Before leaving Ubud to visit the Pura Tirta Empul spring temple, we stopped at the Monkey Forest. It's only a 5-minute walk from our hotel and is supposedly home to wild monkeys.
Monkey Forest of Ubud
To us, they seemed very adapted to humans. We don't recommend bringing any food with you. We lost our bananas to a large monkey just 30 meters past the park entrance; the monkey simply jumped on Bodo. How the woman at the kiosk managed to get the monkeys to eat her bananas only after the tourists had bought them remains a mystery to us.
Pura Tirta Empul – Spring Temple
Thanks to our excellent map, we spent over two hours searching for Pura Tirta Empul today. We drove through a tropical storm, along roads that had partially turned into rivers. But that didn't stop the locals from continuing to drive around on their mopeds. After asking a few people by the roadside, we finally found the temple.
The spring water bubbling up here is considered sacred, and the Balinese come here for ritual washings and offerings. This was the first temple on our trip where we didn't have to pay for a sarong or for entry.
