The story continues....
So, at the moment, I am actually in Cambodia, and am about a month behind on my blogging! Slowly but surely I will get caught up to present!
Here are some shots of my remaining time in Bali with my first and memorable tour group before heading off to Lombok with group 2. Don't worry, I was back in Bali about a week later...we are not yet done with Bali!
From Lovina, we headed along the eastern coast to a place called Tirta Gangga, and then finally to Ubud. Bali has a stunning landscape, which I tried to present in some of these pictures, and also has many beautiful and sacred sites. We visited water temple, swan in one of the pools there which I presume are supposed to be lucky or rejuvenating or something, and also stopped at a lovely and rather isolated (due to the terrible road to get to it) beach and did a bit of snorkelling and beach-bumming. We passed many picturesque rice paddies, and very luckily happened upon a large Balinese festival. In Ubud, an artsy and cultured city in central Bali, we did some shopping and touring of local art/handicraft industries - such as silver jewelry making, weaving, painting, etc. We also drove past many interesting furniture stores and sculptors sculpting crazy things. We also went to see a medicine man...not by accident the same medicine man that Liz Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love went to see and wrote about in her book. Now, its a little embarrassing....but it was fun, and they guy is making a killing off tourists like me...so if you should feel bad for anyone, its me really. :)
Ubud was the most developed/westernized place I had been, despite still being rampant with Balinese culture. It was a cool city, but it was strange seeing so many bules (aka, tourists). I was very sad to see this group dissolve, but they were fantastic people I very much intend to stay in touch with!
We stayed at some very nice places - this is one!
This is the entrance to....a. a very sacred site, b. a cemetery, c. a school, d. a very important persons house
And the answer is.....
c. a school! isnt that great! This is in a more traditional balinese town on the eastern side of Bali.
To keep the birds away from the rice, some pretty creative uses of nets and garbage and maybe even laundry - multi-tasking at its best - to scare away pesky birds, connected all on these long lines.
Temples are very, very common in Bali! Here, is a road side one that I imagine either serves the purpose of 'fast-food' variety of worship, or, just another safety measure on a very dangerous an windy mountain road!
These shots are from the Water Temple - there were the largest gold fish I have ever seen or imagined existed in these ponds...it was great!
The lovely tucked away beach where we snorkelled
Happening upon a balinese festival progressing from one end of town to the temple
Enjoying the scenery!
I've mentioned this fruit before - Salak, or snake fruit. Its very, very strange, and grows in a very spikey fashion on a very large spikey fern like tree. It has a snake skin exterior, about the size of a small pear, and the insides look like garlic, but it tastes very perfumey and sweet. They farm a lot of salak on Bali - and from my experiences with eating this fruit, it was the most delicious there!
The other obligatory thing to do here is try kopi luwak - aka, cat poo coffee. This is exactly what it is - a cat like creature, called a luwak goes around at night and eats coffee beans. Then, he or she poops out the seed. Somehow, probably out of thriftiness as many good/weird ideas are born, people decided to collect these pooped out coffee beans, and make them into coffee! Why waste them afterall!! And, you can charge crazy tourists and coffee drinker adventurers a huge amount of money for it! It tasted like coffee to me.
To keep the birds away from the rice, some pretty creative uses of nets and garbage and maybe even laundry - multi-tasking at its best - to scare away pesky birds, connected all on these long lines.
Temples are very, very common in Bali! Here, is a road side one that I imagine either serves the purpose of 'fast-food' variety of worship, or, just another safety measure on a very dangerous an windy mountain road!
These shots are from the Water Temple - there were the largest gold fish I have ever seen or imagined existed in these ponds...it was great!
The lovely tucked away beach where we snorkelled
Happening upon a balinese festival progressing from one end of town to the temple
Enjoying the scenery!
I've mentioned this fruit before - Salak, or snake fruit. Its very, very strange, and grows in a very spikey fashion on a very large spikey fern like tree. It has a snake skin exterior, about the size of a small pear, and the insides look like garlic, but it tastes very perfumey and sweet. They farm a lot of salak on Bali - and from my experiences with eating this fruit, it was the most delicious there!
The other obligatory thing to do here is try kopi luwak - aka, cat poo coffee. This is exactly what it is - a cat like creature, called a luwak goes around at night and eats coffee beans. Then, he or she poops out the seed. Somehow, probably out of thriftiness as many good/weird ideas are born, people decided to collect these pooped out coffee beans, and make them into coffee! Why waste them afterall!! And, you can charge crazy tourists and coffee drinker adventurers a huge amount of money for it! It tasted like coffee to me.And they do wash it before it is made into coffee.
So, we spent the morning waiting at Ketut Liyers home looking at his bird collection and beautiful grounds, waiting to have our 5 minutes with the famous medicine man. I was very nervous, as I am skeptical of fortune telling, destiny, etc...but still, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to just go for it! When life holds so many uncertainties already, whats the harm in getting one more point of view on what life might have in store? I will admit though, I was still worried he would tell me scary or horrible things or something like what happened to the Australian girl Claire on 'Lost'...and he would refuse to speak to me or something because I was plagued with an evil curse...but that seemed unlikely.
So what did he say??
So, we spent the morning waiting at Ketut Liyers home looking at his bird collection and beautiful grounds, waiting to have our 5 minutes with the famous medicine man. I was very nervous, as I am skeptical of fortune telling, destiny, etc...but still, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to just go for it! When life holds so many uncertainties already, whats the harm in getting one more point of view on what life might have in store? I will admit though, I was still worried he would tell me scary or horrible things or something like what happened to the Australian girl Claire on 'Lost'...and he would refuse to speak to me or something because I was plagued with an evil curse...but that seemed unlikely.
So what did he say??That is none of your business!
Well, mostly he just said I was very pretty, therefore very lucky, and I would have a long life, marry soon and never get divorced!....he 'read' my face, my palm, my back and my legs, and some of what he said i didnt really understand - I have two lotus flowers on my back for instance...this is good I was told - but mostly he was very sweet and friendly and the experience was positive. He seemed like a very intuitive and magical man, needless to say. I do think as well that he was just saying a lot of what people typically want to hear - long life, happy marriage, etc. I didnt get any insight into my career or changing the world or anything like that...
Did I learn anything that will change the course of my future...who knows! But who knows what we learn on any given day that will change the course of our lives...only time will tell!
So, since this was back in mid-july - my next post will jump forward to Cambodia - just to keep to date - and I'll throw in the Indo/Singapore travel bits periodically! Its going to get confusing! Hang tight!
:)
Wow you met Ketut!
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