Barrels of Monkeys: Japan and Bali

We spent New Year's Eve on a very comfortable JAL flight from Denpasar airport and arrived back home (in our apartment) on New Year's day in the afternoon, where we shared a bottle of red wine in recognition of the start of 2008. We then promptly fell asleep, and have been leisurely enjoying the rest of the holidays since our return.

Part of our leisure, of course, included a couple of slow, pleasurable bike rides around Susono, where we were once again lucky enough to come upon a field of wild monkeys. Brian quickly (but steadily) snapped a few photos with our "biking" camera.

A Japanese macaque in Susono (wild, of course). Brian took this photo on Jan.2.


We also had more than our fair share of monkeys in Bali. One day we took a day trip to Ubud where we visited the "famous" Monkey Forest. Of course, Bali has a plethora of monkeys, and when we rented a couple of motorcycles to get around, we passed through our own private monkey forest just about 2km from where we were staying!

This was taken in the "real" Monkey Forest of Ubud:


And these little guys were hanging around in the forest and roadside in the mountains near Candidasa. We rode our motorcycles past a bunch of monkeys several times on our way to and from the white sand beach:



Frankly, I think the little Balinese guys are cuter, but the Japanese macaques are a bit more rare and therefore perhaps a more valuable sighting!