Tracy Carolyn Photography

We have been to many, many places that claim to offer monkey sightings for tourists.  Usually what they have to offer is the possibility of seeing a monkey, from a distance, up in a tree somewhere.  If you’re lucky.  The Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud is about as far from that as it gets.

In this designated monkey sanctuary, the monkeys are allowed to roam freely.  Tourists wander through the paths, offering them food and taking their photos.  Since the monkeys have become so used to having humans around, they let you get really close to them – even when they have their young with them.  The space is massive, so they could hide if they wanted to, but these monkeys know where the free snacks come from.Don’t you think this guy looks guilty eating this coconut?  Busted.
There is a lot of grooming going on in this park.  They are very meticulous, and seem to enjoy the process.  This monkey seems pretty chill about it, that’s for sure.These monkeys are not starving, I can tell you that.  In addition to the bananas the tourists buy to feed them, there are sweet potatoes, yucca and coconut spread around all over for them.  It’s a veritable monkey buffet.Small baby monkey!

This little guy made friends with John, but I think he was just looking for snacks in his bag.  Luckily we knew not to have any food with us, so he didn’t get too aggressive.  He hopped off John’s back quickly enough.In addition to the cute little monkeys, the sanctuary is full of temples, statues, and beautiful nature.  There are temples all over the place in Ubud, so I suppose it’s only fair that the monkeys have one to roam around in, too.Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil…There’s a river rushing through the park, surrounded by loads of trees with vines hanging everywhere.  I think this place is monkey paradise.

And in keeping with the theme from yesterday, here are our faces.  We couldn’t get one with a monkey in it.

People are afraid of my camera.

It’s large, heavy, and looks expensive.  It has a big lens on it.  People are afraid of dropping it.  You can’t zoom by pressing a button (you have to turn the lens.)  People have apparently never used anything but a point and shoot camera.

Most importantly, the image doesn’t appear in real time on the back of the LCD screen – you have to look through the viewfinder to see what you are shooting.  This actually inspired someone to say to me once, “How old fashioned – you actually have to look through the hole!”  True story.  People have forgotten how to look through viewfinders.

I usually don’t ask people to take photos of us anymore.  I know what we are going to get – terrible, terrible photos.  I did have a point and shoot camera for these types of occasions, but unfortunately it died in Peru when a water bottle spilled all over my bag.  I also have an iphone with me, but the quality of images are pretty sub par.  So I just put the camera on auto, zoom out the lens to it’s widest capability, turn the camera on our faces and hold it out as far as I can with my arm.  The result is the images you see above (and several more that didn’t turn out well.)

A guy in the Blue Mountains saw me doing this and kindly offered to take the photo for us.  I mentioned that most people were afraid of my camera, and he kinda laughed.  I though to myself, well, maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe people can figure it out.  So I said thank you, and handed it over.

As soon as the camera was in his hands, the guy displayed the befuddled look I’ve become familiar with.  I told him to look through the viewfinder.  He awkwardly put one hand on each side of the camera (no hand under the lens – photographers everywhere are gasping), pressed his face somewhere nearish to the viewfinder, and pressed the shutter.  As he handed the camera back to me he said, sheepishly, “I see what you mean.”  The resulting image was terrible.

Self portraits it is.

My Facebook status updates have started to annoy even me lately.

I must come off as so pretentious and flaunting.  Nearly every post mentions being in a different city or country, doing something that probably seems completely absurd and annoying.  I imagine some of my friends have already stopped reading my updates entirely, and have completely abandoned this blog months ago.

But here’s the problem – my normal isn’t normal anymore.  We’ve been international for six months now, and traveling for nine.  Which means that when I sit down to make small talk with strangers or try to talk to friends on the phone, I struggle a bit.  My everyday stories no longer involve wedding photography, yoga students, or dinner parties like they used to.  Now, whenever we are having conversations with other people on the road, my stories always seem to start with phrases like “When we were hiking in New Zealand…” or “So we were on this Chicken Bus in Nicaragua…” or involve statements like “If you think this is good, you should have tried the mojitos in Cuba,” and “Tikal wasn’t nearly as spectacular at sunrise as Machu Picchu.”

When we are talking to people we’ve just met, I imagine this comes across as some sort of travel related competition – as though I am trying to one up their stories of traveling in Indonesia for three weeks, or somehow looking down on them for only having a month in South America.  I’m not, I swear.  I just don’t have any stories that don’t involve travel these days.  And I have so very many of them, it seems like there is always a story to tell that is relevant to the conversation.

When I’m on the phone with friends from home, I try extra hard not to tell stories that involve dolphins and double rainbows and other insane (but true) tales.  The last thing I want to do is discourage a friend from sharing a story about their life that they might think I’ll deem as “boring” because my life is so “interesting.”  No!  I want to hear the “boring” stories!  I want to hear all the stories!  We’re so isolated from the day to day life of our friends and family that when I get on the phone with one of them it’s because I want to hear about what is going on for them.  The last thing I want to do is spend the whole conversation telling travel tales (hence the purpose of this blog.)

So please, bear with me.  In trying to feel connected to the rest of the world, I share what’s going on for us.  My hope is that it is somehow interesting, but know that I’m not trying to be boastful or obnoxious.  I’m really not a crazy travel snob – my “normal” is just weird these days.

What’s that?  You were just dying to see another sunset photo?

Hey man, I got what you need.  Enjoy a nice view of last night’s sunset over the rice fields from our terrace.

What can I say, I’m always looking out for you.  I got your back in the sunset photo department.  You’re welcome.

I hesitate to call our place in Ubud a villa.  The word “villa” just conjures up an absurd picture in my head, one of extreme luxury.  In my mind, villas exist only in places like Tuscany, amid sweeping views of the Italian countryside.  In my mind, rich people sit in the verandahs of their villas and drink expensive wine and eat fancy chocolates.  If you don’t have all of that, surely you aren’t living in a villa, right?

Now that I’ve typed it so many times, the word villa has lost all meaning.  Villa.  Villa. Villa.  Good thing there is Wikipedia to rescue me from my insanity and provide me with a (somewhat) accurate definititon.  It tells me that the villa was originally a Roman country home, which means my earlier visions were spot on.  However, it has now come to mean a tropical vacation home.  Well, in that sense of the word, we are living in a villa.

I’m not usually big on posting a lot of photos of where we live, but since I haven’t left the house for six days (due to illness and inability to ride a motorbike), this is about all that’s going on for me right now.  So welcome to my world.

Above is a photo of our outdoor living room.  It has a pool.  A private pool in your outdoor living room may be one of the greatest things ever.  (Unless you live in Denver.  Bad idea.)  Our little pool is surrounded by a small, but lush growth of tropical garden.  The garden insures that we share our space with lots of lizards and insects, and gives the bats a place to perch before they buzz over your head at night.

The kitchen, living room, and one of the bedrooms are downstairs.  There’s also an upstairs.
This is our upstairs terrace, complete with John hard at work.  The door leads to our sitting area, bedroom and bathroom.  For some reason, we have a massage table up there too.The view from the terrace is quite nice.  There are rice fields in all directions.  It was much more beautiful when we first moved in and the fields were lush and green.  They have since been tilled and look more like muddy ponds.  However, it’s still quite entertaining to sit on the terrace or in front of one of the huge windows in our bedroom and watch the world outside.  I like to watch the people working in the rice fields and try to figure out what they are doing (I have no idea how one grows rice.)  If no one is working, the ducks make for some good entertainment, as do the motorbikes that occasionally whiz by on the dirt track between them.  (Have I mentioned that I haven’t left the house for 6 days??)Our upstairs bedroom has a lovely little sitting area and a shower with a view.  The rent here also includes two nice people who clean the house two hours per day, six days a week.  It seems excessive, but a tropical home like this would be overrun by insects and birds if they didn’t clean it regularly, so it’s more of a maintenance thing than a service thing.You get the idea.

Not much to complain about around here, that’s for sure.  Hopefully this cold will pass soon and we’ll get out on the motorbike to explore more.