Dhila Backstrom Photo Blog

After another day of swimming at the Hotel, Putri decided we needed some girl time, so she booked us a message (complimentary from the hotel!).

Putri snapped this picture of me and Treyton

And Jeff wanted to get in the action

Putri thinks this guy could use a little bit more muscle with his hand work, well that's what you get from a complimentary massage, a bit half-ass job.

Afterwards, we met up with my mom, Alvin, Ria and John at the Monkey Forest. This is a MUST stop and a MUST do if you are in Bali. We went to the site in Uluwatu. There's also another monkey forest in Ubud Bali.

Since it's a sacred temple, everyone and anyone (adults) entering the temple wearing other than long pants, must be covered with a sarong, much like what Jeff had on. Look at this handsome man.

First sighting of the monkeys

A family of monkeys. I was told when I was little that these monkeys were human beings once and were cursed by the Gods.

Noticed Jeff didn't have his glasses on? Before entering the temple we were told not to bring ANYTHING with us and to strip all of our jewelries. There are no lockers at this place so you have to either leave them in your car or give them to your mom who's waiting for you outside while you go through the temple.

Getting friendly with some monkeys

Ria getting friendly with her ancestor

I'm pretty sure they could smell fear in me, no wonder no monkeys want my food. The stick on my hand was pretty handy to shoo them away.

They (the monkeys that is) absolutely LOVE Alvin. They were climbing up his back, combing his head to look for fleas and stuff.

Do you notice that Ivory only has one sandal? Well the other one got ripped out of her foot by one the naughty monkeys

This nice lady, got Ivory's sandal back, after she gave the monkey some cut up fruit. A small bag of fruit cost about 2 pennies and we gave her more for the trouble.

She's one of the sellers who sells cut up fruit to sell to tourist if you want to feed the monkey. She also told us that overtime these monkeys got smarter. They didn't steal because they want to own it, they steal from tourist in hopes to exchange their stolen goods with food. Smart fellas!

One must also wonder, is there some kind of collaborative work between the monkeys and these sellers? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours?

We climbed up the stairs to get to the temple

it was hotter than hell that day and we managed to climb up what felt like an infinite stairs to heaven and sure enough we found this heavenly beauty.