On one of our days on Bali we visited a few of the tourist sites around the island. It was a busy day, but really good. Our first stop was to see a traditional Indonesian dance. The performance we saw was the Barong and Keris dance. Barong is a mythological lion-like creature, he is a good spirit. Barong has an enemy, Rangda, she is the demon queen. The performance features a battle between Barong and Rangda. The Keris dance is a popular scene where Rangda wreaks havoc with black magic, causing soldiers to commit suicide by stabbing themselves with their own kris'. Barong and the priest are able to cast a spell to protect the men.
It was a really fun show to watch. Little O felt that it was a little longer than necessary. He did enjoy playing the metallophone after the performance. (I think this is the correct name for the instrument.)
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| Barong |
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| Rangda |
After the dance performance we went to a few shops to see traditional Indonesian arts and crafts. These stops "conveniently" had large gift shops to purchase the craft you had just seen.
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| Ikat weaving |
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| Batik - Hand painted fabric using, wax for the outline and natural elements to dye. |
Our next stop was gross and tasty all at the same time. We got to taste some traditional teas and we had a cup of Kopi Luwak coffee. The teas were very nice and the view was enjoyable. Kopi Luwak coffee is coffee that has been partially digested and defecated by a civet (a cat-like animal). Yup, basically we drank a cup of poop coffee. It was just a very strong cup of coffee to me, but I am not a coffee connoisseur.
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| The coffee! |
We visited a few temples as well, Bali has a lot of temples! Unfortunately I do not remember the names of the temples, but here are a few pictures from what we saw.
Our last stop of the day was to the bat temple, I am not sure if that is the official name, but that is what I am calling it. The next picture is part of the bat temple
Now let's zoom in a little above that yellow umbrella to see what is really going on in that cave...yes those are bats and yes there are hundreds of them! Yuck!
While visiting Bali we also took a cooking class. It was really fun and the food was delicious! It was a little bit hard to do with Little O because he wanted to be involved. He did like to eat the 'fruits of our labor'! I was too busy cooking to take any pictures.
Overall we had an amazing trip to Bali. I hope that we are able to go back some day and explore a different part of this beautiful island.
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