Kiwis to Curries: Ubud: Arrival

courtyard of our homestay

A very long flight and one stop over in Australia later, we arrived in Bali on June 5th. After ten hours on the plane, we were greeted to Indonesia with a two hour visa line. We just happened to get in the line with the slowest customs agent of all time, I picked the line of course, and it took so long that our checked bags were being put into the lost and found by the time we were finally given permission to enter the country. That wasn't all though, we still had a two hour taxi ride to get to our final destination, Ubud. Bali has incredible traffic, but our valiant and ever so cheerful taxi driver got us there safe and sound. We arrived at our homestay in Ubud tired, but excited to have finally made it to Bali. Quite the climate change for us, coming from winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but we started adjusting to the tropics and spent the evening relaxing and watching the lizards on our walls.

After a much needed rest we woke up the next day ready to take in Ubud. We are staying in a bungalow that is in a family's compound. We have a simple room and most importantly, a porch that looks out into a courtyard filled with jungle vegetation and chickens. The father of the house is a Balinese music teacher so we often times have entertainment while he is teaching his lessons. The mom and grandmother, who are both adorable, make us banana pancakes in the morning and bring us tea. We are woken at dawn by roosters and other mystery animals that live on our roof. But, despite the gongs and cock-a-doodle-dos, it is very peaceful and a wonderful retreat.

banana pancake breakfast

We set off that morning to check out the city and hike through the surrounding countryside. The city of Ubud is actually not very nice, it is super touristy and has terrible traffic. Walking through the large sweaty tourists and speedy motor bikes can be quite a chore, but once out of the downtown part of city we entered a beautiful landscape of rice terraces and lush tropical plants. We hiked through some terraced fields and through a few small villages. At one point we came upon a procession going through one of the villages. It was made up of a large amount of traditionally costumed men and women, chanting, playing instuments and singing, while parading through the streets. We also came across an empty hindu temple to explore, which was a treat as neither of us had ever seen this sort of temple before and Balinese architecture is very beautiful. But we had gotten a late start and overexteded ourselves a little in the tropical heat, now we've learned our lesson and reserve about noon to 3pm for nap time.

That evening we wanted to watch a traditional Balinese dance. Bali has a very interesting spiritual culture, much of which is centered around a unique dance form that we were very eager to see. Earlier, as we sat at a cafe cooling off, I had noticed a procession of women wearing traditional costumes carrying baskets and fruit on their heads, all walking towards a temple. I'm a little slow on the uptake, and didn't realize at first that they were all headed towards a huge temple festival that was to happen that night in town and they were bringing offerings to the Gods in the baskets to bless the event. Thankfully we got a tip off from the tourist office where we had inquired about dances, and headed to the festival. Balinese temple festivals are held for a variety of reasons, unfortunately we had no idea why this one was being held, but we rolled with it and tried to be as unintrusive as possible. As we found out they are basically a large social event centered around a performance to celebrate something or other, and everyone comes dressed to the nines and ready to have a good time. There were hundreds of people there, the men were dressed in long skirts and cloth hats, the women in long skirts and lace tops. Everyone was gathered with their friends, attempting to see a dance that was going on in the middle of the temple area. The dance being performed that night was the Barong and Rangda dance, which involves a dog-lion and witch character and some sort of battle between good and evil. We joined the pressing crowd to try and watch the performance. We were able to see the lion dancing to the music provided by the full gamelon orchestra. The crowd wasn't rowdy, but their were a LOT of people and everyone was trying to get closer and closer. After an hour or so we got very claustraphobic and decided to give up our prime viewing areas, as I was afraid that I was going to get squished. Unfortunately we were then unable to see the performance. Temple festivals go on all night long, and the dances can last more than six hours. It was just getting exciting, some of the masked performers were stabbing each other with knives, but we could no longer see. We hung out for a bit longer and eventually left. It was an amazing experience never the less, and what we saw of the performance was spectacular.