Ubud......23 years later

We arrived in Ubud a few days ago after about a 1 hour drive from Sanur.  Chuck and I were amazed at the size - it was so much bigger than we remembered - more traffic, more shops, more hotels and more people on the streets trying to sell you stuff.  It is always hard to return to a place from the past - I'm sure Kelowna has changed tremendously in 23 years.  I decided to take the advice I gave to Chuck a few years ago when we went back to Thailand after 10 years...pretend we have never been here before...that way we can enjoy it all instead of trying to remember what it was like before and play the comparison game.  So once I just decided to enjoy it for what it now is Ubud is LOVELY.

Our hotel is beautiful - the Bali Spirit Hotel - on the side of a gorge.  We have a suite with a king size bed and huge bathroom with glassed in shower and tub on the main floor and the kids have 2 single beds in the loft - they are very happy they don't have to share.  Our bathroom has some sandstone (local) statues - we will get a smaller pair for our bathroom at home.

There are many, many fountains and sculptures on the grounds here as well as lots of stairs!   

Our first full day in Ubud we went on a walk through the rice fields and villages around Ubud.  It was a great experience - the rice fields were so picturesque...  We did an 8.5 km walk through the rice fields, small villages and down the road over the bridge and back to the hotel.  It took about 3 hours.  We stopped at a small restaurant for drinks - this was our view!

The next day we booked a day long bike trip through the back roads of Ubud and surrounding areas. It was really fun and educational.  We started out on a van ride up to the lookout point for the volcano Mt. Badur.  On the way we stopped at the coffee plantation - we saw coffee trees, cocoa trees, vanilla trees, cinnamon trees, ginger plants, snake fruit trees and jackfruit trees.  It was fun for all of us to see where our food comes from! We even saw the wild cat that climbs through the coffee trees eating the best coffee fruit - they digest the fruit around the bean and then the workers find the beans in the cat excrement and sell it to stupid tourists/westerns for a lot of money!!!!!

We got to try all different kinds of coffee - mocha coffee, balinese coffee (it has lots of sludge - kind of like campfire coffee), vanilla coffee, hot chocolate, lemongrass tea, spice tea and ginger tea. Even Chuck tried the coffee!

Cole really liked the mocha coffee and wanted to buy some to take back to the hotel - I said "no way does a 10 year old boy need caffeine" so we bought some yummy local dark chocolate. 
We then went up the hill further to the restaurant for breakfast overlooking the volcano Mt. Badur.  It erupted in 1918, 1928 and 1968.  The soil is very rich so lots of fruit is grown here.  It was a bit cloudy but still a great view of the volcano, the ridge around it and the lake.  Great place to relax and eat rice, noodles, and fried bananas with brown sugar syrup for breakfast. 

We then headed  back down the hill and got our bikes, after they were blessed with sprinkles of holy water.  The bikes were good, mountain bikes with 18 gears, and smaller ones for Cole and Kenna and we all got helmets.  We rode for about 2 1/2 hours on small paved paths beside the rice fields and then through quite a few small villages.  Each village has three temples - one for the family that started the village, one for the protector (to ensure the rains for the fields, keep the demons away) and one for the destroyer whose job is to release the spirit from the body when you die so the person can be reincarnated.  Since it is July we saw several villages preparing for the community mass cremation.  When you die a small ceremony is performed and the body is buried in the cemetery (at the destroyer temple).  When the family has saved enough money ($500 Canadian) they prepare for the cremation to release the spirit for reincarnation.  Depending on how many people are waiting for cremation and the ability to save money cremations only happen in the village every 5 - 10 years.  The whole village helps to prepare - it takes about a month to build the multi-layer pyre that the bodies will be burnt in and the wooden horses that will used to carry the bodies (inside the body of the horse) from the cemetery to the pyre.  The horses have wings and are painted with bright colors and intricate designs and the pyre is decorated with elephant heads and painted as well.

These ladies were helping to decorate the pyre.  The basket on the left probably holds a live chicken! I wonder how old grandma is?  She probably only has 3 teeth as I have noticed a lot of old timers here have very few teeth here.


We then had lunch at the family compound of the family who owns the biking company.  It is the tradition in Bali that the sons continue to live with the parents after they marry.  The wife is expected to move into the compound to help care for the parents - therefore each family really wants a son.  Now some families are more flexible - if they have 3 daughters one will stay behind and her husband will join that family. The compound is surrounded by a high wall and has statues at the doorway to protect the family - some are of demons, others are old people and even sometimes we have seen animals at the gate.  In the compound there is a temple, a small building for each family to sleep in, green space in the middle to play in, an open air building for ceremonies, a cooking building and a building for laundry/toilet.  The compound we visited has 15 people living in it - but some have 30 to 50 people in one compound!