Bali - Ubud - Temples

On our third day in Ubud, we hired a private driver to take us on a tour. He only cost $40 for the day which seemed beyond reasonable to us. We chose to see three different temples on our tour (along with rice terraces, a volcano, the coffee plantation, and to watch and chat with wood carvers while they work). But this post is just about the temples.

The first temple we visited is called Gunung Kawi and it is the oldest temple in Bali. It was built in the 10th century. In order to get to the temple you have to walk down 300 stairs ... and then to leave it you have to walk back up them too unfortunately.

This picture is a little washed out but we took it of the temple from above while walking down into the river gorge that it sits in so it's the only picture we have that shows most of the temple at once:



Since it's so old, there isn't much to it but it does have many shrines carved into the rock walls that surround it. There were 10 shrines total and they were for the king and each of his family members including his 4 wives. It was traditional in Bali for the king to have many wives even though they did not love each other - they were business deals with other royalty to join two families together or to maintain control over certain land or riches.



This is where you would go to sit and meditate in one of the openings:



Some sculptures:



The next temple we visited was called the Temple of the Holy Spring ... because it had a natural spring in it. This one had a huge pond filled with big fat koi that you could buy food for there and feed:



Here's Martin in his sarong, which is required attire to walk inside the temple (you can also just wear pants or something that covers your knees):



A few more pictures:







While you were not allowed to swim in the pond with the natural spring in it (which we did not get a picture of), you were allowed to swim in several other small pools contained around this temple. People bathe here for healing and spiritual merit.

The final temple we visited was the Elephant Cave Temple. As the name implies, this temple has a cave:



It was very hot and muggy in the cave and it wasn't very large. There were a few shrines in it and some little holes where people can sit and meditate.

It also had some water where you could wash your hands and face to help purify your spirit:



And a lot of piles of rocks that are not allowed to be touched or moved, ever:



The piles of rocks are the Buddhist part of the temple, while the cave is the Hindu part. The Balinese religion is a combination of Buddhism and Hinduism so many temples have aspects of both. Most temples in Bali are made up of the colors red, white, and black, each color having its individual owner from one of the manifestations of the godhead - Brahma (the creator), Visnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer). I think they also, along with yellow, represent the elements air, earth, water, and fire (not in the right order).

People in Bali worship 3 times per day, every day, usually in their family temples or smaller local temples. The big temples we visited are only used once or twice per year for really big ceremonies.

That's your brief tour of the temples that we visited. All of the temples that we saw in Bali had very intricate designs and were impressive to look at ... much like many churches in Europe with intricate paintings, stained glass, or mosaics on the walls and floors.

Bali - Ubud - A Morning Bike Ride

On our second day in Ubud, we got up early to go for a 2-hour bike ride to see the countryside surrounding Ubud. The tour was led by a staff member of our hotel. I actually found the ride quite challenging. It wasn't like we climbed a mountain or anything (but the roads are very steep and hilly because that's just how Bali is) but the road conditions in Bali leave a lot to be desired. Meaning, they should be wider to allow for the huge volume of traffic that is always driving on them. Almost every road is only one lane wide (in some cases this is due to people parking, completely randomly, on different sides of the street in different areas) and every time a car comes in the opposite direction you both have to lean off the edge of the road a bit to pass each other ... I honestly can't believe any cars in Bali still have their side mirrors attached. And there are dogs everywhere! Just wandering around thinking they own the streets. We had little bells on our bikes we were supposed to ring every time a dog got too close or in our way and I found that hilarious. I mean, like a tiny little bell sound is going to make a barking dog coming towards me just go the other way. But ... they worked.

So the roads in Bali can be a little scary when you're on a bike or on foot. But we survived. We were not on main roads for very much of the ride, we were mostly on little back roads that travel through the rice fields. Here are some rice field pictures:





Mountains in the distance:



There was a temple in the middle of some rice fields:





Here I am wandering through the rice fields. It requires a good amount of balance because there is only a high thin strip of grass separating each field from its neighbor and if you fall off of it you go down into the rice, which basically grows in a pond of water about knee-deep.



We passed a field with some women harvesting the rice:



This was the closest picture we took of them. We walked all the way over to them and watched them as they worked but it seemed rude to me to be snapping pictures of them while they toiled in the hot sun. Of course Bali relies very heavily on tourism and the people there are well aware of that and very friendly to all tourists and we were told to take all the pictures we wanted but I still didn't.



The women always do the rice harvest. I asked our guide, Wayan, what the men do and he said "other things". I asked him what sort of other things and he said "special projects". Ha. The men might do the planting and the women the harvesting but I'm not sure ... I kind of got that impression though. At least that's fair.

A glimpse of some houses and hotels across a river from us:



This is the trail we biked on for a little while. Narrow, uneven, with a steep dropoff to a river on either side.



We definitely earned the 4-course breakfast we ate when we got back to the hotel that morning.

Bali - Ubud - Monkey Forest

On our first full day in Ubud, we wandered around a bit in town to do some shopping but quickly realized that it was way too hot for us. It was impossible to stop sweating so we quickly gave up and went back to the hotel and back into the pool. However we did manage to spend some time in the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary first.

The monkeys there are long-tailed macaques. Here are a couple of paragraphs I found giving the reasoning for the monkey forest's existence:

The presence of sacred forest is a demonstration of the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature. In Bali, sanctuaries such as the Monkey Forest are usually in sacred village areas, often surrounded by temples. These cultural sanctuaries are not only an important part of Balinese heritage, but also an important part of everyday life. Temple festivals are regularly held for the villagers and the gods in such areas.

A Balinese temple is more than just a collection of pagodas and pavilions. The area enclosed by temple walls and the forest area surrounding it is sacred. These temples and the forest are essential for renewing contact with the spiritual world. The activities associated with these areas are essential in maintaining harmony between humans, nature and the cosmos. Not only are ancestral spirits and gods given offerings and prayers, but also the spirits of trees and statues in the Monkey Forest are given offerings and prayers by the Pemangku and local villagers.


As soon as you start to get near the entrance of the forest, which is right in the heart of town and also nestled amongst some extremely busy roads, you start seeing monkeys hanging around. They were everywhere! And quite tame and friendly too. You could buy bananas at the entrance but that only guaranteed that the monkeys would jump on you and climb all over you to get at the bananas. I was too hot and not in the mood to get myself covered in monkey poo so I avoided the bananas and ensured that I did not have any food in my bag.

Here's one monkey hanging out on the sign at the front of the forest:



Mom and babies:



A little grooming:



Taking a breather:



Posing:



Having a snack:



When Martin sat down to take a breather at one point one of the monkeys came and sat on his lap for awhile. It was really cute, the monkey kept making Martin open his hands to prove he didn't have any food. However since Martin had the camera at the time I couldn't get a picture of the monkey on his lap.

And let's not forget that there is also a temple in the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, so there are many detailed sculptures around as well:







And the temple itself:









We took a lot of pictures of the monkeys and sculptures and temple and they're all pretty neat so I'll post them in their entirety on Facebook and Kodak for people to look at. It was a really neat place to hang out in for an hour or two. Just watching all the stupid people buying bananas who thought the monkeys weren't going to climb all over them was pretty funny.

Bali - Ubud - The Komaneka at Bisma Hotel

Our first stop in Bali was in the town of Ubud, which is known as the cultural center of Bali. This is where you find about a million shops selling all the different crafts created around Bali like dresses, sarongs, paintings, wood carvings, and stone sculptures. You can also enjoy fine Asian dining or a dance performance - there are 7-8 different types of dance performances to choose from every evening.

I will tell you more about Ubud in future blog posts but this one is just about the hotel we stayed at, called the Komaneka at Bisma. In short, it was a wonderful experience. The Balinese people are overly friendly and eager to please and no exercise was too big or too small for them to perform with a smile. We managed to eat two meals per day free here because breakfast was included with our room price and it was 4 courses and absolutely enormous so then we didn't have to eat again until they had complimentary afternoon tea from 3-6 every day when we'd have some little snacks to tide us over until dinner. Not a bad deal.

Here are the flowers on our bed upon arrival:



The white flowers smelled amazing. I'm still not sure what they're called even though we asked somebody and they told us but we had never heard of it.

And every night we got the softest nightgowns to wear to bed, free of charge ... we should have bought some but we didn't. They probably sell them online somewhere.

Here are some views from our balcony:



There were rice paddies right on the hillside outside of our room. They were not fully grown yet and still just little tufts of grass sticking out of little ponds.



We didn't spend much time on our balcony though because there were enormous bees outside - I called them wasp hawks and bee hawks - not many of them but every once in awhile one would fly by and I had forgotten to bring my epipen with me so I avoided the balcony the entire time. Since the entire wall of our suite was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, it was no big deal to sit inside and enjoy the view instead of outside.

And the pool! 32 meters long, perfect for some nice long laps though we did more relaxing in it than lap swimming.

This view of the pool is taken from the lobby, which is on the top of the hill while the rest of the hotel sits below the lobby on the way down to the pool:



There is another level to the pool, down another story, but we didn't get any pictures of that level because we always sat at the longer lap pool. The other pool snaked around in a circle.



See the little baskets of flowers on the deck in front of the pool in the picture above? Those are offerings, placed in every place of business every single morning in hopes that everybody will have a good and prosperous day doing whatever they're doing. These little baskets are even put in taxi cabs and tour buses. Everywhere.

And here's the lobby, with a nice view of the forest beyond. There was a bar here as well and you could sit and look out over the forest (and the pool) and have yourself a nice chilled beverage of your choice.



This was an enormous table in the lobby that Martin was really impressed by:



And another view from the lobby level, looking out over the rice paddies:



Such a gorgeous view. I was sad when we had to leave here and move on after 4 nights. I realize this is basically an advert for the Komaneka. There was nothing lacking in our experience here though so if any of you ever go to Bali, you should definitely consider this hotel.

Spring

This past week all of these flowers have come up in the grassy areas around Zürich and I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of them. There are yellow, white, and purple flowers that have appeared much like dandelions would do back in the US ... they're probably related somehow but it's not so bad to look at a field with purple, white, and yellow flowers in it even if they are most likely some sort of invasive weed:



We had a fairly mild winter in Switzerland, which was very bad for ski resorts but not so bad for those of us who were tired of walking around on snow and ice by December (okay it snowed a lot in November and December here and then didn't snow again the rest of the winter). So maybe that's why bushes have been blooming here since January. I was nervous for them, thinking it'd get cold and snowy again, but it didn't (or, it hasn't yet, I suppose it still could).



I will leave you with these warm thoughts of Spring while I go off to Bali for 8 days.

Zermatt Skiing

Martin and I spent this past weekend skiing/snowboarding in Zermatt. We couldn't afford a hotel in Zermatt so we stayed in a little town called Randa two stops up the train line from Zermatt. Zermatt is a pedestrian-only town so you have to take the train to get there anyway.

While Zermatt is supposedly pedestrian-only, it does still have buses and taxis in it. Funny how that works. Each hotel there has its own shuttle from the train station to the hotel (all quarter mile of the distance to each hotel) and a few of the hotels had horse-drawn carriages as their shuttles. I found it rather humorous. That being said, Zermatt was still much less ritzy than St Moritz. I don't know how else to describe it but the town was more down to earth, more cozy, not filled with designer stores, and nobody was wearing fur coats/mittens/boots/hats there. It's more all about skiing than about wandering around showing off your money.

I regret to say that I did not get any pictures of Zermatt itself. Since we had to take the train into Zermatt every morning wearing all of our ski clothing and carrying nothing on our backs except what we were skiing in that day, we did not bring the nice big camera either day as we don't want to have to ski with it. All the pictures we took on the mountain were taken with the cell phone. And since Martin had the cell phone the day I wandered around town a bit, I was unable to get any pictures.

But boy did we ever get a million pictures of the Matterhorn! You can't get away from it while you're skiing. I was a little disappointed in that you can't easily see the Matterhorn from the town of Zermatt itself ... I mean you can if you crane your neck around some buildings in just the right way but it's not as prominent and easy to find as I thought it would be. But as soon as you get up onto the ski trails above the town it's around every single turn.

Here's the Matterhorn from the top of the Gornergrat bahn, or the train that takes you up to one of the peaks you can ski down from. This train has *amazing* views of the surrounding mountains and the Matterhorn and it's a 30-minute ride so you get to really sit and admire it all. It's worth the $79 roundtrip ticket just for the views, even if you're not going to ski.



Martin with the Matterhorn behind him:



I even got to eat lunch with the Matterhorn:



I had the traditional Swiss dish of Rösti, which is potatoes topped with a fried egg. Perfect fuel for a day of snowboarding:



On Sunday, Martin skied a different area of the resort called Plateau Rosa. The Zermatt ski resort is enormous, it's actually 4 separate areas/peaks, and it is split into two sides that are not connected so you can't ski between them (but you could go all the way to the bottom again and then take a bus to the other base and then ski over there). And this other side that Martin skied on is half in Italy (Cervinia resort) and half in Switzerland (Plateau Rosa). I didn't go with him because I had heard that it was really flat in this area and it's hard to snowboard on flat terrain - you just end up walking over it all. Which, to me, is not worth the trouble. And neither of us went into Italy - the lift ticket was more expensive to add on Italy. But there were a lot of trails over there I would have liked to have tried out, if we had had another day (and $200 extra).

Here's the trail map for those of you who are having issues visualizing what I'm talking about. Plateau Rosa is the blue shaded area center right. Where you see the Swiss/Italian flags is where the resort continues over the other side in Italy. The mountain named Monte Rosa is, I believe, the tallest in Switzerland (center left background):



Anyway, all the following pictures were taken by Martin from this other side of the resort, which is higher than the Gornergrat part and therefore has great views of snow-covered mountain peaks.





The Matterhorn also looked very different from this part of the resort:



Some snowy areas that I'm sure had a high avalanche danger:



And the usual crevasses sign (the Plateau Rosa area is all on a glacier, I believe):



Some more mountains:



And one final look at the Matterhorn on the way back down to Zermatt:



And not a cloud in the sky the entire time! So we got our sunshine to last us through the next few weeks until we get to Bali.