The Terrific3 travel blog

We went to the monkey forest in Ubud today for family photos booked through Flytographer, which is a company that helps you find local photographers for vacation shoots. Bayu, our photographer, was super fun with the boys. He said he was impressed that I traveled alone with 2 kids; that he had one 3 year old daughter and it’s hard work. I don’t tell many people in Bali that I had my kids on my own, but he seemed cool and open enough that I did and he was unfazed.

Those monkeys are quite special. I don’t have a lot of photos since my phone was put away most of the time, but here are a few from when we did the “monkey selfie” tour where a staff member gives you food to feed the monkey and then takes photos for you. It all happened all of a sudden once we agreed. A staff member gave me corn in my hand, told me to sit down with the kids and then said a monkey would be on my lap. A monkey on my lap? What? Did I agree to that? No time to think before we were in the middle of it. I was nervous at first then decided to just lean into and enjoy the experience. The boys had a riot!

Here are some more photos of monkeys.

We had Indian food for lunch (poor S didn’t want any, but I told him he needed to take one for the team as I am so DONE with eating pizza and pasta every day, which is what he wants). Z was excited for Indian food too—he told me he is sick of pasta and pizza too and wants Indian food everyday when we go home. At least I won one kid over? I told S that we’ll be having more Indian in London and he was not happy to hear this; also we are hoping to travel to India this winter and we need to figure out how to increase his appreciation of his native cuisine.

After lunch, our nanny came over for 5 hours. I treated myself to a luxurious pedicure and foot, shoulder and head massage. Since we had such a long day yesterday, it was nice to only do 1 major thing today and then chill. I’ve found this pattern works well for us when traveling—one longer harder day followed by a more relaxed day with only 1 activity. I’m grateful we have the luxury of time this trip to do this.

Tomorrow we go rafting on the Agung river. I’m a little nervous, to be honest, as my only rafting experience was in Costa Rica with a friend who convinced me to go and we fell out of the boat so many times and felt like we’d been run over by a truck the next day because the river was unusually low. I’m told that experience is unusual, and also that these are class 1 and 2 rapids, so I’m choosing to be adventurous for the kids. I’ll report back!

One last thing—we’ve been traveling for over 6 weeks now! I can’t believe it. I’m still loving it but starting to feel like I’ll be happy to be back when we return. This year, the travel bug bit me, and I really bit it back hard!