Tour of inner Bali

After our white water rafting experience we thought it would be nice to see some more of Bali and its people.

So we booked ourselves on a tour to mount Batur and lake Batur, that took us through the art and crafts villages to see the local work and to get in some kathak Balinese dancing.

Beautiful and elegant Balinese dancers

We started the day with balinese dancing which is performed to a live band which is made up of mainly percussion instruments such as drums, cymbals, flutes and xylophone type things. The production we watched was great, and the music was really good too.

a monkey and Barong- a good spirit!

We then went to see some of the 'authentic' craft work, I say that as i felt the art being created was just for show and the artists were really sales men wanting you to buy there 'art'. It was funny, in one paint shop we pulled up and the 'artists' were lying on their backs, as we pulled up they sprung to their feet and got painting like they been doing it for hours and are really into it, I pointed this out but they didnt seem to understand that little bit of what I was saying.
Out of all the art it was the woodwork that most impressed us, huge pieces carved from single blocks of wood.

Mount Batur

The highlight of the tour was Mount and Lake Batur, which is an active volcano which last erupted in 1975ish. The landscape was sparse and barren, but amazing all the same. Near to the volcano there was a village where the people leave the bodies of the dead un covered under trees, we didnt go there apparently the villagers get quite rough when asking foreigners for money.

We also went to the monkey forest in Ubud, a forest with lots of cheeky monkies and a 15th century Hindu temple which is still used today for religeous ceremonies such as cremations etc. the temples and the forest again made it look like something out of a Hollywood movie set. I think this confimed to us both that Bali is one of the most scenic places we have been too.

A Big tree in Monkey Forest - complete with monkies!

Preet and the stone iguanas

me winding up the locals, but this old fella was chilled!

On the way back we through the stunning scenery we stopped at a coffee plantation where they grew fruit and various spices etc. we tried for the first time 'snake fruit' also known as Salek, snake fruit because the skin looks like the scales of a snake.

Snake fruit
Snake fruit, yummy kind of sweet and sour and a bit dry like cranberry if you know what I mean. We also had some fresh ginger tea, coffee and cocoa.. yummy, but the coffee would knock the death out of you!