Ubud

Hey guys,

Let's start off with a picture of me posing in front of Kawah Ijen. You can't really tell, but I'm standing on a ferry as we sail from Java to Bali. What's memorable about the picture is the fact that early that morning we were standing on the top of that baby, this is where we did the sulphur/blue flame tour I talked about last blog, and then came back down by bus to the ferry port and off on a ferry. Now we are headed for Bali!

That night we relaxed and swam in the pool in our hotel. Amazing! We also had our first hot shower since Pai.....yeah that was a few blogs ago. 

The next morning we rented some scooters and headed out to Tegallalang. We kind of ended up making up our own tour, and saw some lovely scenery along the way. 

This was a random rice field we stopped at and walked around. 

We also saw a sign for Gunung Kawi as we were toodling around, so we headed that way. I had read about it in the Lonely Planet, seemed like something worth checking out. Once inside, we realized we were at the wrong Gunung Kawi but it was still a beautiful temple/courtyard so we were ok with it. 

Then we got back on the bikes and after lunch found the Gunung Kawi we had been initially trying to find. We spent the whole afternoon exploring the place. There are 9 'canti's' (shrines) carved right into the rock from the 11th Century, thought to be dedicated to the then Balinese royal family. We also explored the more random, further afield temples, which was really rewarding as we had this awesome jungle path completely to ourselves. Constant views of ancient rice terraces, waterfalls, towards the end we came across two local guys collecting coconuts. One of them climbed a tree and picked us some green fruit. Not sure what it was but it tasted good. They spoke absolutely no English and my Indonesian was about 6 words, so all I could say was "Terima Kasih" (thank you) and that was our conversation!

I'll never forget that Bali green 

Our fruit picking friend 

That night we went to a kecak performance at Ubud's Pura Dalem temple. That night they were depicting scenes from the Ramayana epic and at the end of the show a fire dancer came out and walked through a pile of burning coconut husks. The first video is of a circle of men chanting. Throughout the night different dancers entered the circle depicting scenes from the epic. The second video is of the fire dancer. He was riding a little hobby horse around as he did it, and he had assistants that kept sweeping up the pile of embers so he could walk through them again- it probably happened 5 times! At the end of the performance I went up to see him and his feet didn't look that burnt, but they were definitely pitch black.

Scenes from the performance

The next morning we went to the Neka art museum to learn more about Balinese culture. It is a fascinating little island with it's own distinctive brand of Hinduism. In the afternoon we caught a procession of people headed into a temple, bringing offerings, carrying a massive gong that they played while walking with it, and lots of other small instruments. 

As we were driving/scootering to our next adventure, we were heading the wrong way up a one way. You might think, why would we so flagrantly disobey traffic rules? Well, there are one-way streets all over but everyone goes both ways on the streets so we figured we would do as the Romans do. Only problem is that every once in a while a policeman decides to stop the whiteys and give them tickets, which is what happened to us. We get flagged down by the policeman, he tells us we were breaking a traffic law and would like to see our licenses. We didn't have them with us, so he says (very gravely), wow, you are now violating two laws, you will have to surrender your passports for a week while we 'sort this whole thing out.' Luckily, a Canadian we had met while traveling in Vietnam had warned us about this game. So I asked him if there was any way we could pay the 'fine' now instead of later. He asked us how much money we had. Literally. Jared made a big show of finding our last 100,000 rupiah (about $10). He said, unfortunately this would not cover the 'fine.' So We pretended to search the scooter and 'found' another 100,000 rupiah. So that apparently would cover the fine and he let us go. Simple as that, we bribed a cop. Why is it less maddening to pay a Canadian cop a $150 ticket than a $20 bribe to an Indonesian one? 

Anywho, after that we left and headed for the Campuhan ridge walk. It offered some great views of rice terraces, not to mention the fancy hotels of Ubud, probably where Elizabeth Gilbert stayed when she wrote Eat Pray Love. 

This was the Campuhan ridge walk. 

Kitty in the rice fields 

Little offerings like this were in people's doorways/pass-throughs all over Bali. They are little woven bamboo baskets full of flowers with little incense sticks burning  beside them. One time I wasn't paying attention and got burnt by one, but that's besides the point. They were beautiful.