Bali Trip Day 2 : Ubud Market & Sang Spa

Waking up in Ubud at 6 am was effortless. Bali gets sunlight earlier than in Malaysia, and with Ubud’s tranquility, I had a really good night sleep. We decided to have our breakfast on the balcony. Enjoying the meal and enjoying the scenery.

Our breakfast for the morning. Not much, but good and enough to start our day. The mango juice was incredible.

We decided to rent a motorbike for the day to explore Ubud. We don’t have to walk far since Tegal Sari rent out bikes for 50,000Rph per day.

This time we went to central Ubud via the other way – Monkey Forest Road. We stopped by their convenience shop K Circle to see if it’s as interesting as the shops in Thailand and Hongkong but unfortunately they’re just as dull as Malaysia’s 7-11. Along Monkey Forest was the entrance to Monkey Forest and a whole lot of shops and boutiques. I would say it’s an even better street than Hanoman Road but tends to be really dark at night.

We saw this interesting ‘loading-friendly’ Coco Cola van.

Ubud market was very much like our traditional wet market, dirty, crowded and certainly not a feast for our nose. We reached there early (the market opens from 9 am to 6 pm) so there were less tourists. One would find all kinds of stuffs here – decoration ornaments, sarungs, textiles, clothings and some paintings. Bargain was compulsary and I got myself a dress for 40,000Rph when the initial price was 200,000Rph. Basically an 80% cut. Did I mentioned that they were more willing to give competitive price if you’re the first customer of the day? For them, it’s bad luck to have the first patron walked away without buying anything.

After Ubud market, we proceeded to Ibu Oka, which was just opposite of it, to try out the famous Babi Guling. By 1 pm, the street was full of vehicles, (bikes especially) with school kids getting back from their schools. We tried to visit Neka Art Museum only to know that it’ll cost 400,000Rph per person per entrance, equivalent to RM15 per person! However, if we haven’t go to Neka Art Museum, we might have never found Nuri’s Warung a.k.a the Nacho Mama.

I’ve tried to find the movie-tie-in version of ‘Twilight’ book in Klang Valley, practically searching high and low for it a few months back. Imagine my surprise and joy when I found it effortlessly in Bali!

What’s the most must-tryout in Bali? Definitely the spa! Anyone who got into lowyat net forum and tripadvisor would be familiar with Sang Spa. Sang Spa was not a 4 or 5 star spa center but more of a homely style spa center. I suspect the small one storey building was converted from a house, with non-elaborated interior and hidden at the end of a small lane.

At first we don’t really like the place but once our eyes got used to it, we felt really comfortable and welcomed. Instead of taking the spa package, we went for massage + body scrub for 2 hours. The strength and pressure were good, almost as good as the mild version of authentic Thai massage.

Unfortunately, when we’re supposed to wash off the oil and scrubs, there was an electricity failure and we had to use the cold water. Worst, it’s raining out there and the cold winds blew into the room.

We plunged into the warm flower bath once we got rid of the scrubs.

The staffs were apologetic about the power failure which seemed like happens frequently in Bali. Overall, I would still recommend this place to others for their welcoming attitude and the good services (except the power failure lah!).

After a good spa, we indulged ourselves with the Bebek Bengil’s Dirty Duck. As the sun went down, we loitered around Ubud on our bike like a pair of hooligan and found a few food stalls that almost tempted me until CS said, “You’ve tried Phuket before, do you want to have food poisoning in Bali too?” :p