Bali is a really special place and we have loved being in Ubud. Ubud has a small village feel where art is infused in many aspects of the culture. The tall bamboo poles are ritual offering flags, which appear on most streets.
While the few main streets can be packed with tourists, shops, and some crazy traffic, but most of Ubud is surrounded by and infused with scenic beauty.
These leaf plate offerings are made twice a day at temples, homes and businesses. We enjoyed watching women make these offerings. She seems fully present as she conducts a beautiful ritual that include dipping a flower into water and shaking the water drops onto the shrines, the earth and onto herself.
We had heard that Ubud is very touristy, so we opted to stay five miles outside of town and rent a scooter to get around. These are photos of the jungle-like environment surrounding our hotel and the beautiful pool right outside our room.
We visited the Sacred Monkey Forest, which is both a temple complex and a nature preserve. Like all Balinese temples, the temples here are open air places of worship within enclosed walls. This is a shrine at the cremation temple.
We donned sarongs and sashes before going into the Dalan Agung Pedangtegal temple. Pete is standing in between a candi bentar, split gateway, with a huge banyan tree behind him.
This is a lion barong, the king of the good spirits. Barongs can be lions, boars or dragons, and they always seem to have huge teeth and look fierce. They are like guardian angels. Many of the stone sculptures and carvings we saw are made of volcanic stone and have moss growing on them - they look really old, but instead they just age quickly in this lush jungle environment.
It's called the Sacred Monkey Forest because there are hundreds of macque monkeys that live here. We read that there are four different monkey troops, and that fights over territory are common but we didn't see any skirmishes.
We had read not to bring any food or the monkeys will grab it. There was a woman selling bananas, so the monkeys seemed to be pretty well fed.
The little ones are about 6 months old and so cute with their black mohawks!
Separated at birth? We don't know this man, but he seemed to be taking a risk by letting the monkey climb on him, since there has been a rabies outbreak here.
Here is another barong, which is part of a beautiful shrine at a house. Since Balinese Hinduism is such a huge part of people's lives here, it is very common to see elaborate shrines at people's homes.
Bali has a long history of art extending back to the 16th century when there was a mass exodus of the Hindu elite from Java to Bali. The tradition of giving high status to villages with artistic talent continues today. We enjoy visiting museums, so we checked out three different ones in Ubud. Here is a carving of Ram and Sita at the Puri Lukisan museum.
This is a painting of a barong by I Gusti Nyomen Lemped. Lemped was a stone sculptor and architect, as well as a self-taught painter. He chose to make paintings with themes from Balinese mythology and folklore. While his birthdate was not recorded (which is common here), it is thought he lived to be 116.
Not only did we see interesting paintings and sculptures in the museums, we also saw beautiful grounds.
This guardian statue has been draped in and shaded by checkered ritual cloth called poleng. Each day fresh flowers are placed behind the statues' ears, and the men here often have a flower tucked behind each ear, too.
At the ARMA museum we watched kids learning Balinese dance. The classes are free to encourage the younger generation to learn this important art form. All the kids were very engaged and excited about learning to dance.
These backbends were so graceful.
One evening we went to a dance performance. The main dance was from the epic Hindu story, the Ramayana. The dance begins with these men singing and dancing. Their singing is the only music for the dances, and it included interesting sounds like monkeys chattering.
In this scene Ram is lured away by this golden deer, leaving Sita alone and vulnerable. We loved this young woman's performance.
Sita, the wife of Ram, is about to be kidnapped by the evil king Ravena. He imprisons her in his kingdom on Sri Lanka.
Hanuman to the rescue! The monkey king gives Ram's ring to Sita and promises to return with Ram and his monkey army to rescue her.
We also saw a trance dance by these two young girls. They dance with their eyes closed, but their movements were perfectly synchronized.
And the finale was a fire dance. Here the main dancer is kicking the burning coconut husks around the stage.
One evening we rode our scooter to a nearby village named Petulu. We saw thousands of herons fly in and roost on the trees. This has been happening here since 1965, and the locals consider the herons to be good luck.
Birds weren't the only flyers we saw in the Balinese skies. We frequently saw kites, with ones as beautiful as these to homemade kites made from scrap.
Walking through Petulu, we also came upon this cremation tower being readied for an upcoming ceremony. The number of levels signifies the deceased's status: the more levels on the tower equates to a higher caste or greater social standing. Clearly this was to be the cremation ceremony of a significant person in Petulu.
We found good yoga classes in Ubud at a lovely studio.
We took three classes, including a workshop with Simon Park (who studied Flow with Shiva Rea). We haven't taken any yoga classes since January, so it was a great treat. Here Simon is demonstrating a back bending pose.
We tried the local cuisine via a tasting menu. Starting at 11 o'clock and going clockwise are egg rolls (lumpia), duck cooked in banana leaves (bebek betutu), fish cooked in banana leaves, shrimp chips, chicken (ayam betutu), water spinach, chicken satay, and beef randang which was like a spicy beef jerky. In the center is rice garnished with fried shallots.
We have found the traditional Balinese food to be well-seasoned with nice flavor, but consistently so over-cooked that the meat is dry and tough. We sought out some hippy organic food in Ubud and enjoyed komboucha and smoothies. Our favorite drink here was called "one love" and was a blend of passion fruit juice, cashew milk, honey and vanilla - yum! The flowers in the restaurant were beautiful!
Here's a photo of the full moon over the rice fields. We are sad to leave Ubud, but we plan to return in a month.
While the few main streets can be packed with tourists, shops, and some crazy traffic, but most of Ubud is surrounded by and infused with scenic beauty.
These leaf plate offerings are made twice a day at temples, homes and businesses. We enjoyed watching women make these offerings. She seems fully present as she conducts a beautiful ritual that include dipping a flower into water and shaking the water drops onto the shrines, the earth and onto herself.
We had heard that Ubud is very touristy, so we opted to stay five miles outside of town and rent a scooter to get around. These are photos of the jungle-like environment surrounding our hotel and the beautiful pool right outside our room.
We visited the Sacred Monkey Forest, which is both a temple complex and a nature preserve. Like all Balinese temples, the temples here are open air places of worship within enclosed walls. This is a shrine at the cremation temple.
We donned sarongs and sashes before going into the Dalan Agung Pedangtegal temple. Pete is standing in between a candi bentar, split gateway, with a huge banyan tree behind him.
This is a lion barong, the king of the good spirits. Barongs can be lions, boars or dragons, and they always seem to have huge teeth and look fierce. They are like guardian angels. Many of the stone sculptures and carvings we saw are made of volcanic stone and have moss growing on them - they look really old, but instead they just age quickly in this lush jungle environment.
It's called the Sacred Monkey Forest because there are hundreds of macque monkeys that live here. We read that there are four different monkey troops, and that fights over territory are common but we didn't see any skirmishes.
We had read not to bring any food or the monkeys will grab it. There was a woman selling bananas, so the monkeys seemed to be pretty well fed.
The little ones are about 6 months old and so cute with their black mohawks!
Separated at birth? We don't know this man, but he seemed to be taking a risk by letting the monkey climb on him, since there has been a rabies outbreak here.
Here is another barong, which is part of a beautiful shrine at a house. Since Balinese Hinduism is such a huge part of people's lives here, it is very common to see elaborate shrines at people's homes.
Bali has a long history of art extending back to the 16th century when there was a mass exodus of the Hindu elite from Java to Bali. The tradition of giving high status to villages with artistic talent continues today. We enjoy visiting museums, so we checked out three different ones in Ubud. Here is a carving of Ram and Sita at the Puri Lukisan museum.
This is a painting of a barong by I Gusti Nyomen Lemped. Lemped was a stone sculptor and architect, as well as a self-taught painter. He chose to make paintings with themes from Balinese mythology and folklore. While his birthdate was not recorded (which is common here), it is thought he lived to be 116.
Not only did we see interesting paintings and sculptures in the museums, we also saw beautiful grounds.
This guardian statue has been draped in and shaded by checkered ritual cloth called poleng. Each day fresh flowers are placed behind the statues' ears, and the men here often have a flower tucked behind each ear, too.
At the ARMA museum we watched kids learning Balinese dance. The classes are free to encourage the younger generation to learn this important art form. All the kids were very engaged and excited about learning to dance.
These backbends were so graceful.
One evening we went to a dance performance. The main dance was from the epic Hindu story, the Ramayana. The dance begins with these men singing and dancing. Their singing is the only music for the dances, and it included interesting sounds like monkeys chattering.
In this scene Ram is lured away by this golden deer, leaving Sita alone and vulnerable. We loved this young woman's performance.
Sita, the wife of Ram, is about to be kidnapped by the evil king Ravena. He imprisons her in his kingdom on Sri Lanka.
Hanuman to the rescue! The monkey king gives Ram's ring to Sita and promises to return with Ram and his monkey army to rescue her.
We also saw a trance dance by these two young girls. They dance with their eyes closed, but their movements were perfectly synchronized.
And the finale was a fire dance. Here the main dancer is kicking the burning coconut husks around the stage.
One evening we rode our scooter to a nearby village named Petulu. We saw thousands of herons fly in and roost on the trees. This has been happening here since 1965, and the locals consider the herons to be good luck.
Birds weren't the only flyers we saw in the Balinese skies. We frequently saw kites, with ones as beautiful as these to homemade kites made from scrap.
Walking through Petulu, we also came upon this cremation tower being readied for an upcoming ceremony. The number of levels signifies the deceased's status: the more levels on the tower equates to a higher caste or greater social standing. Clearly this was to be the cremation ceremony of a significant person in Petulu.
We found good yoga classes in Ubud at a lovely studio.
We took three classes, including a workshop with Simon Park (who studied Flow with Shiva Rea). We haven't taken any yoga classes since January, so it was a great treat. Here Simon is demonstrating a back bending pose.
We tried the local cuisine via a tasting menu. Starting at 11 o'clock and going clockwise are egg rolls (lumpia), duck cooked in banana leaves (bebek betutu), fish cooked in banana leaves, shrimp chips, chicken (ayam betutu), water spinach, chicken satay, and beef randang which was like a spicy beef jerky. In the center is rice garnished with fried shallots.
We have found the traditional Balinese food to be well-seasoned with nice flavor, but consistently so over-cooked that the meat is dry and tough. We sought out some hippy organic food in Ubud and enjoyed komboucha and smoothies. Our favorite drink here was called "one love" and was a blend of passion fruit juice, cashew milk, honey and vanilla - yum! The flowers in the restaurant were beautiful!
Here's a photo of the full moon over the rice fields. We are sad to leave Ubud, but we plan to return in a month.
