Our visit this year to Bali was our second visit to this unique part of Indonesia. The major part of what makes it unique is that the majority religion is Hindu compared to the rest of Indonesia which is predominately Moslem. I arranged for two days of private tour with Agung who operates under the auspices of Tours By Locals. I used him before and we have maintained contact using Facebook.
I gathered up my group at 8:30am in the Ocean Bar and we made our way off the ship into the nice port building facility. Ed worked our way outside through the hordes of taxi drivers and tour operators. Shortly after 9am Agung showed up and it was good to see his smiling face and greet him like we had just been in Bali yesterday.
We boarded our little van and headed off for the first stop of the day, the Tanah Lot Temple. This temple is at least an hour's drive northwest of the port area and it was very crowded with lots of vendors. At this Hindu temple, there's actually a Buddhist seminary and a nearby Islamic Mosque. The principal temple is on an outcropping that's reachable by wading at low tide. When we were there, the water depth varied from ankle to waist depth as the tide was coming in. There was also the opportunity to pet the "Holy Snake" for a small donation of about $2US or 20,000 IDR. It turned out the snake was a sea snake and had a black and white striped pattern to it. And, yes, we petted the snake.
After Tanah Lot, we made our way to the Jati Luih rice terrace which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and was visited by former President Obama. Like the temples, there's a modest admission fee of just over $1US. At this site, they grow the red rice. We enjoyed a nice meal at the local restaurant and then had the opportunity to walk down into the terraced rice fields.
From Jati Luih, we made our way to Lake Beratan to visit the floating temple. This temple was very pretty and there were considerably fewer visitors than at Tanah Lot. The lake which was formed by a volcanic crater filled with water, was also a large source of water recreation although the water was a bit chilly. Speedboats roared back and forth across the water just outside the temple area.
Our last temple visit was to the Taman Ayun temple or the Royal Family Temple, which is another UNESCO World Heritage site. The temple had a moat around it and there were three concentric levels to the complex. We couldn't go into the innermost part of the temple as that's reserved for their religious ceremonies, but we could peer over the separating wall and clearly see the area.
For all of the sites we visited, it was about an hour to an hour and a half drive on narrow, twisting, and crowded roads to reach each of the sites. We ended up getting back to the ship around 7:30pm just in time to get some dinner in the LIDO. At 9pm, there was an Indonesian folk dance presentation that was quite good.
The next day was scheduled to be something totally different and a little adventure at the end of the day awaited us. Stay tuned.
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