For our second day in Ubud we planned to hire a driver to visit some area sites. The driver we planned to book was busy, so instead we spent another day wandering Ubud to do some shopping. It ended up working out better than expected. Apparently we needed a bit more rest after climbing around in Angkor Wat anyway.

Instead of looking for a taxi for breakfast, we decided to eat at the place across the street from our villa: Kopi on Bisma. Tracey had the fried bananas and I had Mie Goring if I remember (a fried noodle dish). Both were really good.

We spent most of the day doing lots of shopping in Ubud. We started at an indoor/outdoor market downtown that had tons of souvenirs. The number one thing to remember when shopping in these markets is that everything is negotiable; in fact the vendors expect you to negotiate after they give you a price; this also applies to prices quoted by cab drivers. If you start low enough, you should end up somewhere around half (or lower) of their starting price.

While in the market, we tried some of the Kopi Luwak coffee in one of the stalls. It’s the coffee that is picked out of civet, a type of tree cat, poo. The cats eat the coffee cherries then defecate the “processed” coffee beans. It was a strong, somewhat bitter coffee, but I didn’t hate it.

It started raining while we were shopping, so we moved to some of the indoor shops.

Tracey read somewhere that the prices were better at the back of the market and upstairs in the indoor market. We found the vendors to be a bit more aggressive, possibly because we were the only shoppers up there when it had been busy outside, but the prices–after the required bargaining–were better. One vendor who sold us a few items said we were his only customers of the day. It has to be a difficult way to earn a living.

After taking another break in he villa’s pool, we caught a ride to the night market in Gianyar, a nearby village, for some street food for dinner. We found a stall selling Babi Guling, so we tried it a second time (this one was better than the Babi Guling in Ubud).

There were lots of other interesting food stalls. We found one that was selling a type of filled sweet crepe that looked interesting. We ordered one with banana, milk, and cheese, and it was super good (and was about  $1). It was so good we came back and had more later in the visit.