After Gili we headed to the cultural capital of Bali, Ubud, where we did some suitably cultural things. On our first night we went to see some traditional Balinese dancing which consisted of about 15 men on xylophones accompanying women wrapped in tightly fitting fabric and seemingly trying to escape their behinds while waving their arms and looking rather alarmed:
There was something quite entrancing about the show though, from the eerie, repetitive music to the bright costumes and wild expressions... My highlight was definitely this thing though:
That, apparently, is Barong - a mythical beast representative of good... After he faffs around with a man in a gorilla suit for awhile some men come on stage and stab themselves... It's all quite bizarre and I've been having nightmares ever since!
The next day we took a cycling tour from the top of one of the volcanoes...
Sadly the weather was terrible so the view from the top looked something like this:
Which is a shame as apparently it's beautiful at the top... On the way down we were shown around a typical Balinese house. These typically have a kitchen, 3 living spaces for 3 generations of the family (the youngest inherits the house and the responsibility of care for his elders - girls move in with their husbands family) and a family temple. The house we visited had a farm behind it which was great for cooing at pigs but apparently no gauge for the wealth of the family. If you want to keep up with the Joneses out here the key is to check out the fanciness of their temple - gold decorations and intricate carvings are indicators of a wealthy family.
Normal temple:
Fancy temple:
There was a religious festival on whilst we were there and the household had prepared a religious 'offering' which apparently gets eaten at the end of the day... Cake with fruit, flowers and a chicken anyone? Make of it what you will...
Finally we took a silver making 'class' where we got given 5g of silver to play with and turned a plain slab of metal into slightly twisted slabs of metal that we could hang off our ears and our fingers.
OK - so it may not be the most beautiful jewellery you've ever seen but it's definitely one of a kind and it was good fun too!
After Ubud we headed back to the beach on the island of Lembongan where I got to scuba dive with manta rays which really was as awesome as it sounds! We also met some Californians who kindly shared their freshly caught fish with us before heading to the worst bar in Asia to listen to a guy shred his guitar to a pre-recorded backing track... Standard Indonesian night out methinks!
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