I lost a whole day.. Boarded the plane late Friday night and landed in Hong Kong at 5am on Sunday.. weird! I'm not gonna complain about the flight because it goes without saying that 20hrs on a plane is grueling, but its worth it when you land on a beautiful island halfway around the world!
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| ~Views~ from the Hong Kong airport |
My first stop is Ubud, a city right smack in the middle of the island. No surf here, but lots of other fun activities to keep me occupied! I started off my first morning here by visiting a temple in downtown Ubud. While the prominent religion in Indonesia is Islam, here in Bali most people practice Hinduism. While the island is divided by three religions (Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), everyone coexists wonderfully and the Muslims and Christians even celebrate the national Hindu holidays, like the Balinese New Year! This day is referred to as Nyepi, or "day of silence", where people are meant to reflect on the past year by- get this- not talking, eating, drinking, watching tv, using electricity, or even leaving the house! There are actually local police that will fine you if you are out and about on this day. Fun fact- the Balinese calender is longer than ours, so they are currently in the year 1939!
The Balinese live in gated compounds consisting of temples, rice storage, bathrooms, living quarters, and more. This may seem excessive for one family but in Bali families live together until they die. That means that Grandparents, parents, brothers, and wives all live in the same house- imagine that!
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| Market in Ubud |
The monkey forest may have been the highlight of my trip life. Others may beg to differ (@Marissa Weinstein). I'm going to attach a bunch of pictures of really cute monkeys below because you deserve to see them!
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| Ask me how happy I am |
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| I could die |
At night I went to watch a Kecak dance, which is a traditional Balinese style of dance. This type of dance tells a story, in this case a very elaborate story of a woman who fought off deer, dragons, and monkeys in order to end up with her true love. Tbh I'm not really sure if they ended up together or not, it was very hard to follow.
The next day I went to a Batik painting class, which was crazy interesting. How it works is you draw a design on a cloth with a pencil and then go over it with a hot wax. You then use a kind of water-based paint to paint the cloth, and the wax keeps the color contained. The cloth is then washed and treated and the wax washes away and leaves a really pretty white outline!
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| Yes this looks better than mine. But also I painted the blue background, so I take some of the credit! |
I spent the rest of the day walking around Ubud with my friend Caro, who luckily shares my love of gluten free & vegan food- which there is a ton of in Bali! We got a three course meal for- get this- $10 USD. That's cheaper than a sweetgreen salad. When walking around, you can't help but notice flowers all over the sidewalk, which as it turns out are a daily ceremony and offering to their god.
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| I spend 95% of my time walking worried that I'm going to step on one of these. |
Stay tuned for more temples, rice paddies, yoga, and surfing!