April 8th, 2005
We took a few days to explore the town of Ubud. Ubud is loaded with small shops filled with all kinds of art and textiles. Ubud was said to have been able to concentrate on it's religious and cultural life, and so we took a few days to absorb all that we could in that rhelm. Western Artist Walter Spies was encouraged to visit Bali in the 1930's and he never left, settling in Bali, and creating his home where we had stayed at The Tjampuhan Hotel. He was also a great stimulus to the local art community and was one of the western visitors who helped to promote Balinese culture worldwide.

Jeremy and I headed out in one direction and Buffy and Sherry headed in their direction and these are some of the things that we saw.

Jeremy and I headed out into the main market area to see what we could find.


In the center of the block long building, there was an opening, allowing you to see many of the shops on the inside track of the upper floors. Down on this level, we found the 'fresh food'; fish, and other meats, veggies, fruits and snacks. Some of the food for sale was very questionable, with fruit that was rotting, and fish that were covered with flies...but none the less, people were shopping.


The market was literally a maze of shops, everything you could think of, from sarongs to fresh food, to masks and other carvings. You name it, it was here at the market.


As we wound our way thru the marketplace trying to avoid too much eye contact, we heard small wimpers near some motorbikes that were parked at the far end. We found under one bike this little puppy, that seemed miserable. We pet her for a few moments and one of the other shop keepers, who was following us to get us to buy at her shop, grabbed the dog by the scruff, held it up for us and said, "FREE for you!" We would have taken this pup, (but just couldn't) as we saw many pups around the market, and really don't know if this one will survive, it was a pretty young puppy.


We saw vendors selling Pandan stalks.


All kinds of snack items, and if you look closely you can see an offering placed on top of the piles.


Hand crafted knives.


And with everywhere you go around Bali, there was another Temple at the one end of the market and as we peeked thru a window going down below to more shops, we caught a glimpse of women praying and placing offerings.


Shops along the open air street.


Women selling sarongs.


Sherry at a basket shop. The baskets are all handwoven and the ones directly to her right are covered in beads that are strung on a string and then woven onto the basket.


Here is an example of a beaded pot from another vendor.


Sherry became a master bargainer and was able to make a few nice purchases.


All kinds of woven items.


From tissue box covers to small boxes to store things in.


Wooden bowls.


Colorful masks.


All shapes and kinds of masks.


Close up of masks.


And this was a mask that Jeremy wanted to get to bring home. This was one of the characters in the Legong Dance.


And here is Jer trying on one of the masks he considered.


And we found maks in another store as we walked around.


Up close you can see all the detail and care put into each mask.

Buffy and Sherry also did some Temple sight seeing and caught a remodling in action.

The black hairy roofs on the temple are made from the Sugar Palm. It even resembles human hair. Buffy caught some guys working on temple renovations and learned how they make the roofs.

They pull apart hunks of the sugar palm fibres and line them up to make swaths of 'hair'.




They take each cluster and lay them side by side, tying each cluster to the pole. Many layers of poles are then woven together to create the thick protective roof tops.


Very intricate wood work up inside a temple shrine.


Stone carving on a shrine.


Monkey carving on a shrine.


Gamelan musical instruments. Gamelan music sounds strange at first, it's noisy and jangly percussion, but it's also enjoyable. The instruments are usually stored in the bale gong and are owned by a banjar.

Balinese music is based around the instruments you see above, aside from an occasional simple suling flute and a two stringed rebab it is mainly percussive. It is derived from Javanese gamelan, although the playing style is very different. The main instruments are the xylophone like gangsa which have bronze bars above bamboo resonators. It is played with a hammer and also uses a hand to dampen the sound of each key as it's struck. The tempo is set by two kendang drums (one male, one female) and other instruments are trompong drums, small kempli gong and cengceng cymbols. The gamelan orchestra is called a gong and could have as many as 40 musicians.

The songs of the gamelan are learned by heart and are passed down from father to son.

Buffy and Sherry also found a hotel that was absolutly beautiful. Every village has a temple, and families have village house compounds. This hotel was laid out like like a bit of both.

Upon entering you find in most cases, a wall directly in front of you. This is built here to stop evil spirits from entering the complex. Evil spirits are not supposed to be able to turn corners so they can only come straight in, and then have to back right back out thus keeping the complex free of evil.


At this hotel you could rent a room, which offered a more private sleeping quarter, but your living space was out in the open, though lavishly decorated...


...with all kinds of decorative carvings...


...and ornate gold laden ceilings...


...and impressive sitting areas.

And, b/c we were blessed with so much rain on our trip to Bali, we couldn't resist some of the orchids and how they held onto water drops.



As we moved away from the main areas of Ubud and jogged off into side streets and alleys, we found a whole other area to explore.

We had lunch at an eatery that wasn't much to look at from the outside, but the food prices were so cheap and the food remarkably delicious.


Menu at the Fair Way Cafe. The highest price on the menu for a meal was just over $1.20USD.

And this was the Warung across the alley from where we ate.

A warung is a family run coffee stall, mini-shop which is the heart of village social life, although they have no particular locations. The black dog lying out front wasn't actually all that friendly as we got near...maybe that's why no one is shopping there?


Buffy got himself and wooden Buddah.


At first I was a bit apprehensive about eating a suckling pig...but, our driver said this is where he would eat, as a local, so we thought we'd give it a try. (This was on a different day of course)


This is the suckling pig local eatery, and it was a terrific lunch! Tons of food, and the pig, was delish! In the upper area, there are long family style tables and you took your shoes off and hopped up there to sit on the bamboo mats and eat.


This was at a Temple where we later saw a Balinese Dance. This was the stage area for the dance, and the actors came thru the temple doors.

And we walked to the end of town where we found this grand staircase that we learned was to the 'real Bali'.


These steps we were told, led to the 'real Bali' and once up on top, we followed small motorbike paths around restaurants and living quarters.


Up at the top, it opened up and there was green rice paddies all around you. But, in researching for this post, I've learned that the open rice paddy spaces are becoming a hot commodity for building homes and you could see evidence of this construction just at the edge of the paddys.


But as we followed the small motorbike paths, we also were led into some wooded areas where we found yet more small shrines tucked back away from everything but nature.


And the statue that was there was thick with mossy growth, and donning a yellow and black-n-white sarong.


Unfortunatly when we left that little serence spiritual spot, we noticed down in a steep ravine, a garbage dump. The one big problem on Bali, is what to do with all the plastic bags and bottles and glass, as they do not have a recycling program and within the small villages, they cannot afford to pay for refuse removal. So, what you see when you get out into the villages are dumping grounds, and they are usually at streams, which makes none of the water clean on Bali. We drank only bottled water and used only bottled water for brusing teeth etc, even in our fancy hotels.


We ended up coming into another small village where there were NO tourists, except us! It was quiet and quaint.


We also saw a few roosters in baskets tucked back out of the weather.


And I think this was a homestay place. Homestays are also known as Losmens and are a low-budget form of accomodation. They are not fancy, most likely will not have AC , you may have a fan, and mosquito netting is provided. You may not even have a bathroom, but if they do have a bathroom, will not offer Toilet Paper. However, you will almost always get breakfast included in your room rental.


Women going to put out offerings. It was about 6pm and we started to see a lot of women dressed beautifully, with their offering baskets on top of their heads on their way.


We saw this outside of a small painting shop, again, a natural offering.


And Jeremy and I happened upon this little guy who was happy to have 1000 Rp, which is about equivalent to less than 10 cents US.


The long woven palm leaves are called Lamak and are used as decorations in festivals and celebrations.


Jeremy and I came across these women who were moving this whole pile of stone to a construction site. The woman on the far left, only has one arm, she's missing her Left arm and they all worked together in a team to load the baskets and then helped each other get them onto the other woman's head.


We followed them back to the contruction site and they were dumping the stone for some guys that were working on a temple renovation. They asked us for the time, which was close to lunchtime, and they were able to take a break for lunch, at which time, it poured down rain.


So, Jer and I ran across the street from where they were moving the stone and got ourselves a beer, here, at the Putra Bar after all, it was happy hour and a beer was only $1.60 USD!


And another colorful contrast of floral offerings placed on top of a fierce looking carving.


We witnessed a petrol fill up in a small tucked away village near Ubud.


This is just a Bali scene, of peoole going about their day.


Bill caught this one, 3 generations all hanging out together, and happy to have their picture taken.


It is common for rice to be dried out along the roadsides as this is the hottest, driest place. Cars just swerved to avoid the rice.


Monkey Forest Road heading for the Monkey Forest.

© December 6, 2008