Bali goes by many different names. Some call it the ‘island of the gods,’ others Shangri-La. Bali is small, just 90 miles by 50 miles and lies between the islands of Java, the most highly populated and influential of all the islands, and Lombok, one of the quieter and moderately slower paced islands. Bali is one of 17,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago. Like many islands, Bali has developed a world of its own.
Daily life on Bali is culturally linked to satisfying and appeasing the gods, spirits and demons with ritual offerings three times a day. Once outside of the city, there are breathtaking panoramas of cultivated rice terraces, impressive volcanoes and pristine beaches. Bali’s main volcano, Gunung Agung, is still active and sometimes explosive and is considered sacred among local people as it is believed to be the centre of the universe.
Lying just 8 degrees south of the Equator, Bali boasts a tropical climate with just two seasons a year and an average temperature of around 82 degrees with a humidity level that will kill someone from the Pacific Northwest.
Economically and culturally, Bali is one of the most important islands of Indonesia. Rice is grown on irrigated, terraced hillsides; other crops include sugar cane, coffee, copra, tobacco, fruits and vegetables. Cattle and hogs are also raised. The Balinese are skilled artisans, particularly in woodcarving and in fashioning objects of tortoiseshell and of gold, silver and other metals. The Balinese are noted for their traditional dance, the distinctive music of the gamelan and for their skills in weaving cloth of gold and silver threads, Songket, as well as for embroidering silk and cotton clothing. Bali's best known attractions are their countless Hindu temples.
This is my third visit to Bali, and I have yet to see any of these beautiful beaches. Today was going to be the day to go to the beach. We planned to take a shuttle to a resort where we would have to pay a small fee to use the beach and pool. But alas, sometimes there are other things that get in the way that ruin the best laid plans. Part of our duties on board is to be escorts on excursions. Sometimes we get things we don't ask for and we are obligated to go. In this case, I got a 4-hour tour of the large city called Denpasar, the capital of Bali, and Michael got an 8-1/2 hour tour of the countryside.
I wasn't exactly thrilled with this given the status of my knees, but I figured for four hours I would go look at the city which I really hadn't seen before. We woke up early to start our tours and found that we were still at sea! Apparently, there was some traffic in the harbor and the ship had to wait until space was cleared at the dock. I could have used the extra hour of sleep. After a quick room service breakfast, both of us alighted from our cabin and went onshore to find our waiting buses.
There were 19 passengers on my bus and while that does not sound like a lot, in this bus it was. The Balinese people are tiny, and so the bus reflects the size of the people. American people are a lot bigger and taller, and it was very amusing to see us all trying to fit into the seats on the bus. Really tall people had to walk stooped over as there was not enough headroom. I will say this about the bus, it was clean and it had great air-conditioning.
Our first stop was to the Jero Kuta Palace, which was once the home of a nobel family and is a study in unique Balinese architecture. Most of the temples that you see in Bali are very old. There are approximately 20,000 temples scattered throughout Bali. This one is being refurbished and is quite beautiful. The morning was still pleasant but that did not last for very long. As we roamed around the grounds, one of the guides was giving a presentation on who knows what because nobody could hear him. In between taking pictures, everybody was seeking the shade and a place to sit down while this guy rambled on and on. The rituals that the Hindus practice are very interesting and are quite elaborate. They have a ritual, a prayer, and an offering for everything. One interesting fact is that women who are menstruating cannot visit the temple because they are considered unclean. This means that since they go into a communal pool to get purified they don't want the water contaminated with blood.
The one thing that I did not plan on was having to go up and down many sets of steep stairs with no handrails to go between the different sections of the temple. When I wrote up my report, I reported this. If I had known what I know now I probably would have turned down this assignment. We eventually met in a courtyard where there was a dance performance and women making the ritual baskets.
They also had a table full of Balinese treats, some of which I tried and others I wasn't too sure about. By this time, it was getting downright hot and everybody was starting to fidget. The guides were so in love with showing their culture that they just continued to go on and on and on not paying attention to the time or the fidgety people. Being the good escort that I am, I told the guy it is time to move on. I do have to say this about the Balinese people, they are very happy and satisfied.
There are different types of markets: the public market where you can bargain, and the private market which has fixed prices. There is a morning market, an afternoon market, and an evening market. You can shop round-the-clock here. Our next stop took us to the Pasar Badung Market, a public market that was quite dirty and smelly. Most of the folks on the tour did not go in the market because it was so hot and there wasn't really enough time to do any real shopping. The crowds, the smell, and the heat were big factors in keeping us prissy westerners out of the market and looking to seek air-conditioning. I never made it inside, but I did snap a few pictures of vendors that were sitting outside.
We made it back to the bus playing a game of dodge the motorbike. These people drive crazy. Unfortunately, the bus was parked on the street and the door to the bus opened onto the traffic so it was quite hazardous getting on the bus itself. The people here are so used to their traffic and to the crowded conditions that they don't even give it a second thought. The roadways are extremely narrow and the streets aren't very clean. There are dilapidated buildings everywhere and there is a lot of construction going on but nothing seems to be completed.
Our final stop, or so I thought, was to the Bali Museum. However, we found ourselves at another temple with another guide going on and on and on while we were all seeking shade. By this time, I was soaking wet and the perspiration was running down my face. I take a lot of water with me on these trips in these conditions because if you don't drink, you can get dehydrated and pass out. Since they were quite happy to stay and talk about the temple, I informed the guide that it was time to go to the museum. We started walking toward the museum and people started dropping like flies, asking to go back to the bus. It was quite humid and warm and even I was totally wilting. The first question I asked the guide was, "is the museum air-conditioned?" "Ah yes, it has natural air conditioning" came the reply. I felt a responsibility to stay with the group, but when I saw all the steps, that was my cue to bug out and head back to the bus. I'm learning to just say no.
Many of the people on my bus were disappointed that they did not get to see any rice paddies. I asked the guide if we could drive back to the ship via the countryside, and he agreed that we could do that. The entire group voted yes to do this. We saw many ricefields, but these cannot compare to the rice terraces we saw last year. This one detour, or as I like to think of it as a hijacking, made for a much happier group.
We return to the ship and before we went back on, several of us went over to the vendors that lined the pier to see what kind of crap they were selling. There is a bar type fence that separated the vendors from the secure area where the ship is located. The space between the bars was large enough for the vendors to hand their merchandise back-and-forth to the people looking to buy. They were able to set up a display area in front of the bars on the ship side. What a very clever way to have your cake and eat it too; the vendors were kept out but you were still able to buy their junk. I came back empty-handed.
I returned to the ship, dragging fanny. I went back to my cabin to drop off all of my gear before going to lunch with Marge and Eli. Not only did I drop off my stuff, but I dropped me off. I was so hot that I plopped down on the bed and just lay there until I started to feel cool. This was not a day where a dip in the pool would be refreshing. I finished the afternoon with lunch, a nice cool shower, and time to work on this blog.
MICHAEL
Unlike Beverly, I was pretty happy with the tour that I escorted today, although a lot of it was a repeat performance. We started out by driving an hour to the small township of Klungkung to visit the ancient courthouse at Kerta Gosa. This historical building complex was built at the end of the 17th century but was largely destroyed during the Dutch colonial conquest in 1908. Today, the basic remains of the palace are the Court of Justice, the Courthouse Pavilion and the main gate the bears the date 1622.
We headed next to the Pengliouran traditional village, where life is barely changed in more than a century. This is actually a beautiful area, and we didn't have nearly enough time to fully explore it. Today happened to be Sunday, and by tradition, couples about to be married had a pre-wedding ceremony here.
We continued our drive through villages, lush green vegetation and bamboo plantations up to Kintamani, which overlooks Mount Batur. This is actually a breathtaking spot, where you can see the volcanoes, and the incredible destruction done by the various eruptions and level flows, the last of which occurred in 1963. We were taken to a restaurant called Lake View, where we had a superb lunch. Lunch consisted of fish soup, yellow rice, red snapper, coconut chicken satay, a spinach dish, seven other salads, and five desserts. Believe me, nobody left hungry. Oh, did I mention the beer and wine?
After lunch, we drove down the hill to a coffee plantation where we tasted a good dozen different coffees and teas. This is the place where they feed a certain coffee bean to a civit, who digests it and then poops it out. They then harvest it to make really strange and expensive coffee. We continued down the hill to Tampak Siring. This is a very popular district featuring the Presidential Palace built in 1957. Right next to the Palace is the Tirta Empul Temple. Here, we saw a holy spring, use by local people for healing. There were dozens of people in the spring who have made offerings, and were now cleansing themselves. Before we visited the spring, our tour guide, who used very fractured English, said the funniest damn thing. He told us that women having their periods could not go into the spring, and since it was not his job to personally inspect each woman, they would have to self report.
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