By James

Since my sister was caught up in the IT chaos that affected British Airways back in May, we set off for the lowland town of Ubud without her. Ubud used to be a peaceful, calm little town where locals lived side by side with small yoga studios, and was a central location in the book (and film), ‘Eat. Pray. Love.’ Unfortunately, this love letter to the town has partly been responsible for the change that has taken place over the last few years. We got our first indication of this when it took our taxi 45 minutes to drive 3 miles- the infrastructure just isn’t set up for the massive increase in traffic it has experienced. In the Town Centre boutique hotels jostled for space with shops catering to the yogi, Yummy Mummy type (think £50 yoga leggings and £100+ silver hippy jewellery) and expensive foreign restaurants.

 

We met Rosanna at our hotel the first evening we arrived, as she had fortunately managed to get on a flight less than 24 hours after her original flight time. We went out to an East Javanese style restaurant with £1-1.50 mains dishes; they were so delicious and such good value that we ended up returning there 5 times!

On the first day of our week we had together we travelled North West to a small Sacred Monkey Sanctuary. Virtually abandoned, we wandered around undisturbed by any other visitors, yet periodically assaulted by monkeys.

 

After Chloe and Rosanna had both been jumped on by hissing primates (I had the forethought to pick up a stick, so was left alone), we left the monkeys and clambered down to a small sacred spring by a river.

 

 

 

 

 

That evening we hopped on our scooters to go to a traditional Balinese puppet show. We had just enough time to get a relaxed dinner before the show. This was not a good time for my scooter to conk out due to lack of petrol! I left the ladies where they were and frantically rode around the streets looking for the little shops that sold petrol by the litre out of glass bottles. During the day they were everywhere- at night this was not the case. I gave up and got back just in time to wolf down some fried rice and do some quick shuttle runs with the remaining bike.

The puppet show itself was out the back of a small mask and puppet gallery at the edge of the touristy part of town. We were led in the dark down a path to a small auditorium with a backlit screen. Whilst we waited for the show to start (things never start in Indonesia due to a phenomenon called ‘Rubber Time’) we read a synopsis of the story we were about to watch. It told of a marauding demon king who invaded one of the Balinese kingdoms of antiquity and started eating people! Word spreads around the island of this terrible scourge until it comes to the ears of a young prince. Even though his mother begs him not to, he sets off on a bloody quest to kill his way up the ranks, all the way to the demon king; whereupon they have a big battle and the prince wins. This was all to be performed by a single Puppet Master, assisted by his two, well, assistants, on a screen lit by a flickering torch. What we did not realise is that, despite the abundance of tourists, the performance was to be in Balinese and performed at a hell of a pace.

Even with a broadind and this synopsis, the story was next to impossible to follow. This, combined with the discordant, syncopated Gamelan music, meant it was like watching a Jim Henson fever dream.

We left via the gallery and went home confused, but very much entertained. Rosanna and I took the first shuttle run back and managed to find a petrol pump that was about to close. Since the other bike was at least a 20-minute walk away and the guy didn’t have any bottles, we (rather foolishly) accepted his suggestion of using a sandwich bag to take our litre of petrol away with us. We sped back to the bike with the petrol leaking out of the bag and managed to get about 1/2 of it in the bike and 1/2 of it in my hands and road. It was enough, however, to get it home.

The following day, our last in Ubud, we visited Pura Tirta Empul, the Holy Water Temple. I was the only one who wanted to go in to bathe in the sacred water, so Chloe and Rosanna watched from the side.

Bali’s holiest spring pours forth to the faithful from 12 stone spouts. After an offering to the Gods and a quick meditation, and dressed in a rather fetching green sarong, I got into the stone pool along with the other visitors and was startled to find fish swimming around my thighs!

The first pool, the Purification Pool, is for the washing away of sins. One splashes one’s head three times, then takes a drink of the spring water and then submerges one’s head in the flow, washing away a different sin as one moves from spout to spout.

The second pool only has two functioning spouts (the rest are for festival days only) and are to wash away broken promises and evil thoughts. Although I am not religiously inclined, Hindu or otherwise, I found the constructive introspection it provided really very restorative and I made a few promises to myself to amend my behaviour, which I have mostly managed to keep. (And no, you can’t know what they are!)

The next day we said goodbye to Ubud and headed East to the coastal fishing village of Amed, where we stayed in a rather lovely villa for Rosanna’s 24th birthday.

Unfortunately, as Rosanna got very burnt out on the roof terrace on the first day, we did not do much there. The day before her birthday we covered up and we went to visit a Japanese 2nd World War shipwreck down the coast. Little is known about the circumstances of the sinking, which only added to the eeriness.

That evening we visited a lovely restaurant called Bali Sweet, which became the only place we had dinner in Amed, both with Rosanna and two weeks later with Grace and Ryan.

On Rosanna’s birthday we woke her up with a bright balloon shower and a cooked breakfast. Due to her burns we did little during the day other than hang out, read and swim in the pool.

At dinner back at Bali Sweet the lovely owner came in with a chocolate pancake with Happy Birthday written on it, a 2 and a 4 in candle form stuck in the centre, with the whole staff singing happy birthday.

Rosanna was so touched she even let out a few happy tears. It wasn’t long before we had to leave Amed and head back South to drop Rosanna off for her 2 weeks of sun and fun in Kuta, and to pick up Grace and Ryan. Which is where we shall pick things up in the next post.

Love, The Backpack Duo x