Indonesia - Bali

Weds 27th Feb

Sunny, humid, 34 degrees +

We anchor off Benoa, Bali, overlooking long beaches with a multitude of paragliders, waterskiers and banana-boaters criss crossing the sea at high speed.

We have a long touring day today. The usual wait for a tender to shore - happily made easier by our tour being superbly arranged by Kent Kretzler, a Platinum member from Florida, allowing us to catch one of the first tenders just after 11am. (not too keen on this pushing in priviledge thing but it does have it’s advantages...) We’re off to the port of Benoa on the island of Bali. Landing at the port everyone is inundated with a seemingly unending line of taxi drivers trying to sell their services. “Mister mister, good price, you want taxi, good price”. It was a wall of taxi drivers offering rides in return for US dollars.

There are 9 of us on the tour, 6 Brits and 3 Americans (makes a change to have a Brit positive balance!). We cram in to a small minibus and head out through the extensive Benoan suburbs to the Luhur Tanah Lot Temple. It turns out we have booked a tour with a driver but no guide. The driver initially tried to offer some sort of commentary, but after being loudly berated by the Lancastrian contingency in the back who couldn’t hear we think he gave up. Two hours later through extremely congested traffic, observing suicidal scooter drivers - it seems there is now a law for motorcyclists to wear helmets, however this did not seem to apply to children and babies! We observed many families with the Dad driving with a child in front of him and the wife holding a baby on the back - often with a pile of belongings also!

It was quite an experience watching the weaving and speedy under and overtaking between fingers held over eyes. This is a very built up area and very very congested.  It was interesting peering into the shops and buildings as we passed by - everything from fashion, traditional cane work, basket work, fruit and veg stalls...

The Hindu temple is famous for being on the edge of the sea, it seemed to spread over a large area of land with various buildings - all appeared in the open and not as ornate as say a Buddist temple.

To reach it we had to travel along streets filled with stallholders selling their wares - after the entrance to the temple - in the grounds!

Have to say the prices were extremely cheap and we succumbed to buying an essential toy boat, a nodding head wooden turtle and a large holdall to take all our swag home! All for about £14. Nothing was labelled - the price was what you haggled it down to, rule of thumb seemed to be 60% to 70% of the original asking price.

Although the temple was a busy attraction we still were able to get some decent photos.

Part of the temple can only be accessed at low tide - typical we arrived at the wrong time!

The extensive temple gardens ran along a cliff edge



Back in the bus and another 2+ hour drive through some countryside with rice paddy fields with workers wearing the traditional trangular looking straw hats, cows on the roadside but mainly more congestion. The amount of traffic was staggering especially the tides of motor scooters. The driver said this amount of traffic was unusual, they must all be going our way he said.

We arrived at the Uluwata Hindu Temple with just half an hour for a quick reccy before the main attraction, an open air traditional fire dance show - called Kecak an old ritual  “ Sanghyang” trance dance.It told a tale of a princess being tricked into being kidnapped by a nasty piece of work before being rescued by a white monkey.( Carol’s interpretation -  it was much much more complicated than that).The show was accompanied by a choir of men singing in trance-like chants which sounded like continuous tonal grunts. The finale involved a ring of fire from which the white monkey was reborn. Afterwards there was much merriement with members of the audience drawn in to the fun. Sadly many people were leaving towards the end of the performance to be first out of the car park... how rude!

We all had to wear either sashes or sarongs depending on our dress - the written info stated this was a requirement to enter the temple but as all the obvious places of worship appeared closed it seemed more a ruse to add to the show atmosphere. The men had to wear one  also if their shorts were considered too sexy, which obviously applied to us.( think all with clothing above the knee - he flatters himself - C)

A

Graham and George model their sarongs.

The chorus arrives

The baddy monkey with the princess’s friends

The mischievous white monkey hero

The reincarnation of the hero monkey

As we left the open air theatre area we witnessed a beautiful sunset.

The temple is surrounded by monkeys and we were warned to keep hold of our belongings, especially our phones and cameras. On the way back, taking advantage of darkness we saw a couple of strikes; one monkey nicked a large bag of crisps from a shop causing a fight between monkeys and dogs, and another stole a bag from a small child.( sadly the photo Carol managed to take of the crisp thief captured a rather risque angle of the monkey’s private parts rather than it’s face so thought best not show it..did get the bag of crisps in though!)

Here’s another viewpoint - the dog did manage to snaffle some crisps whenever the crisp carrying monkey moved.

Back in the bus - where we kept catching glimpses of a gynormous landmark with a golden budda like statue in the middle of it - we named it The Big Thing as Carol had asked Graham what that big thing was whilst travelling on the tender to the port. Sadly although we thought we may be travelling nearer The Big Thing we never actually got to see it close to, and after about 45 mins of driving through cut throughs and traffic we arrived at a beachside restaurant where tables were laid on the beach with the tide crashing in the background. All under pretty party nightlights with music provided by local musicians. All very lovely but we were all very hot and tired after a 8 hr+ day with just water to drink. Sadly the promised seafood dinner was not as good as promised (over-cooked) so we asked to leave earlier than planned.

Another 30 mins ride to the port and a 30 min tender back meant we arrived back just after 10.30 pm - a long, tiring but interesting day. Hopeful taxi drivers were still at the port trying to fix a client for tomorrow.

The Big Thing from afar. It is located in a lovely park evidently, not far from the university and where we had the concert, so with hindsight it would have made more sense to see that and the concert and cut out 3+ hours of bus travel.

Thurs 28th Feb.

Sunny, 32 degrees.

A lazy day on board - we couldn’t face the hazzle of tender transfers and taxi hagglers. So nothing to report other than the usual sunbathing, pool dipping, eating and drinking...and tomorrow’s a sea day so more of the same.....