indo adventure - day 4: Ubud and beyond
good morning, ubud
Woke up to this view of a rice paddy and mountains:
Then had a delicious breakfast
Tegallalang Rice Terrace
Rana, the man who picked me up at the airport, was my guide today! First up: an unannounced and decently strenuous hike through the Tegallalang rice terrace.
Hiked down, up, back down and back up. Greenest of greens. Utilize traditional subak irrigation system.
Rice!
A cool bug.
New friends.
A view from the top.
Ada Guna Museum
This was mainly a museum of grandiose wood carvings, and they were very impressive.
These hand-chairs were my favorite:
And Rana insisted I get my photo here:
Ulu Petanu Waterfall
Gunung Kawi
11th century shrines carved directly into cliff faces.
Prior to embarking into this area, Rana told me I had to get "dressed", which involved pulling on a long polyester skirt over my pants, a white polyester blouse that covered my shoulders, and a green sash around my waist. I was roasting. I felt like one of those wrestlers in high school I’d seen running around in garbage bags in an attempt to lose water weight before a match, except with the humidity here, there is no hope for water evaporation. It just runs. I felt highly flammable, but with all the sweat, perhaps not.
It was an incredible place to see nonetheless.
And for the visual assist to my garb description:
Tirta Empul
This is a sacred water temple and active Hindu purification site and I did not feel great about being here. There were a lot of people, majority, if not all tourists, unlikely to be Hindu, crowding into the waters to take part in a Hindu tradition. It struck me as colonialist -- as if it wasn't over, just the terms renegotiated. There appears to be a commercialization of sacred Hindu spaces, with non-Indonesians flooding ceremonies that Balinese people can barely attend in their own holy places -- colonialism with a wellness rebrand.
I also noticed Rana has a tendency to giggle/laugh when things are not funny, perhaps just a coping mechanism, or perhaps his sense of humor is just dark. There were some tourists behaving disrespectfully in the space, to which he released a high-pitched giggle and requested we have a selfie:
Oka coffee plantation
This place was really neat. Rita greeted me when I arrived and walked me through the fauna. Did you know vanilla is an orchid?! And the only orchid with a fruit!
Arabica coffee beans can be seen in the tiny berry-like fruits pictured here:
And Kopi luwak is a coffee that is digested by, fermented within, and then excreted by the Asian palm civet—popularly called a luwak (sort of looks like a raccoon-ferret). It is the most expensive coffee in the world. They feed the luwak, so that keeps them coming back, and enables them to harvest the ...feces-coffee.
They then wash the beans thoroughly, and remove the outer casing that remains on the beans. They then begin the roasting process.
Then came the flight of coffees and teas and yes, I tried the Kopi luwak, it was delicious.
Goa Gajah
Rana drove a bit faster than normal to get here, and when we arrived he jumped out of the car and said "I have to go to the restroom! I am diarrhea-tic!" then released a loud giggle and ran away. This explained the driving.
Goa Gajah is a 9th-century cave temple entered through a carved demonic mouth:
Wood carving
This afternoon, I had a wood carving class at ARMA Museum with Baja on the steps of a lovely museum building. He had about 6 small stumps with sketches drawn on and their accompanying "final product" to get a clear sense of what I'd be working towards. I chose the owl, the animal I thought most befit its' stumpy surroundings.
This carving is from Jempinis wood (a local wood) with ebony pupils tapped into place and whittled down into their proper pupil placement (said 5 times fast) and reinforced with ever-handy superglue. And what would a woodcarving class be without cutting yourself 3 minutes in after the instructor, Baja, has repeated "be careful" a mere 7000 times? His tools, made of steel, are very very sharp.
It felt as innocuous as a razor nick, however, a nick on the knee, especially whilst bent produces a lot of blood. I sat and continued to carve the assigned task at hand while the very relaxed Baja's eyes suddenly became large and seemingly out of nowhere, he swivelled a fanny pack first aid kit out and produced a bandaid and attempted to put it on my knee and stop the bleeding. It did not. I went to fix it then realized all my fingers were now covered in blood and it seemed the tiny nick was rather productive in the bleeding department. Baja, who did not have a tissue or gauze, attempted to mop up the stream of blood using the gauze-part of the now-ruined bandaid while I used freshly-produced and rather rough-hewn wood chips to wipe the blood off my hands and attempt to be useful in mending my own self-inflicted wounds. We got there eventually. And while playing it cool, inside I couldn't contain the litany of potential sanitization issues I'd just brought on myself and hoped that Baja kept his tools clean, or at least restricted to wood carving only.
While working on the owl, the skies opened up and unleashed a proper downpour. The ducks rejoiced. The roosters voiced complaints. It was quite a nice ambiance, and I didn't mind the temperature-lowering effects.
Started here
Working on it...
Getting there….
A little help…ok a lot of help
And voila!
And once I get home and can treat it, it will look a bit more like the goal:
FOOD
For my second meal of the day, at last, I decided to try beef rendang with red rice and steamed vegetables
Very tasty.