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I took the bus to Ubud the other day. As we drove through Denpasar, the island's "big City" there were young men with shovels standing along side the road waiting to be picked up for construction work. the roads are very narrow as are the vehicles. Lots of furniture and wood carving shops/warehouses along the road. we drove through this small village where they were repaving the road which consisted of a few laborers working with shovels and a small roller, can't imagine how long that would take to repave I-5!
Ubud is this lush, tropical artist's village in the hills overlooking three volcanoes. there are shops everywhere catering to tourists selling sarongs, wood carvings, batki, paintings. It's pretty quiet here, not many tourists and the ones I have seen/met are mostly oz, german or french, not many americans. I've asked many of the locals and they say the tourism has really been slow since the bombing in October and because the price of petrol has doubled. They really are struggling and depend on tourist dollars.
I am staying at this idyllic place called Nick's Hidden Cottages located down a dirt road among the rice fields. It's a beautiful
stone bungalow overlooking the valley and very quiet. I took a dip in the pool. my room is spacious with a big bamboo bali bed, veranda and the staff is very friendly., there is a talking bird in a cage that says good morning.
When i arrived i went to the monkey forest which is a holy place and filled with macaque monkies everwhere. they will come up to you and steal any food you may have in a backpack. they jump from tree to tree, swim in the pond. i could stand there for hours and look at them. i'm sure they must look at us humans and think, what a bunch of monkies! a mother monkey was keeping an eye on her baby holding it's tail if it tried to stray too far.
After waiting several hours i was able to see a Cremation Ceremony. The Hindus beleive in celebrating life when someone dies and have a a huge elaborate parade/ceremony. The whole village partakes as well as tourists. There is a huge papermache cow that is carried on these huge bamboo platforms that take up the whole streetby about 20 men. then follows a brighly
colored shrine where the coffin sits. a band of traditional music plays drums and gongs. everyone is dressed in sarongs and traditional head scarves. they put the coffin inside the belly of the cow and present offerings of fruit, flowers. After the priest blesses the body, they cover it in bright flowers and sashes then close up the cow. The women dance around and sing. Then they light the cow and burn the body. The deceased was a man of about 50 maybe?? his wife did not look all that old and she had a son about 20. It was quite something to see.
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