Bali (Day 3) - Ubud

Today we were supposed to rent a couple of scooters and ride around the area visiting temples, but we decided to hire a car and driver instead.  One of the nice things about Bali is that you can hire a car and driver for the day for very little money.  In this case, we hired a car and driver for 500,000 IDR => $33 USD for him to pick us up at our hotel at 8:30 AM, drive us to anywhere we want for the next 7-8 hours, wait for us as we see what we want to see, and drop us back off at our hotel.  How amazing.

Before Made picks us up, we headed to breakfast at the hotel.  They had quite a buffet set up with traditional fruit, toast, and eggs made to order.  But then add noodles, sweet & sour fish, fried rice, and so many other foods.  Since we had such a huge dinner last night, I wasn't too hungry so I just had a plate of fruit.  A server convinced me to order eggs as well, so I shared a plate of scrambled eggs with Tim, but that was all I could do.

After breakfast, the driver showed up right on time.  We jumped in the back seat, I told him where I wanted to go which was pretty much what he thought we would want to see, and we were off.

First stop was Tegallalang rice terraces.  For a small fee ($3.40 USD for both of us), you can walk around beautiful rice terraces that make for amazing photos.  If the natural rice terraces aren't enough for you, you can swing on giant swings or zip line across the field for "better" photos.

We of course had to take a photo with the I ♥️Bali sign.

We were not about to ride the swing, but here are others taking that "Insta" photo.

This guy was willing to pose for you for a small donation.  I quickly shot the photo thanks to others paying for it.

Here are some more amazing photos we took while walking around the rice terraces:

It was now time to hit some temples.  The first temple we visited was the Tirza Empul Temple (dating back to year 962), a very popular Hindi water temple.  This temple had many tourists learning about and participating in ritual bathing,  We just watched.

After watching everyone jumping into the water, we continued our walk around the grounds.

The next two temples are pretty much neighbors of Tirza Empul Temple and only a couple of minutes down the road.  First was Mengening Temple.  Rule number 2 is quite interesting, but I have no idea was Run 3 mean.

Mengening Temple is another water temple, but with way less tourists.  We started up above and walked down to the river where the temple is located.

Unlike the last temple, this one only had local people doing the ritualistic bathing.

The third, and last temple in this area was Temple Gunung Kawi, also known as The Valley of The Balinese Kings.

This temple was way down in a valley requiring us to walk down many, many stairs.  All the down was worth it since ​Gunung Kawi was our favorite temple of the day.

Check out these amazing nooks that were carved right into the rock in the wall of the cliff,

We then walked over a bridge, and the other side of the river also had niches carved in the rock, but with a water feature.  Very cool.

This was an interesting part of the temple.  There was a sign saying that we needed to remove our shoes before entering this entryway...OK..we'll bite.

Wow...what an amazing area on the other side.  This is definitely an area that you can sit for long periods of time meditating.  You couldn't hear any noise from outside, and there was water dripping in one of the corners making our a peaceful sound thoughout.

Hidden behind the peaceful entryway was some more carvings in the rock and more water features.

This was another cool looking part of the temple.

We now had a bit of a drive to get to the last of today's temples.  This is Goa Gajah Gianyar, also known as Elephant Cave and dates back to the 11th century.

More starting high and walking down to the temple.

Here is the namesake cave, Elephant Cave and was rediscovered by Dutch archaeologists in 1923.  You can see the elephant on the right side of the door (Tim's left).  I read that what is interesting about this temple is that there are both Hindi and Buddhist imagery carved into the stone, although I could not recognize it.

Inside this cave was somewhat dark with areas set up for offerings with incense burning causing the cave to be very smoky.

There are 6 woman holding water pitchers (the 7th one that was in the middle was destroyed) depicts the seven holy rivers of India.

When we thought we were done walking around we noticed the stairs kept leading down, so down we went where we saw some more incredible images.

Like all the other temples today, when you are done with looking around, you have to "exit though the gift shop." In other words, you had to walk by many stall of people asking you to look and buy.  It was pretty annoying, but I know that these people only want to make a living.

Although we wanted to get back to the hotel to enjoy the facility, Made insisted on us eating at a restaurant close by.  The setting was beautiful, but it was one of those places that i think pays the drivers some amount for bringing tourists to it. 

The food was about 30% more expensive than any place we had been and the food wasn't any better.  It wasn't bad, but it really wasn't worth the extra expense.  

I ordered the same as yesterday, Tuna Sambal Matah and Tim ordered the area specialty, Crispy Duck.

It was now after 3 PM and Made finally dropped us off back at the hotel.  This is how we spent the next couple of hours...hanging out at the swim-up drinking some Bali beer.

Last night when we got back to our room, there was a flyer in the door advertising taco specials for the next night (tonight) and live music.  So, after swimming we went back to the room, showered, dressed, and waited for 7 PM to go to the hotel restaurant.

We ordered some water and some fruit juices. Check out how fancy these drinks are.  Even the water bottles are cool.

The special tonight was if you order the tacos, you get a fourth taco free (that was placed on a separate plate). I ordered the Fish Tacos and Tim ordered the Pork Tacos.  They were both very good.

To make things even better, there was live music.  This guy played some great acoustic guitar and sang songs from Eric Clapton, Radiohead, Coldplay, Bruno Mars, and many other greats.  It was really enjoyable.

After dinner we went back to the room and we both fell asleep pretty quickly.  I thought about doing the blog, but it just didn't happen.  I am actually finishing this up a couple of days later.

As promised yesterday...here are some photos of our room and facility...very Bali-like.

This was a great stay.  I can't imagine anything better.