Bali - Beyond Ubud

By Rough Guy’d

The tour via motorbike took me to four different temples and an amazing gorge. While I possibly could have navigated this myself, with a lack of any real street signs or maps, I probably would have got lost quickly. There weren’t even signs to go back to the town or lights out in the countryside so could get quite dangerous.

Now Bali is unique among Indonesia for being predominately Hindi rather than Muslim and the temples that I was shown helped emphasise they were all Hindi with a small nod to Buddhism and Muslim outside the main complexes. Now, considering how hot it was every day, I was walking around in a t-shirt and shorts, my usual attire for most of the trip. However, this was not allowed in the temple complexes and as a result, you had to wear a sarong to cover your legs.

Now when I think of a sarong, I imagine a girl in a bikini with a thin, slightly transparent piece of silk wrapped around her legs, off to the beach. The idea that I had to wear a sarong as well, made me do a double-take but I quickly realised that sarongs were different for men and women and that in Bali at least, a sarong was a normal piece of attire.

While the first temple lent me a sarong, it was in a rather plain shade of crimson that wouldn’t have turned any heads while I was there but made the most shocking holiday pics I could think of. So by the second temple, I went to one of the many hawkers just outside the temple and bought myself my own sarong. It was a beautifully-made piece of art with gold-coloured embroidery depicting elephants. I ended up using this as a sheet for sleeping in many locations thereafter as well as not all places had sheets.

The places were amazing and even though they were old ruins for the most part, there was a certain tranquillity there that you could feel even through the crowds and hawkers. It was around this time that I saw the famous stepped rice paddies of Bali and these were to become a lasting image for me.

The gorge that my guide took me to see was amazing as well and he was full of interesting information and pointed out to me the effects of deforestation on one part of it which led to massive erosion and the sight of a mountain slowly crumbling down. While it was sad to see, it was also good to know that the locals also noted this and hopefully this constant reminder of clear cutting (that Indonesia has a reputation for) would serve to stop people from doing this though with the amount of corruption their government has, I highly doubted this.