Bali: Bruises, Bites and Blessings. Day 51-59

                                                          BALI, INDONESIA

It’s a bit hard to describe and paint a picture of this place… the ancient history, the beauty, the poverty, tens of thousands of temples (most of which are covered in mold and moss), the mind-numbing traffic, and the beautiful, patient and kind people. But, it’s a fascinating place and one that everyone should experience if not for just a few days or a week. The drive of twenty miles from the airport took over 2 ½ hours and we were skeptical after what we saw in between, wondering what exactly we had gotten ourselves into. But the moment we passed through the security gate of our beautiful resort, The Ayung Resort and Spa in Ubud, it was like entering another world. Lush, rainforests, gently flowing rivers, and great meals are just a few of the things this place offered. By the end of the week, we had peeled back the many layers of Bali and were able to look past the simple lifestyles and relative poverty of the people that live here and realize what a simple, wonderful life they apparently enjoy. Indonesia is comprised of approximately 14,000 Islands and is actually the fourth most populous sovereign country in the world at around 300 million people. The biggest and most populated island is Java where the capital of Jakarta is located, and Bali is one island to the East. It is a much smaller, tranquil, peaceful island with its own version of the Indonesian language. Bali is thought to be over four thousand years old with most of the island covered in jungle, rainforest and small villages scattered throughout.

The plane ride to get here was long, leaving Johannesburg and connecting from Hong Kong to Denpasar, Indonesia took about thirty hours so we were plenty worn out by the time we arrived here on our Independence Day, July 4 in a major monsoon. Our villa was beautiful; complete with private plunge pool and enormous living room, bedroom and bathroom, walls inside and outside completely covered in dark mahogany intricately carved wood and plenty of porches outside for relaxing and to enjoy the birds, monkeys, flora and fauna. Our airport driver was arranged through the resort to alleviate the hassle of negotiating with an airport taxi or figuring out the local Uber mechanics. The gentleman was a nice, pleasant young Balinese man named “Yogi” who spoke English quite well, and the heavy accent required us to listen intently. 

When we arrived at the resort this was in our bedroom. When Bill booked the trip they asked if it was a special occasion and he said we were celebrating our 33rd anniversary by traveling around the world. Guess they remembered.

The owner of our resort also owned 4 other resorts in Bali. He is now deceased but his sons carry on his legacy. He collected art from all over Bali. All the buildings in the resort  have  magnificent pieces. 

Our villa for the week. 

Around the property grounds 

View from the breakfast area, right above the roofline is a glimpse of the Ayung River. Lots of rafters, class II and III rapids. 

The lobby area. The piece on the left was $100K. 

Guess this truck is transporting feet. 

City Center

 

Because of the frequent rain and just by being in a rain forest, the roads in the resort were understandably slippery. The resort has an army of "buggies", big golf carts that transport guests back and forth to the various amenities. Andrea being Andrea wanting the exercise, the first morning she elected to walk and promptly busted her ass in a fall which fortunately caused no damage other than some major bruises to her arm and ego.  

The fall was witnessed by staff and after limping back to the villa, a medic dude quickly arrived with alcohol and cotton swabs to clean up the scrapes. This will come in handy later...keep tuned. 

They also baked us a special cake presented at high tea\happy hour. 

The resort also provides a shuttle into the village of Ubud so Sunday we struck out to explore the place. Bad timing because most of the day was spent in ponchos and enjoying the monsoon rain. It did not stop the crowds, though, which made it even more miserable by dodging all the umbrellas, potholes, scooters and mud puddles. We finally were able to sniff out a booze store, which as a bonus sold pretty decent cigars so after a sizable purchase, we dialed up Uber and headed back to dryer quarters.

First stop, the Puri Lukison Ratna Wartha Museum, to oldest art museum in Bali. It  features wood carvings and paintings of many local artists. 

Koi pond

Walking the streets in Ubud

A blessing, these are seen outside temples all over Ubud. 

Look above the doorway, at first the symbol had us scratching our heads but after a quick google search we understood that it is a swasti which is a sacred symbol representing good fortune, prosperity and protection and is unrelated to Nazism. 

Basket making factory

The art market shopping district, another Gatlinburg with all the trinkets and knick knacks. 

Ubud Palace. Puri Saren Agung, was the official residence of the royal family of Ubud. Built in the 1800's

Time for haircut #2. 

Back at the villa, relaxing from the rainy day. 

Happy hour entertainment. Click on the video to view. 

Yogi the driver made it known he was available as a private guide at substantially reduced rates than whatever the resort would offer so on Monday, we spent the day being hauled around by Yogi to all of the major sites of Ubud. This was comprised of some interesting tours of a rice terrace farm, a coffee and spice plantation, a waterfall (somewhat underwhelming after seeing Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe), and Ubud’s crown jewel: The Monkey Forest. Here, there are over one-thousand free roaming monkeys that you can observe in their natural habitats in a very beautiful jungle setting, some of which are constantly fornicating. As fate would have it, within a few minutes of entering the park, Andrea sat down on a wall and a monkey hopped in her lap to see what was in her backpack. This was not an uncommon occurrence here but what was uncommon is when Andrea tried to swat away the monkey who then promptly scratched and bit her. This created a minor crisis and a trip to the monkey forest clinic (there were actually two clinics to handle the daily case load!!) for examination, decontamination and counseling on treatment. Understandably, Andrea was quite upset about this for the fear of rabies, but as we were leaving, another couple came in with the same condition so we realized that The Monkey Farm was fraught with the risk of monkey bites and scratches. Note to future travelers: skip The Monkey Forest. We particularly enjoyed the conversations with Yogi about his life in Bali, as well as just riding from place to place and observing life in this fascinating part of the world.

Breakfast in our villa before heading out for the day. 

Traditional fare with a bakery plate, fruit plate and a couple of eggs, and non traditional with noodles and rice thrown in. 

Our first stop of our day with Yogi was the Tegallalang Rice Terrace. The terrace is a series of rice paddies that follows the traditional Balinese irrigation system called subak. It's been around since the 8th century. They have turned it somewhat into a tourist photo op with many places to get your picture snapped along the way. 

Bird of Paradise 

Lovebirds

Yogi explaining rice harvest, about two weeks away from being ready 

A blessing for one of the rice paddies. 

First time standing in a rice field. 

World UNESCO site, beautiful! 

The next stop on the tour was the Bali Pulina coffee plantation and spice farm. 

Kopi Lusaka coffee is also know as civet coffee. The animal pictured below is an Asian palm civet. The civet consumes ripe coffee cherries, poops them out and the poop is collected, cleaned and roasted. The process is unique and the coffee is expensive. No, we did not try it.  

These animals are dangerous and will bite. 

 

The cherry berries they eat. 

The poop

The drying and roasting process 

We ended the tour with a coffee tasting, all available for purchase in the gift shop. 

Coffee bean pickers 

Next stop, the Monkey Forest from HELL. 

Don't let his cuteness fool you. 

Oh look, how cute. 

No, not so cute. 

Ouch

Sites along the way on the tour. The traffic is unbelievable. 

Finally, the last stop the waterfall. 

As for food and mentioned earlier, the resort has an outstanding restaurant. Breakfast is on the house, and they are phenomenal with all kinds of traditional and Indonesian dishes offered and basically all you care to eat on top of that. The dinners are incredible. The service is spot on and there’s always some sort of Indonesian entertainment in a beautiful sunset setting. This night we were entertained with the traditional Balinese dance called the Oleg Tamulilingan Dance. It's a dance that depicts the pleasure of two beetles playing while sucking honey and flower juice - and end up falling in love. Ooookay. Fortunately there was a written interpretation of the dance as it was very doubtful we would have had a clue what it all meant.

The highlight for Tuesday was a couple’s massages at the resort spa center. As part of our resort package, we were given thirty-minute massages so we tacked on another 30 minutes and had two wonderful, soothing and relaxing one hour massages. We had been hearing about and seeing signs of the old ancient Hindu tradition of cremation. It seems that cremation is the preferred and very common way of burial and is a very lively and upbeat parade and ceremony similar to what you would find at a jazz funeral on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. As the pictures will show, there are very elaborate funeral crypts carried on massive bamboo poles by Balinese men. These crypts eventually are burned and contain either the corpse or the bones of the deceased. The staging area for the cremation parade happened to be just up the street from the entrance to our resort so we were able to witness this spectacle. Quite a sight to see.

After the foot wash, it's time for the massage. 

Short video of the cremation ceremony. Very fascinating to watch! 

Yep, it's happy hour and they know we are outside and ready to terrorize Andrea.  

Beautiful sunset views. 

Another tradition of sorts is the “floating breakfast”. This involves a giant flat open wicker box that contains an elaborate breakfast and is floated to you by servers on one side of the pool while you either stand or sit on the other side of the pool. It sounds a bit ridiculous and cumbersome, but it actually was a lot of fun and very romantic to participate in it and ... it was a great breakfast. Later that day was spent napping, sunning, and drinking cold ones by our plunge pool. That is, until the monkeys discovered us later that afternoon and then the war was on. These creatures are persistent and know exactly what you have that they want. We persevered in finishing our happy hour, but it was a bit unsettling, being surrounded by the watchful eyes of dozens of hungry monkeys waiting to attack. 

That night, we made another stab at visiting Ubud which was an entirely enjoyable experience sans the monsoon. We found a great watering hole there and just watched the constant stream on tourists, locals, cars and scooters pass by and then had an absolutely fantastic Indonesian dinner nearby.

Waiting for the buggy outside our villa 

Enjoying our last night in the town of Ubud since we are eating
at the hotel tomorrow evening.

Looks like fun!

Quite different on a non rainy afternoon 

We are amazed at how many people fit on a bike, the little kids are usually in the front. 

How we will NOT be going to the airport. 

Bill's new favorite beer, Bintang. 

On Thursday, we participated in what was probably the most meaningful thing of the week and that was a “purification ceremony”. This began at 8 AM at the foot of the rainforest by a beautiful running river and led by a Hindu priest of sorts who took us through the Hindu tradition of purifying our minds souls and bodies. We did chants, received blessings, received holy water that soaked us completely, but at the end of it all we felt that some small strides were made in the purification process! We are looking forward to plenty of chants and ceremonies on Harbor Island going forward.

Fountain down from our villa (where Andrea was originally headed before she fell). 

Explanation of the chants, AIR, WATER, FIRE. 

Drinking ginger tea before the ceremony

Since this is our last full day in Bali, we are spending the afternoon again relaxing by the pool and soaking in the beauty of it all ... and ready for our battle with the ever-present monkey brigade at sunset, our cocktails in hand and a newly acquired sling shot to scare them away. 

We’re ready! 

We had another entertaining dinner and called it an early night since we had a 8am pickup to go to the airport to start the next (and final) segment of our journey, 

The Fiji Islands. So long, Bali. 

The dance at dinner. This one was about two lovers and the battle between good and evil. 

Click on video to watch.