CSC Indonesia 4

Our first day in Ubud, we kept it relaxed! After breakfast one of the drivers of our hotel brought us to Ubud palace, in the city center.

The palace grounds are closed for public, but the courtyard in front of the palace can still be visited.

The door to the palace grounds was open for a moment. Another statue greets you at the entrance.

The day after Galungan, the barong dances begin. Everywhere in Ubud we saw children performing parts of the barong dance and music.

After lunch we walked to the Monkey Forest where you can see .....

The monkeys are fed with banana's which you can buy at the entrance. The monkeys are quite bold and pick the food out of you bags, so you need to be careful.

The little baby is only two days old.

The monkeys are close with the guards. They feed them with special cookies. One of the monkeys sits just like we do!

The monkeys live in a forest near to Ubud and feels quite tropical. Even here you find temples as everywhere at Bali.

For dinner we went to Bebek Bengil, Dirty Duck, where they normally should serve crispy duck, but they were sold out due to the holidays. We will try the crispy duck another day.

Our first day in Bali is a very special day. Today they celebrate Galungan, the festival to honor the creation of the Universe. The festival is linked to Nyepi, which was celebrated two weeks ago. There is a third festival linked, which is Kuningan, celebrated this year on April 6th. We will miss that one. But we enjoyed the one today very much.

The whole island is full with decorated bambu poles, called Penjors!

All temples on Bali, more than thousand are decorated with yellow cloths.

The ceremonies last around 10 minutes each

and lots of people come to offer. They take their own offers with them!

The women & girls wear sarong & kebaya.

The men and boys wear a double sarong and a little headgear, called udeng!

Nice to see that the children are involved early in the ceremonies.

En route we saw regularly these creatures, a symbol of divinity.

The ladies carry the offers on their head. Even the cars are decorated!

All day long we see those!

Sometimes it looks like a game, some streets are more & nicer decorated than others.

On our way to Batukaru we passed the Jatiluwih rice terraces, Unesco world heritage site since last year!

Beautiful views, difficult to catch in a picture!

This man lives opposite the rice fields, although modest housing, the views are faboulus.

The restaurant where we had lunch had a nice flower garden, looking over the rice fields.

And then finally we reached Batukaru!
As result of the Galungan the parking lot is full with cars and we have to walk the last one km uphill to the entrance of the temple.
They sell corn and other tasty things. A family is really enjoying the corn.