Back in Bali and Family Visits

Back in Bali, did our best to settle in quickly (more on that in future posts). The kids started school on August 5 and before we knew it we had visitors from South America - Soledad’s mom and our nephew Gonzalito. We picked them up at the airport at midnight. Because we would have to be near home during the school week, we left the next day for a weekend excursion. I felt a little bad for Lita and Gonzalito for going straight into more travel after their long trip from Argentina, but at least this would be riding in a car.

We picked up sarongs for each of us to wear in the temples (required uniform in Bali). Then we boarded the 3 row Daihatsu Xenia SUV I had rented via for $10 per day from a contact of a jiu jitsu friend. Driving was tough though. The roads in Bali are very narrow, cars drive on the left, the steering wheel is on the right, and the manual transmission in the middle, which means you’re changing gears with your left hand. This made my inaugural “drive a car in Bali” experience a bit stressful. On the way up to Ubud, Gonzalito rode shotgun on the left side and for the first hour or so would routinely count out how many centimeters away from the edge of the passenger side mirror was from a wall, parked car or other item and the same for left tires from the edge of the road.

As we hadn’t been in Bali long, we were exploring new areas at the same time as Lita and Gonzalito. We first headed up to Ubud, which is touted as the cultural spirit of Bali. We stopped by a cool monkey temple before arriving in Ubud.

But then the reality of peak season Ubud set in. One hour in a car to move 4 blocks. Ugh… this is Bali?

We stayed the night in a basic, but cool Balinese style guesthouse. 

The next morning we woke up to check out a few of Ubud’s famous temples. We found the first, Pura Dalem Ubud, was closed and the second, Saraswati, was partially closed due to a ceremony. We then took the sidewalk down a couple blocks to the Ubud Palace dodging taxistas and other people along the way. The palace looked like a temple and was interesting. However, there were tons of people there which took away from the mystical feeling. In the end, we found the town made famous by Eat, Pray, Love to be a mess. It lined with all sorts of tourist oriented yoga clothes boutiques, overpriced custom jewelry shops, “clean eats” joints, and annoying things like that. All were set on roads with tiny sidewalks interrupted by parked scooters, chairs and other things that forced you to spill out into the narrow, car and motor scooter crowded streets to walk. We got out of Ubud as fast as we could.

Just outside of Ubud we had lunch at a very cool hotel made of bamboo,the Bambu Indah Resort, where a fellow Santiagueñon (the name of the people from Soledad’s hometown Santiago Del Estero) worked. Now this is what I had thought that the mythical Ubud was supposed to be like. It was breathtaking.

I’d booked Saturday night at a middle of nowhere guesthouse in Tampaksiring, northeast of Ubud. On the way there we stopped for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the famous Tegalalang Rice Terrace. Parking was rough, the food was… not so great. And the rice terrace looked like someone was trying to build a tiny Disneyland with adult swings and people charging fees to walk through the rice terrace paths. We left.

We continued to the Tangkas House, our guesthouse in Tampaksiring. It was on a beautiful, culturally authentic looking Balinese street where houses looked like temples. The owner had built a beautiful temple inside his family’s compound. We rented 3 rooms in the back for the 6 of us.

Down the street rice sat rice terraces with huge plots at various stages of growth. We hiked for about 20 minutes until we reached a river where local boys were swimming in their birthday suits. Soledad turned back. Gonzalito, Vicente, and I continued forward. On our hands, knees, feet, and butts, we lowered ourselves down the path till arriving at the river. It was like a scene out of National Geographic. Water running through a small canyon, a water temple on the far side, and a statue of Shiva in the river to bless the ashes of the bodies that were and would be cremated and delivered back to the earth here. We all jumped in. The water was refreshing in the heat.

We checked out one more “famous” temple in the area, Pura Tirta Empul, known for its healing waters. It was a zoo. There was a 45 minute snaking line of people already standing in the water to take turns at showering in the springs.

We quickly learned a guiding truth of Bali (at least in my mind). The further you get from the trodden path and away from anything in a guidebook or anyone’s “Top 10 list of best ABC in Bali” the better Bali was. There are many nice places to visit in Bali. You just need to go where others do not. 

 

Back at our house in Sanur, Gonzalito and I drove over to the other side of Denpasar (Sanur is like an adjacent beach town) to Kuta to try our hand at surfing. For $3 we rented a surfboard for an hour. Milagro left town on a 3 day camping trip with her school, and Soledad spent some mother daughter time with Lita. 

 

While Milagro was out, the rest of us went to the coastal cliff Uluwatu Temple for the Kecak Fire Dance. It was only 18 miles away but took more than an hour to travel each way. Fortunately we were in a GoJek (Balis’ version of Lyft) so someone else was doing the driving.

Come Friday, Milagro had returned from her camping trip. We picked her up from the bus in the re-rented three row Daihatsu. Milagro had a mini-meltdown when she learned she was going straight from her school camping trip to a family road trip. I felt bad and it hadn’t even crossed my mind that Milagro might not want to go. She had just finished a camping trip with a menu filled with local Balinese and vegetarian food and was a bit shell shocked by that, as well as the outdoor showers. Like a trooper though, Milagro boarded the Xenia and we were off. We drove to North Bali to see the lakeside Ulun Danu Bratan temple and the infamous Ghost Palace Hotel.

We stayed at an AirBnB house in the area that had early morning views of Mount Agung, the volcano that had exploded lava earlier this year and diverted flights for a week. However, after 7:30am the skies would routinely cloud up and Agung would be gone. The property had a tiny area where we tried to kick the ball around with Vicente that overlooked a rice terrace.

I’d learned about the Ghost Palace Hotel, formally known as PI Bedugul Taman Rekreasi Hotel and Resort, from Reddit a while back. The hotel was originally built in the 1990s reportedly by Tommy Suharto, the youngest son of former President Suharto. Tommy was sent to prison in 2002 for ordering the assassination of one of Indonesia’s Supreme Court judges who had previously found Tommmy guilty of corruption charges. Tommy went to jail and the hotel was abandoned. Now there is a guard there that charges you whatever he wants to let you go inside and look around. Check out the photos to see what happens when a place like this is neglected for years.

Some of Bali’s temples belong to a “water system”. In this system, downstream areas, with their own water temples, are subservient to their upstream counterparts. Pura Ulun Danu Beratan, often abbreviated to Pura (Temple) Bratan, is one of Bali’s major water temples. It sits on Lake Bratan which is a primary source of irrigation to central Bali. Built in 1633, the temple has a 11-storey meru tower. It’s cool to look at and has some surrounding grounds you can walk around.

After the weekend, we drove back to Sanur. The next week was much more relaxing. Gonzalito booked 2 nights at a hostel in Kuta (the off the wall, young backpacker and Aussie drunk epicenter of Bali) and bought a laptop via Facebook marketplace. Soledad spent some mother daughter time with Lita, and I got to train some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. 

And... I turned 46!

Sunday September 8 came too fast, but it was time for the Argentine travelers to return home. We were sad to see them go.