Unfortunately Dad woke up this morning still feeling quite sick but was determined for our last day to not go completely to waste. Luckily, we don’t fly home until later this afternoon because one of the things my dad was really keen to see whilst we were here in Bali was a temple & we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see one before we left.

We went for a walk down the road and had a lovely little breakfast at a local café, it was cute and surprisingly one of the only breakfast’s we actually ate out at whilst here in Bali. Most of our days have been super early starts so we hadn’t really had a chance to dine out too much at all.

We then went back to the villa, got ready for the day and headed back out to find a taxi van that would take us up to Uluwatu temple for a quick visit. After the taxi terminal trying to sell us a whole day of sightseeing & us convincing them we have a flight back to Australia later today so literally only have time to go to the temple and back, we were finally on our way.

It was about an hour drive to Uluwatu temple and I was so excited to go back here. I remember on my previous trip to Bali being at Uluwatu for sunset and it was so pretty and just amazing to watch the thousands of monkeys strolling around the park and causing mischief with the tourists. I had already warned my family to keep hold of everything because as cute as the monkeys are, they most definitely have fun stealing different items from the visitors.

We pulled up at the temple and noticed one of the local market stalls were selling cheap sunglasses, so we decided to buy some just in case they went “missing” on our temple walk. We purchased our tickets, put on our sarongs then made our way into the temple. To my surprise though, as we walked deeper into the temple grounds, there were no monkeys in sight. I couldn’t believe it, especially given how many were here last time and how I had literally just spent the car ride explaining to my family how crazy they can be!

The temple itself was lovely, we got some really nice snaps of the place and being able to look out onto the ocean, it was just as magnificent as I remember it being. We were able to walk around and take a few happy snaps and eventually found out, by one of the local workers that the monkeys only really come out in the evenings, just before sunset – I guess that explains the absence of them right now, bummer!

Lucky for us, as we were making our way out to exit the temple grounds we saw a few cheeky little monkeys lying on the walls and playing in the trees. I was beyond excited to see them, as a trip here just would not have felt complete without it & I was very grateful that my family got to see them too! The monkeys were super cute, especially the little baby ones & after a little while of just watching them and laughing at the little things they did it was time to head back to the villa for our final few hours in Bali.

Once we arrived back at our villa, we were able to spend an hour or so swimming in the pool before the taxi arrived to take us to the airport ready for our flight home.

The flight went relatively smoothly and thankfully on the return trip, the seatback screens actually worked and we were able to watch movies for the 5 hour flight back home. About two hours out of Sydney though, the plane went into some turbulence and we dropped pretty rapidly from the sky for what felt like a 10 seconds or so. I’m sure it was much shorter than that in reality but it was pretty scary and definitely the worst kind of turbulence I have experienced before – it probably didn’t help that the lights were turned down and most people had been sleeping too! I’m someone who absolutely loves travelling but am not a massive fan of flying so after that I was very keen to have both my feet firmly back on the ground in Sydney.

Overall it was a pretty great 5 days away with my family; sickness & craziness aside, we had a really great time away together and I’m glad that my dad and brother liked Bali just as much as I thought they would. I even have my dad saying he would like to come back, you know…just to make sure he really doesn’t like it – yeh, yeh dad, if you say so ha