It is not surprising that Bali is so popular, because it has options for everyone: from lying on the beach and doing nothing all day, climbing volcanoes or explore mountain villages in the middle of rice fields.
With temples and people everywhere (4 million people on an island of 5000 km2), you won´t stop seeing interesting things and talking to the Balinese, who have no hurry at all and can chat for hours. Despite being touristic, if you go just a little bit out of the crowdy areas you will not hear any of the typical calls “taxi”, “massage” and “Sarung sarung”, and hardly anyone speaks English.
Everywhere there are offerings to the gods, in the form of incense, rice and flowers and in each house there is an altar, apart from the hundreds of Hindu temples that are scattered throughout the island. These people make ceremonies for everything! To kill the chicken, for the full moon, for the economy, for cremation, etc… Some Balinese believe that for this they have more luck than their Muslim neighbours of Sumatra, because with so many ceremonies they get protection of the gods.
The best way to move is to rent a motorbike. It allows you to stop at places where there are no tourists, interact with people and go at your own pace.
A Balinese ceremony at Yoman´s place
At the village of Bona (near Ubud) I met Yoman, a very authentic woman. One or two times a year, she takes her motorcycle one evening and goes to Java, the neighbouring island to the west, to buy wood. She arrives there during the night and in the morning she buys the wood and inspects it before it is sent in a truck. She goes back home on the same day to Bali to make dinner because she says that the family does not manage without her! She makes furniture to sell, mainly to Dutch travellers, and she has also accommodation in a house that is in the middle of rice fields. Very kindly, she invited me to the biannual ceremony that made the next day in her house, that lasted three days (I just went on the first day).
Yoman Preparing the ceremony
I arrived early at her place and she had already made a bunch of small baskets and trays in many different forms with palm leaves and staples, which she filled with rice, bananas, sugarcane, boiled eggs, chicken and coconut and distributed through the four altars of the house. It seems that the first day is the day of purification.
The priest was playing the bell saying some verses, and they purified the altars with water and flowers, and then purified themselves. At the end, they burned offerings and sprayed them with young coconut water (purifier), and they went around the house making some peculiar sounds, as you can see in this video:
Ubud
After that I went to Ubud, where you can find the temple of Monkey Forest, full of monkeys that are not bothered by the presence of humans and that one may be watching hours and hours:
Also in this area there are a lot of incredible green and yellow rice fields. They produce up to 3 harvests per year and have plantations distributed on irrigation canals that also use as showers. Once ripen, they cut the rice and beat it against a metallic structure to extract the grain. Pulling it from the top of their heads and venting it with some wicker trays, they can extract the impurities and let it dry three days in the sun to remove the grain from the husks.
Planting rice
Fantastic shades of Green in Bali
Cleaning the rice
With some backpackers I met at the hostel we joined a tour to climb Mt. Batur (1717 m). They picked us up at 2 a.m. and we began to walk at night, to get to the top when the sun came out, spectacular!
Mt Batur and Mt Agung in the background
Sunrise at Mt Batur, with Rinjani at the horizon in Lombok
Inspector Gadget, Brain, Sofie and our guide
You can also visit very picturesque temples, such as Tirta Empul and the nearby Gunung Kawi.
Tirta Empul Temple
Boy purifying in the temple
Eastern Bali: Rice fields and Amed
I continued the route (with the motorcycle I rented) to the area of Iseth and Selat and the temple Lampuyan, very authentic mountain areas, to finally arrive to Amed, a couple of fishing villages with small boats that go out to fish every afternoon and fill the sea with hundreds of colorful sails. Some inhabitants go out to fish some tourists (usually young European girls traveling alone) or to offer diving glasses and see the coral and the dozens of fish in all colors, or the dive next to sunken boats in the area. This peninsula is incredible, with the volcano Agung on the side, a fantastic coastline and isolated mountain villages.
Little town in Amed at sunset
The food and the people
The food is very good, fish, rice, a kind of soy little cake that is called “Tempe”, some skewers with “Ayam” (chicken) called “saté” with sambal sauce (very spicy), “Babi guling” (Grilled suckling pig) and “Lawar” (reddish coconut, chilli and pork blood).
But the best of all in Bali is people: very smiley, eager to communicate and with a good sense of humour. You find children who stop playing “bola” (soccer) or Badmington, and they teach you how to speak “Bahasa Indonesia” (the common language of Indonesia) and “Bahasa Bali” (Balinese), mountain bars with very authentic people who bursts into laughter when you try to speak Indonesian, guides like the Iwayan “Bon Jovi” that says that he always smiles (even when he is angry), and the driver Koman, who fell in love with a girl in the village of Amed, and because her father did not agree with the wedding (he was poor), he had to steal the girlfriend to be able to marry her. You also find people very poor, like a man with a hoe that asked me for a cigarette and then pointing his bare feet and my shoes, some sandals.
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| Some girls teaching me Bahasa Indonesia |
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| Koman, who stole her wife |
With little desire to leave Bali, I take a boat to go to the neighbouring island of Lombok, to the east. The ferry takes 4 hours to do 25 kilometers, not that bad!
A boat from Padangbai to Lombok
Cheers!
Yep yep Yep
You can see more pictures here!
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