More Sights in Bali

Welcome back for more on our trip to Bali last May. I wanted to talk about a couple of other areas we visited while on our trip in the hope that if you ever go that you will try them too!

First, Bali is filled with different types of Hindu temples. No matter where you drive there will be temples on the road and altars at most homes. Bali is the only non muslim majority island in Indonesia so its very different from the rest of the country when it comes to buildings of faith and religious practices.

The next location is the Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest/Sanctuary. It is right in the middle of town so you could just walk to it. This sanctuary is like a large city park and it has over 700 monkey’s in it. There are also three temples located in the forest itself.

The monkeys are everywhere in this park and you essentially just stroll through it taking in the beauty of the forest, the temples, and animals. Tenley couldn’t control herself. She kept calling all the monkeys either “Abby” (our dog back home) or “woof woof”. If she wasn’t strapped to me she probably would have chased them. These monkey’s do everything in front of you — everything and if you think I am hinting to what you are thinking about…I am. You also have to be on guard while you are there. At one point I thought Tami was pulling my hand to hold hands and it turned out to be a monkey who was trying to steal my water bottle. I let out a loud, “eeehuhuhuh” and made several bystanders laugh as I awkwardly danced away from my new little friend. I highly recommend that you go. It is Tamaria’s favorite part of Ubud and you can literally spend hours walking around and watching the monkeys and enjoying nature.

Finally for today we visited the Sacred Waters of Tirta Empul (sounds like something out of an Indiana Jones movie).

It is one of the holiest water springs in the Hindu faith and its only located about a 90 minutes from Ubud. The belief is that the hidden underground springs that produce clean, fresh water can cleanse you of anything from physical ailments to emotional or spiritual impediments. It is meant to wash out the bad and free/restore your energy and health. Lilian/YaYa, my mother in law, was the one that really pushed us to go and I must admit I was not very happy about going. I mean come on, stripping in to a gown and standing in cold water is going to somehow be fun? I was so wrong.

You definitely had to be reverent on the site. There were large temples surrounding the entrance to the pools. You could only wear special robes in order to bathe which you had to rent and then put on in a shared locker room. There were individual changing rooms but they were very crowded and small. Here was us about to go in:

So you get in the water which was actually alot warmer than I was prepared for. It was cool but you weren’t shivering and for me it only came up to about my hip. You go to each of the fountains (except a few which they note you cannot drink from) and say a prayer to the gods (or in my case I prayed a different prayer to Jesus each time). Then you drink the water and then douse your head in to the fountain stream 3 times. Then you move to the next one.

It was actually really fun. It was hot outside too so the cool water felt good. It was a spiritual experience. I felt like I got alot of time with Jesus. When you have to pray 7-9 times within 20 minutes you start getting deep. And there is just something refreshing and life giving about water. After you make it to the appropriate fountain heads you get out and go back and change in to your clothes. As you exit there is a huge market filled with merchants selling stuff. I recommend you skip that part as they are very aggressive. Just go out through the same entrance you came in on.

Overall these were fun activities and was surprised that I enjoyed all more than I expected. Sometimes you just have to take a risk and sometimes it will pay off.