Ubud for beginners

So following on from the fun and games at the IMF conference I decided to skip out early and decamp to Ubud instead.  It’s low season here so it’s quite hot but the weather has been beautiful so far.  The streets are quite choked up with cars and scooters but when you go into the shops and restaurants it’s actually quite empty.  Apparently people have been scared off by the earthquakes and the tsunami.

The Agung Rai Art Museum was really good – amazing collection of modern Balinese art – an oasis of calm with very few people.  Lunch at the Yogabarn was a strange mixture of vegan and macrobiotic to which you can add chicken???and full of beautiful young people with taut bodies in tight fitting yoga outfits – oh well maybe I’ll take a class later.

Dinner was another strange affair in the local vegetarian warung (with a full meat menu of course).  The food was very good – proper home cooking according to the one other diner there – a Bangladeshi who claimed to have worked for the UN but was now doing very little – I did wonder what he was actually up to.