It’s Tough Out Here…!!

Patti and Krista at the launch of the new W Hotel...

The night before Patti’s niece Mikaela jetted in from California to visit for a few weeks, we rode down to Seminyak together with a small group of Patti’s friends from Como, to paint the town red…or any other colour we could lay our hands on…!!

The evening began at the “Potato Head”, a club whose grounds run right down onto the beach, and where perched on large “day beds” overlooking the ocean, we shared a few bottles of wine, and enjoyed a simple dinner… We then decided to visit the new “W” hotel a short distance away, where a supposedly “renowned” French DJ would be rocking the house…

The fact that the bugger only put in an appearance at 2.30 am, meant that we had to suffer under the burden of overpriced drinks for much longer than we would have liked to…!! By the time he wound his trumpet blowing way through the large crowd, Patti and I had almost danced ourselves to a standstill…

“Almost” being the operative word…!! I was dragged back down to the area in front of the stage for another half hour of wild gyrations, the noise of my creaking joints just barely covered by the booming techno music coming from the bank of speakers nearby…

“This is gonna count for at least three yoga sessions…!!” I advised my irrepressible dance partner… Her little smile said, “Fat chance, Buster…!!”

By 3.00am, we were all tuckered out and began assembling for the drive back to Ubud, extremely thankful that we had had the good sense to ask the driver to hang around and wait for us…!! It had been a long time since I last “got my groove on”, but had to remind myself that often, the only difference between a groove and a grave, was the depth…!!

It was after 4.00am when we reached Ubud, and after making a sandwich to appease the hunger that had overtaken us, closer to 5.00am, when we finally got to bed… Before I fell asleep, I made a mental note to feign an illness if invited out on a night on the town with these girls again…!!

The girls of Como... Sally, Sylvia, Heidi and Krista...

We collected Mikaela from the airport, and her bubbly personality soon put paid to the hangovers we were nursing… That and the large cups of coffee we bought at Starbucks before leaving the airport…!! By the time we got back to Ubud, Mikaela had excitedly listed the three hundred odd things she wanted to do while in Bali, which had me exhausted all over again, trying to figure how we were going to fit them into the two weeks she would be with us…!!

In between keeping in touch with her business and clients back in California, Mikaela managed to climb Mount Batur, went down to Legian to take surfing lessons with Patti, accompanied us on many walks, took a few yoga lessons with me while Patti was at work, visited the local markets, and generally kept herself very busy here in Ubud…

The Elephant Temple was our first stop for the day...

A few days before she jetted back to the USA on another marathon haul that lasted almost 30 hours, we hired a car and driver for the day and set off to do some sightseeing…

We were dropped off at the Goa Gajah, a few kilometres from Ubud, where Mikaela and I had to don sarongs because we were wearing shorts…

The cave and the immediate area it is located in, was used as a retreat for Buddhist monks as early as the 8th century. It includes a series of Holy Pools, fed by water that comes from the confluence of the two rivers that straddle to cave complex…

The cave itself runs back into the cliff face for about ten metres, and then splits right and left into two smaller tunnels with a chamber at each end… Offerings left by previous pilgrims were piled into small niches cut into the rock surface… Apart from that, there was little else to see or get excited about…!!

After visiting the cave, we wandered down a long flight of steps that led to more temples, past small waterfalls and other pools, to yet another cave that was sometimes used for meditating… While Mikaela and Patti followed the path that led to yet more temples further into the jungle, I made my way back to where our driver was waiting and sat chatting to some of the locals who I had met a few days previously on my ride through the eastern reaches of the island…

I had stopped in the very same parking area to buy a snack and something to drink, without realising that the Elephant Cave and temples were barely a stone’s throw away…

The entrance to the cave... And if you can see any resemblance to an elephant, then you have to stop smoking those socks...!!

Mikaela, Patti and I pose for a pic outside the temple...

We drove further east to the town of Klungkung to visit the Court of Justice… This was established by the Dutch to bring law and order to the area they had conquered in 1908… Set in large grounds, the Court of Justice is made up of a few large pagodas where the local art form of Kamasan paintings are exhibited…

One of the two large pagodas where Kamasan "works of art" are displayed...

These paintings depict rather graphic images of ancient Hindu history and the battles fought between their deities…

It would seem that very little mercy was given to those captured...!!

Convention rules of warfare clearly had no place with these guys...!!

Besides a number of shrines where the ubiquitous daily offering are presented, there is also a large museum in the grounds and many of the exhibits brought more than just a smile to our faces… The information sheet describing the battle between the Dutch and the Klungkung Kingdom  was a case in point…

How the Dutch brought a "throbbing kingdom" to it's knees....

Ibo's Patricia and Mikaela at the Bat Cave and Temple near Candidasa...

After reading some of the information to hand, and wondering why somebody with a better grasp of English had not intervened to make what was clearly a tragic event, less mirth-inducing, we left the building, trying to keep a straight face as we recounted some of the descriptions we had read…!!

Bats flitted from one perch to another as we watched them from below...

Kardi our driver, then set off for Candidasa, where we stopped to visit the Bat Cave and Temple…

Dressed in sarongs with accompanying sashes, we strolled up to the front of the temple to get a closer look at the thousands of bats that hung from the ceiling of the cave…

A ceremony involving a large group of folk was taking place at the time, and while they chanted, bats fell from there perches and flew hither and thither across the cave to find new places to settle … We were later told that a number of snakes live on the ledges in the cave and have become rather partial to the bats that fly within striking distance of where the Boas lie in wait… It is said that to witness the snakes in action brings good luck to beholder (except of course if you are the bat forming part of the action…!!)

Pak Ronnie and his Ibo Patricia at the Bat Cave...

Before Kardi could suggest any further visits of a cultural nature, we informed him that we were all “Templed-out” for the day, and requested that he get us to Padang Bai on the east coast, without further delay… After having lunch at a local restaurant in the harbour, we hired a small boat and set off to do some snorkeling…

Patti and Mikaela on board the small fishing boat we hired to take us out to the dive sites...

Struggling through another difficult day in Bali...

We agreed to a reasonable fee that would give us at least two hours of snorkeling at three different sites, and set off across the bay and around the distant headland to the north of the harbour… Our skipper tied his boat up to a small buoy that floated a few hundred metres offshore, and indicated with a few grunts that we had arrived at the first spot we could snorkel at…

The water here was reasonably clear and after getting our gear on, we hopped over the side and into a wonder world of coral and reef fish…

Into the blue...

Directing traffic underwater is not as easy as it looks...!!

In living colour... Seeing the smaller reef fish like this Surgeon Fish always gives me a huge rush...!!

Although the coral here was not as prolific as that which we experienced in the shallows off Gili Trawangan, there was certainly enough of it about to attract the large variety of fish that lived there…

We spent about an hour exploring the ridges and rocky areas close to the boat…

Just as we were approaching the boat, our skipper threw chunks of bread into the water around us, drawing hundreds of Wrasses and other smaller fish which swirled around us in clouds…

We grabbed some of the chunks floating nearby and allowed the fish to eat from around our fingers…

We motored back towards Padang Bai and stopped off in a spot called the Blue Lagoon… While Patti caught some rays back on the boat, Mikaela and I circled the boat, staying within the confines of a large ring of reef bordered by white sand… We hung in the water watching large schools of fish drifting around us, until I noticed that we had been out more than the two hours we had agreed upon… The time seemed to have flown by while we were enjoying the opportunity to get up close to so many of the beautiful species we had followed and searched for…

The boat landed us back on the beach at the small harbour, where Kardi was waiting to take us back to Ubud…

Open wide...!! Many of the smaller fishing boats have this "gaping jaw" design carved into their prows...

It had been a hectic and fun-filled day, and together with Patti and Mikaela, I had enjoyed another interesting day in Bali…

And there was still so much for me to discover here… About the island, and myself…

©GBWT 2011