For having spent a lot of time in Indonesia over the years, it's funny that the bulk of that time was on one beach or another. Or not so funny when you consider that Indonesia consists of over 17,000 (!!) islands. It probably has the highest border area to total area ratio of any country.
Ubud is not on the coast. As you may have heard, it's in the woods. Or, as they call it here, jungle. Some say there are monsters in that jungle, and I've seen the statues to prove it.
I'm pleasantly surprised by Ubud - once you look past all the "Eat, Pray, Love" toting divorcees and the western yoga cats who are too cool for sunscreen - mental note: tomato yoga may be the next big trend, reserve trademark now - it's a great town that has, from what I can tell, managed to incorporate tourism fairly well. In a Banff sort of way, where the high school is across the street from a row of tourist shops, but still...
There are monkeys, banana pancakes and a drum factory here - what more evidence do you need to show this is a backpacker hotspot? Since you asked, I'll tell you about the taxi touts. All hours of the day and night they sit around with laminated signs, asking if you need transport. How do they make money? Do they own/lease their taxis, or just rent an available one when they have a customer? Is one trip a day enough for them to turn a profit? How successful is the "cold call" approach?
So many questions...
Myself, we used a driver recommended by a friend, and e turned out to be wonderful, a cheerful guy and a cautious driver. We'll be sure to use him again, perhaps to track down a source of that civet coffee I've heard so much about...
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