Culture & Crap Coffee

So enough of lounging on beaches, it was time for us to actually get a bit of local culture and see what Bali was about. Seeing as we only had a couple of days, we didn’t manage to really get off the beaten track and instead headed to Ubud, that place made famous by the film “Eat, Pray, Love” starring she of the braying laugh and flapping nostrils, Julia Roberts. That one was for you Dad.

Of course we did what any good culture vultures would do when arriving at a place of such history, we headed to a darkened bar to watch the All Blacks vs France 🙂

Ubud was quite an assault on the senses after the quiet of the previous few days in Lombok and Gili T. There were other tourists everywhere, traffic snarled the roads, “Taxi, Taxi” was shouted at us at every other step, ticket sellers pressed leaflets into our hands, and there were shops, shops and more shops. Fortunately there were also ancient temples, luscious green rice paddies and stunning gorge views to be discovered. And of course there were a couple of lovely hotels that Clive had organised which were just the place to retreat to after a sweaty day of sightseeing. I liked the feel of Ubud, even though it’s the most touristy place that we’ve visited so far. Somehow the multiple outposts of Paul Smith shops and the like are balanced out by the more authentic Indonesian chaos that surrounds them and keeps Ubud just this side of cheesy.

One of the afternoons we decided to borrow some bikes from our hotel so that we could explore the surrounding area. I was imagining that we’d be given worthy steeds based on the type of hotel we were staying at, but no, I had to perch my unpadded buttocks on a rusting hard tail with a saddle I think a couple of the local dogs had fought over and attempt to slow any descent using V brakes! V brakes I say! The horror! Still, it allowed us to get up into the rice paddies outside the town, which were just stunning (pics below).

We also got out to see some of the local temples with a guide for day which was fascinating, though I have to confess we did get a little “temple apathy” after a while as they are all built on more or less the same layout so look increasingly familiar. We remarked to our guide that there were a lot of statues in the private gardens of houses but were told that these are actually family temples and pretty much every house has their own temple no matter how humble the dwelling which is remarkable when you consider how poor some of the people are. All the pavements were also always covered in small offerings of flowers and sweets in hand woven baskets with incence burning that families will spend up to a third of their income on along with other religious donations – another indication of how important religion is to the population that is 90% Hindu.

Our final stop on our day with the guide was to a local coffee plantation where we tried a number of local teas and coffees including one that is made from coffee beans that have been eaten by a Civet, an animal that looks a bit like a cat, digested, then, yep you guessed it, harvested from its poo. Mmmmmmmm delicious! I can report that it was very smooth 🙂 and if you don’t believe me, check out this link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak.