BALIBALIBALI
(View towards a temple frontage in Ubud: Bali, Indonesia)
Yesterday at 5:30am, we awoke in Singapore (a mere thirty six hours after my arrival in Asia) and embarked on another flight. I have spent almost as long in transit since leaving Glasgow as I have actually in one place. Ying and I sped to Bali island in Indonesia. The flight was a couple of hours and after arrival, the hotel driver ferried us from the airport to our hotel in the town of Ubud. My first impressions were so different from those of China or Singapore; this country is entirely different from either, though it isn’t particularly far.
The road we travelled yesterday was teeming with traffic, but there were as many speeding motorbikes and mopeds as cars, weaving in and out of the other vehicles. The road began as a large, organised thoroughfare at embarkation and became increasingly narrower and more rural as we continued. The people also change from exclusively Indonesian to a more abundant spread of paler visitors – sometimes I am actually embarrassed of my colour when I see how many tourists behave. I spent the entire hour’s drive ogling the sights outside the window. Ying managed about twenty minutes before the heat and the early rise sent him to sleep. The road was lined with all manner of shops selling an exuberant variety of goods, mostly handicrafts; woven baskets, bricks, stone statues, wood carvings, jewellery, handmade clothing, fabric, furniture, food and countless other items. The roadside cafes are reminiscent of the type that Pete and I visited a year and a half ago in and around Chiang Mai in Thailand; small, sparse affairs serving amazing home cooked fare. As we approached Ubud, the vistas opened up to reveal rice paddies on either side, forests of palms and banana trees and verdant wetlands. I was enchanted with Bali before we even reached our destination, it is actually magical.
Soon after we arrived at the sumptuous hotel (pictures will follow) we washed the sticky journey away in the shower and made a move to make lunch related explorations. This view is adjacent to the ‘lotus café’, apparently a well-known eatery in the area, given its name because of the pools of lotus blooms that form its centre. This photograph is taken with the lotuses behind me, looking on towards a small temple to the left of the scene – the red and grey brick is a feature of Balinese architecture – I’m not an expert, but I gathered this much on my own as it is everywhere! I chose this image today to give a general impression of Bali; the arresting greenness of it, the palms, the pools, the almost Incan appearance of the stepped temple and the mystique that the mosses and blinding sunlight lend to every statue. It is as if these things have always been here and we have only just discovered their existence.
Mosquito bite tally: 1 (right instep – why do they always get me there?)
– Today Rosie and Ying are visiting a temple in Ubud, Bali –
