After a quick jump over from Singapore; Sam, my parents, and I landed in Bali to head into the countryside to the city of Ubud.  Bali is a place like I’ve never experienced before and it was absolutely beautiful in every way.  The lush greenery that we could see from our resort was magnificent and the Hindu culture was truly an amazing and friendly experience.  Just walking around the Royal Pita Maha where we were staying was a beautiful experience.  Set in a series of mountains and against the Ayung River, just looking out of your villa took our breath away.

We immediately set our sites on a couple of adventures we wanted to experience while we were in Bali including walking through the eccentric and artistic town of Ubud (something I suggest to ALL photographers wanting to visit an artistically diverse city!) to see the rock sculpture that the region is known for, visiting the Monkey Forest, doing some “white water” rafting down the Ayung River, and experiencing sunrise over the Tegalalang rice paddies.  A lot to do in just 4 days in Bali which included more stairs and walking than I think any of us were quite prepared for (and I think almost killed my father on more than one occasion!).

Our first adventure was to walk about 2 miles each way through the city of Ubud to the Monkey Forest so Sam could see her first wild monkeys.  The shops were full of local artwork including sculptures, paintings, thread-work, and plenty of other nicknacks and oddities that were interesting and fun to walkthrough.  But, by the time we finally arrived at the Monkey Forest we were all hot, sweaty, and our feet were killing us because we all wore sandals no knowing what we had really gotten ourselves into.  Fortunately, it was all totally worth it!  The Monkey Forest was an awesome experience and being able to get so close to them, we could really do some fun portrait work with the 85mm 1.8 and 100mm f2 macro lenses that you just couldn’t really do anywhere else.  Now, I don’t know if you could really consider the monkeys wild, but they were definitely wild enough to set my mother on edge when I did this!

Anyway, with all of the walking we had to do on the way back, we spent the night relaxing by the pools and watching some Big Bang Theory (to Sam and my mother’s aggrivation).  Here are some of our favorite portraits from the forest, enjoy the Monkeys and leave us a comment to let us know which ones are your favorites!