11th - 14th January 2011
Waking up early in Kuta, we went our separate ways both having things to do before leaving for Ubud. I walked to Matahari Square where I salivated over shoes and bought some much needed mascara and then went in search of Havaiana flip-flops. I got to a small outlet in the Discovery Shopping Centre and found that I was 18000 (about 2USD) rupiahs short for two pairs. I power walked back to the hotel and worked out for the first time since NYE, it was difficult to say the least. After a quick shower I had just started asking our hotel guy if he could lend me some money when Djalma showed up, told me he had booked us tickets and that we had to be ready to leave at 1pm for the shuttle bus (minivan for tourists). In full panic mode I raced, well walked very quickly, back to the shopping centre and got both our flip-flops (mine were different sized but I didn't realise this until several days later) and then rushed back. I made it with 15 minutes to spare, we shared a couple of cans of Pocari Sweat, a life saving drink with rehydration salts and sugar and swapped some of our books that we had been trying to change. Note to anyone planning to travel to Bali/Java/Lombok the book exchange scene is utter bollocks – any books you leave in a guest house go to a book shop which will charge about ¾ of the cover price but will pay less than 10% of that to you for your books, we even tried to exchange four books for one in several places but they weren't having any of it.
Our minivan came by around one and we drove through rain and sun to Ubud a small village packed to the gills with arty bits and loveliness. On the way up we spoke to a Chilean girl who had the biggest smile and a Spanish lady who was nice but spoke very loudly. We parted ways at the drop off point but exchanged numbers and made noises about meeting up later, despite calls and texts we never did manage it. After plenty of trawling around trying to find a room for less than 100,000 rupiah (a little over 10USD) we eventually found a room and a guy who, after plenty of haggling, let us have it for three nights for 80,000 including breakfast. The room was big but the walls were thin and the amorous French couple next door could be clearly heard next door – plenty of coughing real and fake alerted them to our presence. After settling in and marvelling at the beauty and the ever present green Djalma got us both geared up for what would be a week of continual action/tourism/travel. We went for a stroll in the spitting rain to have a better look at the place and to try and find out about one of the many dance performances in town. It was getting dark and the spitting persisted, Djalma left me to find a place selling tickets and went back to get my camera, he found a place selling tickets for a Kecak dance right outside the place – I'd found the ticket office while waiting for him (and in-between longingly window shopping).
The dance had just started, it was a fairly small stage but packed with men in sarongs who were seated in a circle and provided most of the music. The only music was singing, chanting and clapping which was so beautiful and melodious, it controlled, or echoed, the pace and the atmosphere of the story (part of the epic Ramayana).
The dancing and the acting was superb, I felt like I was forever taking photos because every moment was dramatic and not to be missed, which I did end up doing especially as I had to wait for my flash to recharge in-between shots.
There were three section in all and the performance lasted about an hour and a half, the first section was a section of the Hindu epic, Ramayana, the second was a performance from two young girls who danced with fans. The third was a guy on a horse. What was interesting was that all the performers playing characters, the girls, the king and the various demons from the Ramayana, the two young girls and the guy on his broomsticks horse were all possessed by the spirits of the original “characters”.
At the end of the dance the two young girls fell down, very artfully, and lay on the floor asleep while a priest came and said a few words and I think splashed them with some water. After this their headgear was removed and they woke up looking more like normal little girls.
The last act, was a possessed guy who galloped round the small stage with the tail and the mane flying. The candelabra type centrepiece of the first act was removed for the young girls and the empty space was filled for horseman with a piled of coconut husks liberally doused with petrol and then set on fire. The horseman then came galloping on stage and started kicking the flaming coconut husks around, the ladies in front of us, sitting in rapt attention in the front row, got quite a fright and would have jumped back had we not been right behind them. The set wasn't long he mainly ran round the stage, running over the husks and kicking them after two old guys had brushed them back into a pile again. At the end he sat down and the priest came and brought him out of his trance, curtains up, show over.
It was a beautiful introduction to the town/village and I was glad that Djalma had insisted that we do something other than chill out and take the first night in Ubud easy.
We were up quite late the next day, my legs were aching so I decided to give the workout a miss and we had breakfast on our little patio, a banana jaffle, fruit salad and a thick coffee. The garden of our hotel was quite beautiful, with so much rain all the time, things couldn't help but grow and everything was a lush green, from the grass, to the trees to the luminous moss that grew on anything that stood long enough. We left Ubud behind and set on on a little walking tour that led us through several sights through Pedang and Bedulu.
The first hour was all up and down and heavy going, especially because it was so humid, the sun hadn't really warmed everything up despite it being mid-morning, it was the moisture in the air that was the real killer. Our route generally followed a river which wasn't far from sight for very long in the beginning of the walking tour.
We met a guy on a scooter who kept reappearing wherever we were, odd but he seemed friendly enough and directed us (or perhaps more accurately Djalma the map bearer) via some prettier routes. We stopped outside a large temple and took turns going in, we had to wear a sarong around our waist – having the shoulders and arms bare wasn't an issue here, it's the knees that need to be covered. The place was big and divided into several sections, I really tried to be quick but there were photos waiting to be taken everywhere I looked. It was easily the best example of temple architecture that we saw in Bali, the sculptures, stone or concrete, were exquisite.
The temple grounds were well looked after and I saw several people putting out the small plates of offerings at various shrines. The offerings are quite lovely and being completely biodegradable, very nature friendly. A broad long green leaf is shaped into a shallow square dish and filled with a mixture of different coloured petals, something edible like rice, sweetcorn kernels or a small biscuit, sprinkled liberally with sugared water and usually finished off with a scented jos-stick.
The smell of incense and all the demons, monsters and spirits from Hindu mythology reminded me strongly of India, it was the smell of the burning incense sticks that did it though. There were lots of gate type structures, there's a road sign with a three tiered triangle for temples and on roads the gate things are separate allowing the road to pass through. I personally think that they are much more impressive when the “gates” are joined in the middle and have only a small gate to allow people through. I took pictures of the wind in the rice paddy opposite the temple while Djalma wandered round in the sarong. He was evidently captivated and I spent a while waiting for him underneath a frangipani tree so I wouldn't burn.
We continued along that same country road which wound through rice paddies, home to numerous ducks. We passed through what could be described as a village except that I'm sure it was to small, temples lined both sides of the road and old offerings splattered the intersection of the road leading into the village.
At the end of a road, passing a quizzical looking cow and a pile of burning refuse – all natural stuff, coconut shells, dead leaves and old offerings we spotted another rice paddy.
I think we have seen about a million rice fields, but they weren't getting old or boring, if anything they were getting more and more impressive the more we saw. Djalma climbed up a wall to take a picture of one small field fringed with coconuts – any excuse to climb!
This preview was more beautiful than the ones we actually paid to see in Yeh Pulu, it was carved high up in a wall that dropped away to a river and further up backed onto more rice terraces that were positively glowing in sunlight that had found a gap in the clouds.
I wish I could really confer the true beauty that we saw, I just don't have the words to describe the quality of the green that was everywhere. I've mentioned somewhere else that the greenness is probably the primary reason that Bali is so jaw droppingly beautiful. No surprise then that we stopped for more pictures at more lovely rice terraces, this time Djalma went into the fields for the photo opp.
The road continued onto Pura Pusering Jagat (an important temple home to a bronze bell) winding gently through more hamlets or villages where children played on bikes, chickens scratched in the road and people carried bundles on their heads. The temple itself wasn't that special, quite often the important temples were not as visually impressive as the beautiful temples that housed a multitude of“normal” shrines. After getting passed the lady who was determined to take a donation, I had a quick look around and despite the beautiful green lawn I couldn't help but compare it unfavourably to the temple we first stopped at. I refused to give a donation on the way out, not only was it a bit of a disappointment I also though that it was cheeky to insist on a donation, if they want to charge a ticket price to enter the temple grounds fair enough, but a donation should be given willingly and not extracted under duress. Djalma didn't even bother going in and we couldn't through the small village braving the very loud and rather aggressive dogs. In Ubud there are bags which say 'I love Bali dogs' I've no idea if this is ironic because they were all loud and scary or whether people feel sorry for them (we saw a couple that looked horrid and in urgent needs of a vet's attention).
We got a couple of bottles of Pocari Sweat and some Mangostines and snake fruit from a small stall next to some fighting cocks. Feeling a lot better after the electrolyte infusion we carried on a little longer, by now it was about 1pm and even the beauty of the paddy fields couldn't sustain us without something to eat. We tucked into the Mangostines as we walked, it's a small round dark purple fruit the size of my fist, you squeeze it open and the broken skin reveals segments of white squishy fruit that is unbelievably sweet and tastes divine. Further on in the village we turned down a road where a temple was all decked out in long limber swishing leaves out the front and a statue sitting behind piles of fruit and flowers. Music blared out from speakers as a group of young boys whizzed past us on their bikes. We followed them up the road where we watched them dump their bikes and climb over a gate into the temple grounds. Naughty, naughty!
We sat down for a while to enjoy the temple gates and rest our legs, mine were killing me having restarted my workout and walked up and down the hills in the morning, Djalma as usual was doing just fine and had plenty of energy.
Two minutes later we finally found Yeh Pulu, a small set of carvings along a cliff face from the 14th century, the only face I recognised was of Ganesha the elephant God. We tried to get through some rice fields and follow a short cut but we got really lost and so retraced our footsteps and walked for another twenty minutes, by this point my legs were ready to actually fall off.
We passed more aggressive dogs, more beautiful temples but the only thing I really remember is the relief when we caught a bemo (small local bus) back to Ubud. We had dinner in a Padang style restaurant, all the dishes were cooked and displayed in the window for you to choose, everything was delicious although sitting on the hard wooden chair wasn't the most comfortable way to eat with such a weary body. We went back to work on photos and put our feet up and then later in the evening went out in search of beer and free wifi.
The next day my legs had recovered but not enough to even think about working out, we strolled through town after banana pancakes for breakfast and had a quick look at the local market where they sold everything, including vast baskets of petals and grasses for offerings. Djalma went off to book more tickets between islands for later in the trip and I strolled to the Puri Lukisan Museum of Art.
I got my ticket and strolled through the small but lovely grounds and made my way through the collection of modern art. It wasn't that special, some of the art was beautiful but there wasn't anything that spectacular most of it was post WWII and to my mind, not that modern. I did get a free refreshment in my ticket price so I sat and drank a coke and wrote another postcard to my little brother, a card to my wife and generally killed time before meeting Djalma for lunch.
It was the only time we stopped at a place recommended by the guidebook, it was a heaving warung serving up freshly roasted suckling pig. It was delicious, the meat was so tender and juicy, the skin was brown and crunchy, the vegetables nice and spicy but not too hot and the extra dish of beans with fresh coconut beefed it up and made it a more balanced meal. Unfortunately the photo doesn't really do justice to the deliciousness of the meal, sorry about that.
We kicked back at the hotel avoiding the midday heat, with the sun out, it was rather warm, too warm for me. Later on I walked down to the ARMA (Agung Rai Museum of Art) which was impressive. Set in gorgeously sculpted gardens it felt like a real setting for some interesting culture and inside I wasn't disappointed. The building was beautiful and the work was just as good. I killed a good hour before Djalma rolled up on our scooter for the next few days and whisked me over to Zen for our pamper session.
The previous evening we had taken a look at several different Spas and had settled on the last one, the cheapest and friendliest, we booked a 1 hour and 45 minute Mandi Lulur which is an hours massage followed by a turmeric and rice paste scrub, a generous amount of yoghurt to further exfoliate and beautify the skin and then a soak in a perfumed bath lavishly sprinkled with petals. It was delicious although I did get the giggles when the time came to massage my front and my masseuse whipped the sheet down to my waist and then strolled off to check the bath water leaving my breasts airing for more than was comfortably long!
The massage oil stayed on our skin even after the scrub and the yoghurt and the bath and subsequent shower, we left at 8pm and the air was cool so instead of feeling hot and sticky we felt all delicious.
The next morning we left around 7.30am and began our four day adventure circling the rest of the island.
