Bali - So What's the Hype About?

 January 29

It would have been nice to keep the blog up to date, but the Internet service wasn't always available or able to upload photos on the ship or even in a couple of the ports.

We arrived in the port of Benoa around noon. This is not the large commercial port for the island, but a smaller area where we found another cruise ship, one of the much smaller Ponant vessels, and some navy ships. It is much closer to 'downtown' Denpasar so this is the 'cruise port' for the island of Bali.

There were so many small private craft of all kinds, including boats towing parasails, that we wondered how the pilot and captain were able to get the ship through and to her berth. We were in the Observation Lounge, which is above the Bridge, and I was sure a couple of these boats crossed right in front of the ship so close that we couldn't see them except through the side windows.

Our afternoon tour was fairly long, so we were off the ship and on our bus fairly soon after the clearance announcement.

Indonesia is made up of a total of over 17,000 islands, most of which are not inhabited. The total population of the country is about 280 million, with about half living on Java, where capital city Jakarta is located, and the bulk of the rest on the islands of Bali, Sumatra and Sulawesi. We will be visiting Surabaya on the eastern side of Java as our next port of call.

One thing our tour guide kept repeating was that the various religions present in Indonesia - Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist - all accept each other and live harmoniously together. This is by no means an equal proportion for each; 87% of the country is Muslim and 10% Christian, with Buddhists and Hindi (2%) only predominant in small areas. Much of the population of Bali is in fact Hindu, which makes the Balinese 'urbanscape' unique in the country.

In the Hindu religion there are temples for every level of community from individual family to extended family, village, municipality, districts, regencies and cities, and provinces. And then there are royal temples. Denpasar is the largest, and capital, city of Bali with a population of 670,000, so you can imagine the number of temples we must have seen during our drive.

Many different gods are represented in this religion, so statues play an important role in the temples. And because there are so many temples, people who manufacture these statues do a booming business. We passed a few of these 'statue shops' in our travels.

I really like the 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil,
Speak No Evil' set here

As you can see from the raindrops on the window, we drove through a fairly heavy rain shower on our drive. We were crossing our fingers that it wouldn't rain while we were off the bus at the temples.

This could be an extended family temple given its
size. They are always surrounded by high walls, but
many house temples are in courtyards behind the home.

Another temple, and below, the entrance
to the temple down a side street

Another temple entrance

Our first stop on the tour was at a batik factory where we learned about the process of making some absolutely gorgeous batik fabrics.

Our tour guide explaining the process, with
framed patterns behind him

Close-up of one of the patterned fabrics

I think these might have been wax application
'tiles' before being mounted here. They are
quite intricate

The process is quite interesting and uses a wax overlay. Only the colour that is being applied at any one time is left uncovered by wax. Once the dye has dried, the fabric is washed in hot water to remove the wax. Then the process is repeated for the next colour, and the next, until the fabric is finished.

Of course there is a store where one can purchase shawls, lengths of fabric, clothing and even the most gorgeous artworks. I bought a shawl, 1 x 2 metres in size, in this pattern:

You can see how those 'tiles' might be used
to apply the patterns for the various colours 

After this stop, our next goal was the Royal Family Temple of Mengwi, Pura Taman Ayun. This temple dates back to 1634 when it was the primary temple for the kingdom of the time. It is now recognized by UNESCO as a cultural heritage site.

The temple name means 'Beautiful Garden' and it is situated within a lovely garden with a tiered aspect. As you rise toward the temple itself you are moving closer to the gods. The actual temple is behind the huge gate and is only accessible by certain people when opened. The moat around the temple creates an 'island' on which there are at least 12 multi-roofed shrines and other structures. The moat itself contains numerous lotus plants, some of which were in flower during our visit.

One of the statues at the entrance

The moat around the lowest level, with a tower
at the middle level in the background.

The gate to the Royal Temple. Our tour guide
loved to take multiple photos of everyone!

We are not allowed on to the island where the
temples are located as that is sacred ground, but
there is a walkway around the outer wall of the moat

Some of the temples on the island

One of the lotus blooms

This was a beautiful place to visit. After gazing our fill at the sculptures and shrines at Pura Taman Ayun, we boarded the bus again and headed toward the sea, and the Pura (temple) of Tanah Lot.

Everyone knows that Asian and Indonesian people eat a lot of rice and that it is grown extensively throughout the whole area. We were sort of in the country as we traveled to Tanah Lot, so we passed by a number of rice fields on our way.

The temples are so ubiquitous that they even have a significant presence in workplaces - and that includes rice paddies. Every workplace has a temple dedicated to the appropriate gods; this is in addition to all of those community-related temples I described earlier. They aren't large or elaborate, but statues to whichever gods are closest to the enterprise's product or service are there.

Our guide explained that originally rice was a crop that took 6 months to mature, and with the dry versus wet seasons, could only yield one crop per year. During the 1900s strains of rice were developed that would only take 3 months to mature, and even allowing for dry season and leaving a field fallow for a time, would allow 2 crops per year.

You can see the temple for this rice field to the left
of the buildings on the right side

A newly planted field

The closest we got to seeing terraced rice fields

We arrived at Tanah Lot and it wasn't raining, although it was so humid and overcast that we were all concerned that we might get a downpour at any time. Our guide had passed around plastic rain ponchos to everyone just in case. Our agenda here was to walk down to the temple and then go to an adjacent restaurant for a small sampling of local Balinese cuisine and a drink before heading back to the ship.

The temple area was quite crowded, and our time was limited. We had just long enough to walk down to the temples and take a few photos before our guides rounded the groups up and led us to the restaurant.

Pura Batu Bulong, a secondary temple
near Tanah Lot

Another view of the temple

Tanah Lot is one of a chain of sea temples that surround and protect the island. It purportedly dates back to the 16th Century, when it was built by a religious figure on his way around the island. Venomous sea snakes are believed to protect the island from intruders and evil spirits. You can only reach it on foot at low tide, which fortunately is when we were there. The photos at high tide are probably also quite spectacular.

Everyday folks and tourists aren't allowed
on the temple, so these must be local
religious preparing for a ceremony of some kind

Our meal at the restaurant, which I forgot to photograph because one of the items spurted all over my shirt, consisted of some vegetable spring rolls, banana fritters and a dessert called Klepon. It is a small  dumpling made from a dough of rice flour with something to make it green and a filling of brown sugar syrup. It was the syrup from one of these that spurted out when I made the mistake of trying to poke it with my fork. Everyone else benefitted from my mistake as our guide made sure to tell them that you need to eat them in one bite. All of the food was delicious, and I was able to clean my shirt once we got back to the ship.

We had an overnight in Bali, but we weren't adventurous enough to want to go back into Denpasar in the evening. The weather didn't look so great, anyway. When we awoke in the morning, we looked out our window and saw - nothing! It was raining and so heavily fogged in that we couldn't see the breakwater peninsula 100 metres away. This was around 8 a.m. and there were tours that had gone out at 6:30 because we were scheduled to leave at 1 p.m.

It did eventually stop raining and clear up. We had the same parade of pleasure boats on the way out, but I could get photos of some of the water sports as we sailed out.

Parasailing. These drivers have no fear of
bringing their chutes close to the ship. This was taken from a side
window at the Observation Lounge.

This fellow is on a Water Jet. He's obviously a pro - I 
saw someone else in another spot who kept
keeling over

Boats around the beach beside the 
channel into Benoa. The yellow thing in the middle of
the photo is an airborne inflatable raft with someone
hanging on, presumably for dear life!

We had always thought of Bali as a very exotic destination. I guess if we went to a beach resort for a week and toured from there it would be more like that, but just seeing the big city of Denpasar and the countryside around it for an afternoon was more like going to any Caribbean island but with more exotic buildings.

Next up, Surabaya on the island of Java. As most of the residents of this island are Muslim, everything will look a little different.