Our next stop on the trip was Ubud, but first, a few more pictures of A Village Above the Clouds:
From Village Above the Clouds, we headed to Ubud… another touristy place mostly made famous by eat, pray, love. It was known to have all sorts of cuisines and cultural and artsy trinkets– the best place to get souvenirs. Ubud was going to serve as our base for the last part of our trip… it was supposed to be really cool…and it was. We loved it and could have easily spent 2 weeks there alone. This first day, we just wanted to see the downtown area, so after being dropped at Swasti Eco Lodge [another stellar hotel– more on it later], we started our walk into town, only to get sidetracked by the ever massive “Monkey Forest”. Naturally, we had to take a look. I have. never. seen. that. many. monkeys. in. my. life. There were so many monkeys! Seriously— tons of them. They were very handsy– one of them kept trying to put its hand in my purse. The forest is a really big place and there are a number of temples within it as well. We walked down to a water-related temple that was known in the tourist world as the Indiana Jones Temple- surrounded by trees and water, you have to hiked down a bridge of steps. There are monkeys and statues… you know the drill. Very cool and very worth the trip. A warning though– if you go to Monkey Forest, don’t pick up the old pieces of banana from the ground and hand them to a monkey– chances are that if it’s on the ground, they already rejected it for a reason. I made the mistake of picking up 1/2 a banana and holding it out to a monkey who bit into it and then proceeded to charge me with his teeth hanging out.
After taking copious amounts of Monkey pictures, we worked our way towards the exit of monkey forest, where we came upon the preparations for a cremation. Remember my post about the importance and tradition of cremations, offerings, and death ceremonies? Well, this was the day before the event- tons of people were around and setting things up for the event. We spoke with a few locals during our time to understand the whole process. As it turns out, giant wood carvings of lions and horses are created to carry each body to the cremation. The entire carving is lit on fire and cremated and then the ashes are moved again into a smaller ceremonial temple of sorts. Additionally, large cremations only happen every so often, so this cremation was to involve many many bodies. The colors were bright and people seemed generally happy– they were naturally, celebrating lives and through a rich cultural tradition. This particular cremation was not open to the public, so we did not get a chance to watch. Additionally, we had plans to hike Mount Batur the next morning for sunrise! We walked around town as well just for a few minutes, before heading back to Swasti to prep for our 3AM wake up call.
