Bali, temples

update: Film at eleven shrunk uploaded.  Please excuse the video quality.

I think we are officially tourists now, doing the tourista things, with no other mission on our way through town.

We spent a day visiting the Pura Goa Lawah (Bat Cave Temple) and Gunung Kawi (Mt. Kawi), pictures for which you will find better ones on the web than ours.

Pura Goa Lawah is new to both of us, and with an ongoing ceremony to deify the soul of the deceased family member, en masse, the visit was very special.  Our guide tells us the temple was recently restored.  Saw-cuts can be seen in the large flat surfaces, and you can really see the Chinese influence in the style of the temple.

By the way, I make all these photos small or medium so the webpage will load faster, but you can click on them to see larger versions if you have a real interest. 

Gunung Kawi was of particular interest to me having visited 30 years ago, before any renovations had been done.  Now we have a concrete walkway across the river, whereas before we jump from stone to stone across the river.  And of course in the old days there was not so much selling to the tourists, just a few kids with hand carved ebony chop sticks.  Now it's gauntlet of stalls with goods from all over Indonesia, and some locally made.  Arriving upon these huge monuments after the long trek down the stone stairway makes the trek worth while.

cats, bats, and rats

There are quite a number of cats around here.  In most parts of Indonesia the cats are feral, with tails short, crooked, or looped.  Must be some kind of genetic thing.  Really, a "normal" cat tail is very rare here.  As for rats, I did see one, pretty big too, in Madiun ferrying edibles from a pile into it's hole.  And as for bats, the little guys are all over the place.  But, fruit bats, wild?  Our first one lives down the street at a local hotel, where they must be feeding him, cause he's not in a cage, and he just hangs out.

Before AC and hot water, Ida's

(for those who might be a bit Internet challenged, throughout this blog are links to related web sites with text that appears like this that will open a new window or tab in your browser.)


We've been in a lot of hotels but this is the most unique, Ida's (eeda's).

Most of the hotels, unless they are at least 3-star have something wrong: the hot water only works for 5 minutes, bathroom sink drain that leaks onto the floor, or some other little thing creating some minor discomfort.  Now you might see the sink drain leak as a problem, but when the floor is sloped toward another drain who cares?  The water all goes to the same place.  You got a problem with that?  These rooms all have a surprising lack of roaches, but they do have ants.  I have heard it said that ants are the cleaners, and they do do that, carrying out every little scrap they find.

So with all the experience of the various inconveniences we found this place that is really rustic and thought we'd give it a try.  Last night we were at the Kelapa Mas (Golden Coconut), very pretty garden, nice front porch, but the western toilet is mounted where the eastern one was and now where you expect your feet to be there's a 3 inch drop-off, which was great for the eastern toilet.  And the shower hose is too short to reach over to the bathtub.  "What?", you say.  Remember the drain in the floor thing?  Well most of these places were built before showers, bathtubs and western toilets came to Indonesia, so the shower head is on a hose attached to the old spout that used to fill a ceramic tile box.  You'd scoop water from the box and dump it on your head.  So, now we've got showers, and sometimes tubs, and most often they are not collocated.  In one place the tub actually, intentionally drained onto the floor.  Oh, and don't forget the moth balls.  Some places really like to use them, like stuck under the furniture all throughout the room.

Anyway, Ida's is right next door to Kelapa Mas ...
Kelapa Mas, our room was D9.

Ahhhh

looks nice, huh!

Ida's, our room is 5 (no loft, but high ceilings / roof (the roof is the ceiling)).

Oooo