I look out from our hotel room to the rain forest ravine in front of me, bursting with life. Honking, shrieking, croaking and calling. The cicadas offer the choral backdrop which reach crescendos and then drop away. To the right a mountain not unlike Agung but mercifully not smouldering.
The road that leaves the hotel snakes around paddy fields, silent in their serenity, the hotel standing like a great border reminder of the two competing sides of this island. Pristine forests and the population's farming needs.
A few kilometres from Ubud we stop at another ravine, perhaps once covered in rainforest, now a lustrous example of well organised and tended paddies with locals showing their hardworking presence and an imposter in their midst. The good thing is that this very heart of their existence has been turned into a tourist attraction and so can inform as well as finance some of the costs. It is an idea which I find welcome to show those who buy their rice from supermarkets what toil, hardship and water is needed to produce it. It is all hand harvested here and the community comes together to help each other out when harvest comes round.
In the city the ponds of water lilies and lotus flowers, almost blue in their hues, stretch upwards. Talking to the people who are gracious and kind, tourism is coming at a high price and the water tables are dropping every year. Overdevelopment and overcrowding are beginning to have a serious impact on the island and some of its unusual Green Inhabitants.
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