Ubud, being a cultural hub, has restaurants everywhere both modern and traditional. Among my top food picks are satay (with yummy peanut sauce!), anything with nasi (rice) and mie (noodles). For this blog, I will feature my favorite Ubud or Balinese food -the Babi Guling which is a roasted pig.

The Bali area of Indonesia is predominantly Hindu and you can find dishes with pork in it. The roasted pig is similar to the Philippine’s lechon where they roast the whole pig, although the Balinese add more spices to it.  They also serve it with rice as with most Indonesian dish.  

I tried this at Ibu Oka restaurant at Jalan Tegal Sari No. 2 in Ubud. If you’re staying within the tourist hub of Ubud then this should just be walking distance from that.  

PRAY.

Hindu temples are one of the most intricate and beautiful temples I’ve ever seen. Ubud has maintained their old Hindu temples as well as traditions like festive wedding ceremonies. What’s interesting is how different the temples are. There are temples where people bathe in holy water, temples where people just pray, and temples inhabited by hundreds of monkeys.  

Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary

 At first glance, it looks like a mini jungle but it's actually a Hindu temple complex. This small forest within Ubud is such a refresher after you have traveled around the busy tourist town. Monkeys roam freely in the area so make sure you don’t bring anything that will attract their attention like food.

You can wear your casual travel attire here but do not forget your sarong. You will need to put on your sarong when you enter the temple to give respect. I was wearing pants on this day but I still needed to cover myself from my waist with a sarong.

Safety tip: Better wear your camera strap all the time and  secure your other belongings because some monkeys can be curious of your stuff. There was one monkey who suddenly grabbed the small green flashlight keychain attached to my bag. It was a tug of war! And the monkey won and I lost a mini flashlight! The monkey might have thought it’s a small unripe banana.  Well, I can’t read his mind.  

HEAL.

Now this part was not part of my plan at all and this is a true story, of course. I went to Indonesia with a sore throat and dry cough. And it just got worse. It was so bad that it’s really embarrassing to go to the quiet temples and cough so loudly. Now before you think that this is just a shallow case sore throat, yes it was, but there was something more than that which I discovered. And I believe this has saved my life now. So please stay until the end of my story.

The medicine and lozenges I took with me were no longer working. I asked the owners of the guesthouse where I was staying if they can recommend a doctor in the area. They said that they do not go to doctors, instead they go to Hindu priests who are also faith healers. Faith healers are not foreign to me as they are common in some provinces in the Philippines especially when I was young. So I agreed with this recommendation.

They were very helpful and they took me to their Hindu priest who they call “grandpa”. It was outside the tourist area of Ubud and it was nice to see how the locals actually live. We went inside a family residential compound. I was there for a healing session but I was more excited taking photos of what a real Ubud home looks like!

It is a large compound with a house and temples. The house even looks like a temple.

Grandpa  stared at me from the other side of the table. He doesn’t speak English and my guesthouse owner served as our interpreter. I really didn’t know what will happen next as he was just staring at me and it was starting to become uncomfortable. Finally, he spoke and it was translated to me.  He gave his impressions, or should I say diagnosis, of me. Aside from the dry cough and sore throat he said that I have poor eyesight. I was wearing clear contact lenses and I wondered whether he has super bionic eyes that could see that at our distance. But that was not all, he said the most intriguing news to me.

“You have something bad inside your neck. Don’t take it to a doctor because they will cut it open.” my guesthouse owner interpreted. He didn’t say what it was but he only said that it was “bad”.

Grandpa, the guesthouse owner and I went to the house temple, while grandpa’s grandson took photos of us. He started with the ritual. One thing really appreciated is that he told me to pray NOT to his (Hindu) gods but to pray to the God that I believe in. This was faith healing so it makes sense that it would only work with belief. This was what made me go on with the session.

I drank an herbal concoction for my sore throat. I felt instant relief after that. As for my eyes, he took a bottle of oil and I had to remove my contact lenses. He rubbed the oil on my eyelids. It felt hot and tears were just flowing from my eyes because of the oil. He told me that I will see more clearly but he cannot totally heal it because that “bad thing” inside my neck had to be healed first.  He wanted to cure that deeper sickness he found but it will take more days for a healing session. Unfortunately, I had a flight the next day and he was only able to do one session.

All these were of zero cost and they only accepted my donation. I was healed almost instantly of the dry cough and sore throat. As for my eyes, it did feel clearer. To confirm all these, I went to an eye doctor when I came back to Manila. My eye grade before my trip were -1.25 and -1.75. The post travel results came out to be better and were only -0.75 for both eyes. I also did not follow his advice not to see a doctor, out of curiosity, I went to see an ENT doctor for my neck. He was able to feel a lump. It was really unnoticeable that time and I myself didn't even feel it. I went through a neck ultrasound and shockingly, there were 3 tumors. The doctor performed a Fine Needle Biopsy and the worse news came: it was suspicious papillary thyroid cancer. But don’t worry about me. Everything is under control and I am undergoing alternative medicine treatment. And so I did somehow follow grandpa not to have it cut open. I will share about this on my future blogs as I would also like to share about health too.

It still makes me wonder if I’ll discover the tumors before it gets worse if I never went to Ubud . This may be weird for some people but I believe things happen for a reason, as mystical as it is.  To grandpa, my guesthouse owner and grandpa's grandson - Terima Kasih!

The first series of my Wander blog will focus on the beautiful country of Indonesia and the places I’ve traveled to there. My first wander blog was about the great Komodo Dragons of the Flores islands. If you haven’t read it, here are the links to the blog and the photos. I will share more photos of temples and monkeys not featured in this blog tomorrow. This will be under the Wander Snaps series.