Day 4 - Tuesday 1st October

Once again, we had breakfast in our villa at 8am. Each day, the staff leave us with a small form so we can select what we are going to have for breakfast the following day.

Today we'd booked a van to take us on an all-day tour to Ubud. Suzy decided not to come because she'd already been there earlier this year with her sisters and her foot was too sore to be walking too far. Also Alexis had decided not to come. This left Philip, Steph, Matt, Amelia and me.

Before we got to Ubud, we stopped at a coffee plantation, Negari, in Luwak. We received a guided tour of the grounds and a coffee tasting.

There were various animals in cages such as chickens, parrots, rabbits, ducks and goats. One of the animals was the civet. These animals eat the coffee beans and pass them out at the other end. This is supposedly to make the coffee taste better.

The next stop was at the Monkey Forest at Ubud. This is a very popular tourist location where the monkeys roam free and the visitors walk along paths amongst the monkeys. Our bus driver said we should spend between 60 and 90 minutes there.

Signs warn you about the rules for the park. They emphasise that you must look after your possessions because the monkeys will try to take them - including hats, spectacles and cameras. They say the monkeys can be quite aggressive.

We hadn't walked very far into the park before I felt a monkey trying to get something out of the pocket in my pants. I turned around and yelled at him which made him show his teeth and snarl at me. I moved on quickly.

Soon afterwards another monkey snatched the water bottle that Amelia was carrying. We then watched in amazement as the monkey twisted to top off the bottle (just like a human). He then poured the contents on the path and started drinking the water off the path. Later, people told us that the monkeys sometimes swig directly from the bottle.

We saw monkeys jumping onto someone's lap and other monkeys sitting on someone's shoulder or head. In one case, the monkey was gripping the girl's forehead and seemed as though he was about to gouge her eye. Plenty of people were posing for photos with these monkeys.

Towards the end of our tour, one monkey got hold of the bottom of Steph's dress and looked as though he was going to climb up. We chased him off.

After about an hour, Amelia in particular had decided we'd seen enough and we made our way back to the exit where our driver was waiting for us.

It was only a short drive to a restaurant (Teba Sari) where we had lunch. The building was constructed with bamboo. It was open at the sides and overlooked the valley.

Next we drove to a valley with rice plantations on both sides. The attraction here was a series of giant swings on the cliff overlooking the valley. Each swing was supported on poles about 10m high and swung the participants into space over the valley below.

I was standing there wondering who would be silly enough to do this when Steph and Amelia bought tickets to ride together on the couple swing. I stood there watching as the staff strapped them in and let them go. I was scared that I was about to lose both a daughter and a granddaughter.

Luckily they both survived and seemed to enjoy the experience. They were obviously the bravest two in our group.

There was also a zip line where people would start at one side of the valley and travel about 300m to the other side on a single wire rope. There were plenty of people who were prepared to give it a go.

Originally, we were supposed to go next to a market. However, since Suzy wasn't with us, we couldn't see the point in going there and so we asked the driver to take us straight back to our villas. Unfortunately this was a slow trip because of very heavy traffic - like we'd seen on the day we arrived in Bali. We were back there at about 4:30pm after a long tiring day.

We had dinner at the villa cooked by the villa staff.