Ubud Return: Enjoying the Influences of Ex-Pats and Balinese Culture

We were so happy when we arrived back in Ubud for a second visit. We spent a week repeating some of our favorite activities, but mostly we enjoyed new restaurants and explored Balinese culture through new activities.

We took two of Les Leventhal’s yoga classes. Les recently moved from San Francisco to Bali. He led us in chanting Ganesha, Ganapadi. Here is a statue at the yoga studio of the Hindu god Ganesha.



After eating our fill of Indonesian food during the last five weeks, we branched out to other cuisines. Ubud is home to many ex-pats from all over the world, and some have opened restaurants here. One of our favorites was the Melting Wok. Owned by a French couple named Geraldine and Phillipe, the food had Thai spicing, like this curry dish flavored with lemon grass and basil.



The desserts at the Melting Wok were outstanding. This is coconut crème caramel, which had a texture like flan.



Another favorite restaurant was Taco Casa, a truly California-Mexican restaurant that served pitchers of good margaritas and entrees like this “eight layer burrito”.



We also ate at Il Giardino, a delicious and authentic Italian restaurant. We enjoyed their garden setting.



Here’s a photo of their anchovy, carmelized onion and olive pizza. We also loved their house made paperdelle with lamb sugo.



We went on a Bali bird walk. Here is our guide Victor Mason, an irrepressible Brit who has lived in Ubud for over 40 years.



Victor proudly told us that he never wears shoes.



The bird walk included about 10 people, and went through rice fields and along irrigation canals.



We saw over 20 different types of birds on our walk. This is a Javan Pond Heron. We saw these in India too.



Also hanging out in the rice fields were Wood Sandpipers and a White-breasted Waterhen.





Our favorite bird was the Java Kingfisher, with its beautiful bright blue feathers. We also saw Collared and Sacred Kingfishers, but they are both less colorful.



We watched this snake, who stayed in this pose for over a minute.



We drank fresh coconut water from coconuts that this man harvested.



There were many different varieties of dragonflies.



This is a Chocolate Pansy butterfly.



Victor was so knowledgeable about the birds and butterflies, and he has written several books. We looked at his Butterflies of Bali book with its incredible illustrations, and decided to buy a copy for ourselves.



One morning we rode bikes through the countryside. Here we are with our guide Gede.



Here the rice terraces were steep, so we walked our bikes up this part of the trail.



Pushed by the Indonesian government, most of the rice grown in Ubud is GMO rice from Monsanto. This man is weeding his rice field.



Gede told us that the farmers now have to also buy Monsanto pesticide and fertilizer in order to get adequate rice yields. Spraying pesticide in the fields was a common sight.



At the end of the ride we opted to hike to our lunch spot, so we got to walk through these rice fields.



Our guide explained that the daily leaf plate offerings change every day. August 24th honored metal, so vehicles and electronic devices had offerings.



This woman and her son are on the way to the temple with an offering for the gods. The blue cans are Pocari Sweat, which is a Japanese beverage similar to Gatorade. Apparently the Gods need electrolytes, too.



Several times we walked past this building near a temple and saw many people preparing offerings together. The men were out front while the women you see here were in this covered area.



It was a full moon again while we were in Ubud. We felt so fortunate to see this sight twice!



Cock fighting as an animal sacrifice is part of Balinese Hinduism. The blood of the rooster that loses is considered to be an offering to the evil spirits. This rooster is probably about two years old.



We enjoyed several dance performances. This dance is the bumble bee dance. The two dancers represent bees that fall in love in a flower garden.



The dancers were accompanied by a live gamelan orchestra, which was a joy to hear and watch.



Check out these long fingernails!



An important part of Balinese dance is expressive eye movements.



This is a Legong dance. Developed in the 19th century, it was originally performed only for royalty.



Her finger movements were so delicate. It's no surprise when we learned that dancers are chosen for large eyes and long fingers.



After her dance, she took a break and checked her email.



The male dancers also have expressive eyes.





This is a Barong. As the Barong dances he chatters his teeth. It took two people to dance with this costume.



Here he looks like a cute chihuahua!



Rangda the witch is the epitome of evil, while the Barong personifies good. To the Balinese, these forces are constantly in battle in the world, and to live appropriately one must work to keep these forces in balance.



The male dancers are fighting the evil Rangda.



We will treasure our memories of our return visit to Ubud.

Selo and Beyond: Vestiges of Hinduism in the Land of Volcanoes

Hinduism was the primary religion in Java for 1,200 years, coexisting with Buddhism for about 400 years. Originating in India, Hinduism came to Indonesia in the fourth century. This photo is the Prambanan temple complex. Like Borobudur, it's made of andesite stone, which is volcanic.



Kristina is in front of the Shiva temple. Shiva is the Hindu god of creation and destruction.



Shiva rides a bull named Nandi. Inside the Nandi temple was this statue.



It was crowded here too, as Idul Fitri continues for a week after Ramadan ends, and lots of Muslim families were traveling.



This mosque is in Malang. We enjoyed strolling around the park in front of it, listening to the imam sing the call to prayer.



Even though Java is predominantly Muslim, the Hindu roots in the Javanese culture are evident. While staying in the small town of Selo in central Java, we attended a cultural program. It was music and dance from the Ramayana, the Hindu epic.



We really like gamelan music. There was a full band with singers for this program.



In this dance there were pairs of white, black, blue and red monkeys. The color denotes the names of the monkeys whose stories are part of the Ramayana. All these monkeys are good and help to fight the evil King Ravana.



This white monkey is Hanuman and he was our favorite dancer.



Here he is without his mask and full costume. As a result of all his dancing, he had supposedly gone into a trance and became a monkey. He did pull-ups from the rafters and ate a banana while he kept dancing.



We were the only Western tourists in attendance. There were lots of kids watching the dance.





When the dancers left the stage, some of the kids would take a quick turn running across and showing their own dance moves.



We liked these masks with their funny expressions.





Selo and much of Java has a lot of agriculture. This is tobacco, which is grown extensively here. It is well-suited to the climate because it doesn't need water during the dry season. Using cloves to sweeten the tobacco, cigarettes are made cheaply and sold for less than a dollar a pack. Unfortunately this results in close to 70% of Indonesian males over age 15 smoking.



We came to Selo so we could climb Mt Merapi. Our friend Khalid from the Vietnam cycling tour had visited Java in June. He shared his experiences and recommendations with us, including visiting Merapi. This is a photo taken at sunrise in Borobudur, 35 miles away from Mt Merapi. There is a small plume of smoke rising from the crater, which is typical.



Khalid also connected us with his tour guide Triono who is taking us around Java. Kristina is pictured here with Triono in front of Merapi. The name means mountain of fire in Indonesian.



Mt Merapi is the most active volcano in Indonesia and typically has major eruptions every 10 years, with the last one in 2010. We climbed up the north side, which is the left side of the photo. It’s 9,600 feet tall.



Merapi is a young volcano at 400,000 years old. It's a stratovolcano, which means it erupts violently with viscous lava. Because the lava is thick, it sticks to the sides of the mountain, resulting in these steep slopes.



It has to be dark to see the glowing lava inside the crater, so we started our climb at 1 am. Using headlamps to see the trail was essential. We arrived at the top at 5 am where it was 45 degrees, but felt colder because it was extremely windy.



We huddled together for warmth and watched the sun rise. The layer of low fog reminded us of home since we’ve been on Mt Tamalpais with a similar view of the fog below.



As we began our descent we had a great view of Mt Merbabu, an extinct volcano, which is only 10 miles away from Mt Merapi.



On the way up we didn’t have to climb through all this sand, but we did have to slog up a short section that felt like we slipped back as far as we stepped forward. Our descent included “skiing” down this sandy part at the top, which was really fun! Pete zoomed ahead and got this great shot of 7 climbers; Kristina is fifth from the left. (Click the photo to see it larger.)



We climbed up 4,500 feet and 6 miles each way. It was the most demanding climb we have every done, primarily because of the incredibly steep trails of loose rock and ash. We can’t remember a single switchback, instead the trail just went up!



At the top it was like a moonscape. There are two tents at the bottom of the photo, as these people wanted to experience both the sunset and sunrise at the top of the volcano. We were impressed and don’t think we could have ascended and descended the top twice within 12 hours, given how difficult it was to do it once.



This is about half way down Mt Merapi. Vegetation is increasing, but you can see it’s still very rocky.



Here we are at the end of the hike with our guide Yoko. We were hindered by hiking in Keene sandals, which have very little tread compared to hiking boots, and we slipped and fell a lot but didn’t get hurt. We joked with Yoko that we earned the title of his most falling-down clients – he didn’t disagree.



It was thrilling to climb this amazing volcano. If we had bucket lists, it would certainly be included. And we are also relieved that we didn’t get hurt, as the climb was much harder than we had expected.

A few days later we visited another volcano. Here is our first view of the Ijen volcano complex in East Java, including the smoking crater.



We were happy there was a wide trail to hike up. We shared the trail with other tourists and with sulphur miners. His load weighs as much as 150 lbs. What a hard job!



This is elemental sulphur. We could smell sulphur in the air as we hiked.



After 2 miles of hiking we reached the lake. The lake is continuously emitting sulphurous gas. The water in the lake is high in sulphur, and this makes it a beautiful turquoise color. The lake is 500 feet deep and three quarters of a mile across.





You can see the bands of sulphur in these rocks.



It was barren and windy at the top. We have a new level of appreciation for volcanoes after hiking in Java.