Ubud Adventures

Friday morning I checked my luggage into my hotel in Kuta, climbed on my motor scooter, and took off. I was headed to Ubud, a little cultural hub in the hilly middle area of Bali. I left almost everything behind, which is why you're getting one big update here at the end.

On my way to Ubud I took a detour to go check out the Taman Ayun temple. It's a Hindu temple surrounded by a moat and beautiful park, and is mostly recognizable from its characteristic temple roofs.

Some of the temple buildings in the Taman Ayun complex.

Here you can see part of the wall and moat surrounding the temple.

Outside the main gates of Taman Ayun.

The drives and our stay in Ubud were beautiful. Bali is known for its beaches, but water can be found all over the island in the local rice farms.

A casual view of the somewhat constant landscape. I'm going to miss this.

More rice fields. And palm trees.

However, even though rice fields are kind of the norm here in Indonesia, there are still some that are just even more beautiful than the general landscape. So one afternoon Suraiya and I took a mini-road trip up to the Tegallalang rice terraces, some of the most famous ones in Bali.

In front of Tegallalang.

The beautiful landscape.

Another mini-road trip we took was to the village of Petulu. Just north of Ubud, it is the nesting site of thousands of herons every evening. It is just a small normal village of local Balinese and we actually questioned whether it could actually be that impressive when we arrived. But right as the sun began to set the birds began flying over in large groups.

However, there's an interesting historical and spiritual aspect to the birds arrival in Petulu. This webpage does the best job describing the mythology behind the herons. The main points are as follows...

"In 1965, a failed coup in Indonesia was attributed to communist conspirators.
A period of mass murder of known or suspected PKI (The Indonesian Communist Party) followers ensued, including a massacre of over 5% of the population of Bali.

According to reports, many, as those in the little village of artisans called Petulu, not far from Ubud, were apparently made to sit on the edge of the mass graves prepared by force by fellow villagers, before being shot - one by one - in the back of the head.
There are reports that elsewhere many Balinese were simply hacked to death with machetes and tossed into the sea...

The survivors in Petulu took action to rid the village of this dreadful negative energy by holding a ceremonial cleansing ceremony in the last week of October 1965 – and on the 7th November the same year, the herons Kokokanarrived for the first time in history."

The birds really do fly from all over the island to only one little stretch of unassuming road in this village. It is hard to come up with another reason for their clockwork arrival every day since 1965. Thousands of them begin to accumulate right at sundown.

Some of the first herons landing on a nearby tree.

A close up of the herons.

The trees become full of the birds.

Every white dot is a heron.

This is Suraiya and I with a local man from the village. He let us onto his uncle's roof so we had a great vantage point to watch the birds fly in from every direction.

The day after, furthering our Hindu-themed journeys, we headed to yet another temple. Called Tirta Empul, it is a temple at a natural spring which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere north of Ubud.

This is actually not Tirta Empul, but another local temple (we're not sure of the name) that we happened by along the drive.

This is the main attraction of Tirta Empul. The natural springs of (supposed) holy water.

A statue on the side of one of the temples at Tirta Empul.

A statue in the pond at the temple.

The temples were absolutely gorgeous.

And the best part, it's interactive. I was able to go in and rinse myself in the springs of holy water.

Convincing Surayia to come in after me took a little more work.

After returning to Ubud, Suraiya and I finally convinced ourselves to visit the Monkey Forrest. Such a huge tourist attraction that one of the main streets in Ubud is actually named after it. It's a little park absolutely full of monkeys. There are hundreds of monkeys in the area, but it's hard to know how many are in the park at any given time since they're actually not confined there. They can go adventure out of the forest whenever and wherever they like, they just tend to congregate in the area because tourists go there to feed them.

Assorted monkeys.

I'm not sure why anyone brings food for them however. They're sneaky and evil little beings, you know, when they're not being adorable. They like to steal people's possessions. 

This monkey had acquired a tourist's water bottle.

This one was able to grab a woman's bag. She made the incredibly unintelligent decision to put bananas in it and dearly paid the consequences. All of her money and travel IDs are in that bag. The monkey was first ripping it open with its teeth (pictured) and then just opened the zipper 100% normally. Oh, and big aggressive male monkeys were attacking any person who got close to the backpack. We left very quickly once the attacking started, so I'm not sure how the situation concluded.

After an exciting few days in Ubud I had to once again get on the bike and head back down to Kuta. It's amazing how comfortable I got navigating around Bali in just a few days. I managed to get back the hour drive to my hotel in Kuta without looking up directions.

This is a "gas station" for a moped. Racks similar to this are all over the street in any corner of the island. Shop, restaurant, and home owners stock up on petrol for motorcyclists to fill up with. They store it in all sorts of bottles. Here you can see the Coke and water bottles, the very typical glass jugs, and another common container: Absolut vodka bottles. Gas usually runs 14,000-15,000 rupiah, or $1.28, to fill up the tank.

The main entrance gate to Kuta beach.

Catching the sunset at Kuta beach on my last night in Bali.

Overall, Bali was an absolutely amazing trip. I loved the freedom of being able to navigate the island without needing a taxi or additional transportation and it was phenominal practice for my bahasa Indonesia skills. (I am so good with asking directions now, you don't even know.) The island's another fantastic part of Indonesia with a unique people and culture all it's own. Although I could do without the culture in the tourist beach areas, I'm so glad I came and got to visit.

Next step? Catching my plane to Thailand!