Legian – 
Gnah… I wake up way too early – a lot of noise is coming from the hotel hallway. Some sort of chimes playing in loop. I have a look out of one of the tiny room windows: In between all the roofs I can see there is some sort of small temple on one rooftop – some private housetemple maybe…
We get down to the dining hall to have breakfast before I head off to find an electronics store… This is harder than I thought. Tattoo parlors, massage saloons, surfer shops… there are tons of them here. Though I ask around a lot, noone can point me in the right direction. At least I get a “Surfer Blessing” with Jasmineblossom-oil in one of the surfer shops I ask about the electronics store – maybe it helps Meanwhile I have made quite some distance to the streets with all the hotels… The area here looks a lot more pleasant and less touristy. There’s a huge mall, maybe I’m lucky…
At least! An electronics store! Alright… I’m going to buy something halfway decent. Kinda strange that the cam is less expensive than in Germany. I take the quite cheap (20000 IDR (1.39 USD)) Mall-Hotel-Shuttle waiting outside, which makes stops at most of the bigger, more expensive hotels. Yep. If you want more touristy you have to go to Vegas. Back at Grandmas we book us a Homestay in Ubud and get ourselves a taxi 220000 IDR (15.26 USD). You can calculate with about 5000 IDR (0.35 USD) / km – 7000 IDR (0.49 USD) / km even for longer distances (make sure to negotiate about the final price first!) The great scenery on the way to Ubud makes up for all the running around in the morning.
Ubud –
Since one of the exits to the road is closed, our taxi-driver has to make a turn and drive past Ubuds Monkey Forest from which you can see some monkeys climbing on power lines to the nearby houses. Arriving at Gasti Homestay we get some bad news: All rooms are taken, since one of the former guests got sick and has to stay another night. Yet, people here seem to know their neighbors quite well, so we get a room in Ekas Homestay next door for the same price. The entrances to some properties resemble those of temples here, and Ekas Homestay is quite picturesque having a big garden with small houses which surround the housetemple in the middle of the site. You have to get used to the spartan bathroom, but apart of that our accommodation is great. We have dinner at Lada Warung. No clue why it got this good rating on TripAdvisor… The food is quite “alright”, but also pretty expensive. On the other hand I had some Jackfruit juice, which tastes great.
We have a short walk and I manage to persuade Elke to visit the Keçak Dance performance which is about to start in a few minutes. Some of the dances here in Ubud get performed by professional dancers, others by amateurs. This performance here is by the local community – which doesn’t mean it leaves a bad impression! Quite the contrary! The show can best be described as acapella-singing accompanied with trance-like movements of the performers. We get to see a small part of the Ramayana-Legend* in which the main actors get to play Hanoman, the Monkey-General or Prince Rama for example. Our way home is extremely short – the temple in which the performance took place is only about 100m from our homestay.
*After looking this dance up in Google, it seems that this dance isn’t quite that “old”: Walter Spies, a German, who escaped to Indonesia from the Nazi-Regime, created this dance together with the Indonesian dancer Wayan Limbak in the 30ties. It is a combination of the traditional Sanghyang Exorzism Ritual and parts of the Ramayana-Legend.
