Leilani and her roommate Michaela came down again and hung out at the beach in front of our house. I am from Huntington Beach, California and yet shockingly have never even so much as attempted surfing in my life. The three of them went surfing and convinced me to give it a go. I had no idea what to expect but was able to stand up on the very first wave I caught. In fact I didn't fall off the surfboard until about my fifth wave when I got a little cocky and tried to take a wave way too big for me. Here is a picture of Drew, Leilani and myself surfing next to each other.
One of the best things we did so far in Bali was rent a driver for 40 dollars that picked us up at 830 AM. We had an itinerary and he didn't like what we had planned but we stuck to our guns and made him drive us around. He said we wouldn't have time but we actually finished the day with about an hour to spare. It happened to be a Muslim holiday (Bali is mainly hindu, but they took advantage of the holiday so no one really worked on this day). This worked in our advantage because traffic wasn't nearly as bad as it normally is. Our first stop was a temple that is famous for it's healing powers. The source of the healing is water that comes from the ground and the temple was built around it. As you can see from the photos, thousands of people flock (especially on a holiday) to cleanse their bodies in these pools. Here are some photos of Tirta Empul Temple.
on a side note, you can not enter the temple without a sarong so we were forced to wear these anytime we went in. The sarongs do not breath and it was very hot, so most of these photos we will be sweating in.
You also cannot enter any temple if you are a female while you are menstruating because you are considered "unclean" and in case you forget, there are signs to remind you. What is also funny is at all of these holy temples, they try to sell you beers, shirts, paintings, key chains etc, which to me in itself seems unholy.
Our next stop was actually by accident, the driver misunderstood us and took us to a temple. We spent all of two minutes in this temple because it looked just like the other one and was not what we were planning on seeing. It was a temple, with a koi pond, no people and a badminton court. The name was Gunung Kawi (but was not the Gunung Kawi we wanted as there are two)
After this temple we got back on track and headed to the REAL Gunung Kawi. You have to hike down to this temple and there is a running river and some rice fields and it is very pretty. The main attractions are some stones carvings cut out of the cliffs.
My favorite part of the day came right after this when we headed to the Tegalalang Rice Fields. These are the rice fields we had been hoping to see as they are terraced and when we were there were a mix of yellow and green so we tried to get artistic with our photos and turn on the color filter. We had lunch at this location over looking the fields and this is where having a driver came in handy. He took us to a great place with no tourists around. We thought we had just gotten lucky to have no one around, but he after we were done with lunch and viewing the fields he took us about two minutes up the road where we saw all of the other millions of tourist and we were so grateful to not have to be a part of this.
Our last stop of the day was Tanoh Lot temple which is a temple in the sea. Our favorite part of this Temple was the surround cliffs and rocks that you could walk out onto which were covered in green algae. The temple, depending on the tide, can actually be surrounded by water on all sides.
We ended the day at our favorite restaurant Poppies. I do not have any photos of that restaurant from this trip, but I do have them from when we were in Bali 3 years ago. Like I said before, we apologize for not blogging sooner and sorry for the long post of everything we have been doing in the past week since we blogged last. Drew will be updating about our place in Thailand. We are so happy to be in Thailand and as much as we loved Bali, Phuket is even better. The water is clearer, the city is cleaner and the temperature is a lot more bearable. I leave you with some random photos from Bali.
This picture is taken by me on the back of a scooter driving down a two lane road. This is two lanes for both cars and bikes which doesn't seem possible seeing as the car takes up the entire road, but occasionally cars would come at us as well.
A picture from the street we live on.
A large lizard we named Wilbur. He lived downstairs in our apartment and occasionally came out to play. We were grossed out by him but everyone told us that they are considered good luck.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment