Recess week - Part 2

Nimen hao!

Okey, this time I will fly my thoughts back to the lovely island of Bali!

Last time we had gotten until Ubud, central Bali. Looking at my pictures, I just have to say a couple of words about the animals living in our hotel. Shortly after arriving to the hotel, we had a guest on the wall of our balcony/lounge area. This is her picture. :)

Because that gecko was so big, I admit, I did get a little frightened at first. But for some reason, I have always liked small geckos and viviparous lizards, maybe because I know they are not going to do anything to you. So after seeing it's quite calm, it was a welcomed pet. A friend named it Daisy! :D

This is another reason why I quite like geckos:

Geckos eat bugs. I had never seen SUCH a BIG cockroach like we had in our  bathroom. Well, I'm not sure if geckos even eat cockroaches, though, since this one was there too.

The geckos is Bali made a very interestind sound, it sounded like "gec-ko...gec-ko". That night, one of the friends in our group told us, that they make this sound when they need to renew their kidneys. "It lays down, starting to make this sound, which attracts a worm to come and eat its kidney, because they cannot renew their kindneys themselves." Well... :D :D I tried to look from the Internet, whether this could be true, and supprisingly enough, I didn't find any information implying to that. Wikipedia says, this is just their mating sound. If anyone has any other information, please tell me! Nevertheless, after that it was a common joke among us, when ever we heard (or some one made) the "gec-ko" sound. :D

Day 4

Looking upwords to the temple area

On Monday we hired a car again and headed to Besakih, the Mother Temple. It's the biggest temple in Bali. As usual, it consisted of three big "gardens" around each other; the outer, middle and inner garden. The temple area is very big and on a mountain, and consists of many smaller wall-surrounded areas for worshiping, so you can't see it all in one glanse, even thougth it's all in "open-air", not in a one big building. Especially if it's as cloudy as it was that day. Normally, if it's not that cloudy, you could also see mount Batur from the top of the temple's mountain.Well, I guess the pictures say again more than thousand words...

Looking downwords to the temple area

For Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva

In the innermost circle of gardens, there was the most important "altar" (can't remember how did they call the places for worshiping): for Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver and Shiva, the destroyer.

People going to the temple

After the Mother Temple we headed back towards Ubud, but we stopped on our way in a resautant, where we could see a very beautiful view on ricepads. The restaurant had no wall on that side of the building, so while we were eating, we could enjoy the beautiful view all the time.

100 times more stunning in real life...

A huge bat outside the restaurant

In the evening another friend of ours who only now flyed from Singapore to Bali, joined us. Also, it was our last night together in Bali with my roommate and her boyfriend, since the next morning they took a bus to Probollingo, on Java, with intentions to conquer Mount Bromo. So, we went to a Shisha bar.

Day 5 

On Tuesday morning we went to the Monkey sanctuary, or Monkey Forest, which was really close to our hostel. Sooo many cute monkeys! And of course, like anywhere in an island of thousands of temples, a couple of temples.


Later that day we went outside Ubud, to a plantation, where they grew all sorts of plants, including coffee and cacao. They gave us a variety of different kinds of teas and coffees to taste.



But actually the reason why we went there was that they also made Kopi Luwak - a balinese coffee, which is one of the most expensive coffees in the world. I'll tell you why. It is made by this little cute animal:

Yes, so... The fox eats coffee beans, and while going throuhg its digesting system, the beans ripen. After that, the fox "gently deposits" the coffee beans (as it said on the package :D) on the ground, and people clean them and roast them. And tha-daa, ready to make coffee out of them.

At first I thought, I would never ever try that coffee! But then... I don't know what happened... and I did. It tasted really good!!! Soft, I would say.

A cup of Kopi Luwak and the beans that it's made of

Later in the evening we went to the Ubud market and then just chilled in a nice cafeteria/restaurant. It was a really good place where we had had a dessert before as well, namely a piece of cake called "Death by Choc". I just have to tell you about this, because it was soooo gooood! And that name really describes it well, because it was so rich! It was the most chocolaty cake I have ever tasted, really, those two mouthfulls I tasted were already enough!

That night it was again time for some good-byes. One friend left back to Singapore the next morning, and two friends left in the night to Denpasar, to fly to Yogyakarta in the morning. They met my roommate and his boyfriend there. I also planned to go with them at first, to see Borobudur and Prambanan, but then I decided not to go, because it would have been quite expensive and there was still a lot to see in Bali as well.

---

I think I will cut the story here again, for it not to be too long (I also have to go studying...) and I will continue to tell about our last Bali-days soon! :)