On Saturday we set off on our journey at 8.30. How great that we rented a car! The Polish guy we met in Singapore on Thursday suggested we rent a jeep and explore the island ourselves. I even suggested it to Bryan. Lucky for us, he refused. The roads are narrow. And when I say narrow, I mean narrower than in Ireland. Narrow as in a local road between my little home town of Piechcin and one of its neighbouring villages. The traffic is unbelievable, there are three lanes of cars in two lanes of the road, no one seems to pay attention to anyone else and among all this craziness - hundreds of motorcycles. An old motorcycle seems to be the preferred mode of transportation among the islanders. They swarm you from each direction and I have to make a great effort to not cover my eyes in fear of hitting or being hit by one of them and killing an entire Balinese family - because yes, there are mothers, fathers and children mounted on each bike. A small child (two, three years old?) sits first, holding on to the gas tank for its dear life. Behind may be another child and then the actual rider. Or a child in the front, then the mom/dad riding the motorcycle and then one or two children behind them. I can't even watch that. You see a lot of young teenagers (I really really don't want to say they are kids) riding motorcycles by themselves. I ask our driver and the age limit for a motorbike license is 16 years. But who cares, right? If you grow up holding on to the gas tank it's like a baby cowboy or cowgirl who is never afraid of a horse - they grow up with it, just like the Balinese babies grow up with their motorcycles. No traffic rules seem to apply. But they all somehow manage to avoid crashing into us or into one another. At snail pace we move, in our air-conditioned car, with Wet Towels - of course, why not - being handed us by the driver once in a while.
Our first stop is a Balinese dance performance. Which turns out to be a bit of a tourist trap which we fall into by the suggestion of the hotel concierge - we dish out 16 USD to watch a performance. It's an interesting show, with full traditional costumes and everything, I am just not very fond of the humorous elements that they incorporate into their acting every now and then just to entertain the audience. We watch it, we take pictures and get back to the car, where we get Wet Towels.
On the way to Ubud, our destination for the day, we visit a Hindu temple. Our driver is a wonderful guide, we get sarongs and go in to the temple grounds. He explains everything is detail. It turns out that the religion in Bali is a mixture of Hindu, Buddhism and ancestor worship. My knowledge of the Hindu religion could really do with some dusting up so I listen intently to everything he explains to us. We take some pictures and continue our trip. This is the only temple we will get to see on the island. We were hoping to visit the Mother Temple - Besakih Temple. When we were told it's three hours away from the hotel we thought it's a piece of cake - for us used to driving for hours to go see relatives in Louisiana, or pretty much everywhere from Texas. Three hours? That's nothing. Turns out - not on Bali. On Bali it means more like five hours of standing in traffic. So we give up and our driver consoles us, saying that the temple that we saw was really representative of all the temples open to tourists, including the Besakih Temple.
Our first stop in Ubud is the Monkey Sanctuary and Forest. It's a fascinating experience to walk around a place that is inhabited by monkeys living in the wild, the wild in question being a jungle-like forest. The number of tourists takes away from the experience, but since we are tourists too, I am not complaining. On my mind is the horror story of my friend Alicja having been bitten by a monkey in similar circumstances so I stay away from the monkeys, admiring them from afar. No bananas for monkeys, no reaching out to them and no trying to befriend them. But the monkeys try to befriend us. One in particular - jumps on Bryan's shoulder and tries to steal his shades, then the camera, then his bag, playfully hanging down from his arm, leg, waist, while he is trying to gently shake it off. Go away, monkey, no banana for monkey, what can monkey want. But the monkey just met his long-lost cousin and has no intention of abandoning him. The monkey wants to BOND. Bryan bonds for a while, while I ferociously take picture after picture. For the family album, of course :). We spend close to two hours wandering around the Monkey Forest, looking at monkeys and nature. And somehow I don't get eaten alive by mosquitoes...
From the Monkey Forest we go to a restaurant that is famous for its Balinese duck. We have the duck there, it's a very skinny but very tasty duck. I also try a duck salad and Bryan tries the duck melon soup. The duck theme continues when we leave the restaurant to go and look at the rice fields behind the restaurant buildings. There are a lot of ducks just hanging out there, in the rice terraces, completely oblivious to their imminent fate... I can't feel guilty though, the duck was yummy.
Our last stop in Ubud is the traditional Balinese market, which offers all kinds of local arts, crafts and even more tourist goods - the I heart Bali bags and t-shirts and the like. We walk around, buy a few things and then spend the afternoon just wandering around town, going into local stores and experiencing Ubud. Ubud consists of several smaller villages, we are in the central one, and on the way we passed by two or three other - each of them specializes in something different. One is a painting village, where they paint colourful butterflies and eggs (I wish I knew why they paint eggs in Bali...), another one is all about silver and gold smiths - a lot of nice jewelry is made here. There is also a village that is famous for stone carving. The sculptures and statues and religious figures everywhere are amazingly intricate and beautiful. We take a ton of pictures. We get back to the hotel well after dark - the sun sets around 6 pm on the island. And we are in for a treat - we want to use a jacuzzi in the hotel spa but instead we discover that there is a swimming pool attached to the spa that, as the spa staff tells us, not many guests know about. It's a gorgeous huge infinity pool on the level of the third floor of the hotel, surrounded by palm tree tips and the sky above it. Pure tranquility and happiness encompass us as we float in the water in silence, looking up to the strange, southern sky. It's moments like that make life worth living.
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