Ubud, Bali

Eventually i managed to get myself out of Kuta and travelled inland to Ubud, this is the cultural centre of Bali.


Here you can wonder around the old palace. It is laid out more like a compound with open pavilions, one with a large bed in it, another with a throne. Everything is on one level (its not done for the princes to have common people walking above their heads), there are few decorations but the whole thing is still quite pretty and feels calm. Down the road from the palace area the Royal Temple (Pura Marajan Agung) is not open to the public but you can peer through the gates to have a look. Pura Taman Saraswati is the Water Palace, quite a large place with two pools filled with lotus flowers in front of the main temple area.

Public transport in Bali is a bit of a nightmare unless you are travelling out from the capital Depensar to another fair sized town. So to get to see some of the sights outside of Ubud a tour was needed.

Goa Gaja is the Elephant Temple (no elephants) It used to be a hanging temple which meant that it was literally hanging on the side of a steep hill. When the Volcano Batur erupted in 1962 it caused an earthquake which in turn started a mudslide and the temple (along with a Buddhist Temple) was washed down the hill. Lots of the smaller more ornate rubble has been collected and is on display.

There are two large pool here with water features involving ladies with urns. Splashing this water on your face aids fertility. Actually this whole temple is dedicated to fertility and lots of couples come here to pray and meditate. It has to be a joint effort, as making babies is a joint effort! There is a cave at this temple too with a huge carved image of Kata, he it there to ward off evil spirits and is always pictured with his hand ready to catch them! After another couple of temples we went to view Lake Batur at the base of Mount Batur. You can still see the lava paths down the sides of the volcano from when it last erupted.

The last place we took a look at was the rice terraces, these stick out the side of the hills like large ledges and they are constantly in use. There is some story of a farmer offering to sacrifice a pig at the end of the harvest if it was a good one. The harvest was good and he didn't have a pig to sacrifice so he planted some more rice meaning he hadn't yet finished with the harvesting!

Ubud is famous for its traditional dances, there are various performances every night. I went to see the Kacak Fire and Trance Dance Pura Batu Karu. It was brilliant. In the Kacak there are a hundred or more men sat round in a circle chanting, singing, swaying, in the middle of the circle, the stage, is an enormous candelabra which provides the only light. The costumes were amazing, the story told was part of the Hindu story Ramayana so we have demon kings and monkey gods and magic weapons!

The Sanghyang is a god-inspired trance dance that protects the society from evil. A man wearing a costume of a grass horse repeatedly dances through a bed of burning coconut shells with bare feet while the rest of the men chant.