Lovinia and Tirta Gangga

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After the epic morning up Mount Bromo, the trip to Lovina, which took us across a ferry onto the island of Bali, was a needed rest for the group and I. The highlight of this commute came when Betsy spotted, in the lonely planet book, an interesting type of female cleansing supposedly offered in Lovina and agreed to be the guinea pig!
Without going into too much detail, the treatment involved steaming, aromatherapy oils and was not available to men...... ;-D
Needless to say we had a good laugh about it and it was part of many comedy gags over the next few days. Upon arriving in Lovina in the evening, we freshened up and went out for dinner. My first impressions of Lovina was that it was a really quiet seaside village and, after a couple of bars, 2 seperate bands playing "no woman no cry" which was obviously a favourite for Indonesian cover bands, my first impression remained. We made our own entertainment so all was good as expected.
The next morning we headed to the Brahmavira Arama Buddhist Monastery and i thought to myself that i would be just another temple, however i realised after spending a short while there that this temple, with its magnificent views across the local area was probably the most serene temple of all i have visited. After this temple we headed to some close by hot springs (insert name) where some of us bathed for a while and others wandered the local markets. The afternoon was free, so i opted for a massage and spent some time chilling at the pool before dinner and another helping of "no woman no cry" followed by a couple of beers and some drunk talk by the pool. The next day some of the group went dolphin watching and i used this time to catch up on some sleep, chill and write my blog- it's almost a full time job you know! ;-D
In the afternoon we walked along the seafront to a local womans house which she had rebuilt since the sunami of 2006. It was mostly construction of tin and bamboo with mud floors covered in Bamboo rugs and contained an outside dining area with large table. The large table, to the excitement of my stomach, had been filled with some amazing local delights - the dishes I had tried before, like sate (satay), rice and gado-gado (mixed green veg with peanut sauce), were excellent but some of the other dishes, which i don't really know what they were, made for a really tasty an interesting lunch. Mmmm.
I realise, while writing this, that I talk about food quite a bit...... What can i say.... I'm a food person!
Next, off to Tirta Gangga for a night....
Tirta Gangga was a little extra stop Nyoman, our guide, had organised. It was a small village with large rice paddies. These rice paddies were different from all the others dues to the locals use of various pieces of rubbsh, i.e. Plastic bags or old t-shirts, to prevent the rice birds from getting to their crops. Having walked through the local village and the rice paddy, we headed for Rajah's water palace. This was a stunning water garden with large coy carp and a rather refreshing (by that, i mean freezing) natural spring water pool. Dinner was had at the good karma restaurant accompanied by a few arak
(local spirit made of rice) cocktails. We spent the remainder of the evening listening to music, drinking Bintang and swapping photos..... there was definately a feeling of good karma for us all......next onto Ubud.

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