Visit to Bali Nov 8-17, 2011

Bev and I just returned from a fun trip to Bali. This first video is just to get you into the mood! I have always wanted to see Bali and the perfect excuse arrived when I heard that an old friend whom I knew when I was Peace Corps in Iran was going to visit another old friend who is living in Bali. I had not seen John for 40 years and so we planned a 10 day trip to visit Bali and have a mini-reunion. Even more fortunate we have friends in Hancock, NH who have a house in Ubud. Richard and Wayan (she is from Ubud) have invited us for years to visit them while they are in Bali during the US winter and we are in Thailand but we never had. However, they don't arrive until December so we were able to rent their house, located in the wood carving village of Nyuh Kuning and overlooking some rice fields.

We flew from Chiang Mai to Singapore skipping Bangkok and then to Denpasar in Bali. We didn't stop in Bangkok due to the potential flooding, only to arrive in Bali where it was raining so hard that the parking lot had 4 inches of water on the ground and we had to take our shoes off to get to the car. So much for avoiding floods!

We spent the first couple of days getting settled and walked to Ubud town through Sacred Monkey Forest which is a park. Click here for more details. The monkeys within the Sacred Monkey Forest of Padangtegal are commonly called long-tailed macaques. Neither of us particularly like this kind of monkey who can be quite devilish/aggressive. Lots of tourists however pay to go into the forest and feed them. See http://goo.gl/TRE4v for more details. It's a quick walk into Ubud where most of the restaurants and stores are located, but at night it is too dark so we needed to use a taxi as going by road was much much longer with no sidewalks.

The first trip we did out of Ubud was with Eka to the 14th century "Mother Temple of Besakih" near Mt Agung the principal volcano of Bali. First we stopped at the sacred water temple called "Pura Tirta Empul" 926AD (Click here to read about it) On the left side of the temple is a modern villa on the hill, built for President Sukarno's visit in 1954, which is now used as a rest house for important guests. Each shrine has beautiful carvings. For more than a thousand years Balinese worshipers have been drawn to Pura Tirta Empul, whose sacred spring is said to have been created by Indra and to have curative properties. The tradition continues almost unchanged at the temple today.

Here are some pictures ......



From the sacred water temple we headed northeast towards Besekih and started seeing signs for Luwak coffee. I had a vague memory that this was an exotic coffee worth a visit so we stopped at one of the little gardens to try the coffee. Luwak is the Indonesian name for a civet which is fed coffee beans. Its "output" makes for the famous coffee that is processed by the enzymes of its digestive tract. The coffee sells for $ 30-50 a cup in the US or you can buy the beans on Amazon for $ 399/lb. We tried a cup for $5. It was good strong coffee, almost like espresso, but once was enough! Click here to read more. After leaving there we took the scenic route via Kintamani and Batur volcano and lake to Besekih temple.




Finally we arrived at our destination for the day, "Mother Temple of Besakih", Click Here for more info

The Mother Temple of Besakih, or Pura Besakih, in the village of Besakih on the slopes of Mount Agung in eastern Bali, is the most important, the largest and holiest temple of Agama Hindu Dharma in Bali, and one of a series of Balinese temples.

Here are some pictures:



Here is a video of how we dealt with traffic jams in Ubud .... The roads are quite narrow and big tour buses drive into the town. A few days earlier we went past two GIANT buses which were stuck head to head with many cars behind them! On a motorcycle we zoomed past and I bet it was quite a long time before they untangled that mess!





Trip to the Pondok (farm) - map



View trip to the Pondok in a larger map



On Sunday we went north with Kadek, her daughter Ducati to visit a farm where friends live. Nyoman drove and it took about 1 hr to reach the farm. It was interesting to visit a home and farm where they were growing lettuce and strawberries. We walked around the area and saw cocoa, vanilla, and of course rice growing. Most of the fields that grow vegetables or flowers use plastic to cover raised beds to keep the weeds down and to protect the plants from too much rain. The road consists of two tracks of concrete which was a big improvement from previous years when the dirt road/track would get very difficult after rains.
pictures at the farm and the walk

Here are some misc pictures:

and some video of the Barong dances - about 5 minutes of various dances
try to watch the eyes and hands of the dancers ...



The countryside is beautiful but they are losing rice fields to houses at a fast rate. Water too is becoming a problem due to the number of swimming pools at almost every guest house. The food is quite good but I did miss the fish and chili sauce we use in Thailand all the time. There are some really good things that seem to survive. Their families seem less affected by TV and the family unit is intact with families living together in a compound. I loved seeing all the little offerings placed at every conceivable location. Packaging and offerings are all still made from natural products like bamboo and banana leaves. Also check out the website http://www.whirlingturban.com The dresses are made by our friend Katherine, and Bob from Iran days is helping her.

Tom and Bev