We're having a fantastic time in Bali so far and staying at the Kampung Resort has made our stay near Ubud extra special. The scenery, staff and quality of food has been outstanding. On top of having a fantastic resort to relax in we're in the cultural hub of Bali. Since our last post we've done a lot of exploring. Yesterday we decided to hire a driver to take us to some of the most popular places around Ubud. He was absolutely fantastic and explained a lot about Balinese culture. Each village is divided into three parts; at the top is a village temple where big celebrations take place, in the middle is where the people live, and at the bottom is the cemetery. Top and bottom here are very literal (at least in Ubud) as the land is all hills and mountains. The three sections represent the spirit, life, and death. Driving down the street almost every other building is a temple. Our guide explained how every family has it's own temple where they pray in addition to the the village temple. It's no wonder they call Bali the land of temples! It takes multiple generations for family temple to be paid for a built and its extremely important to them. They also build shrines and temples in places of businesses, farms and more each with a specific manifestation of god in mind so that offerings may be given to promote good fortune and happiness. After our short drive through some villages our first stop was at the Holy Spring Water Temple, Tirtha Empul. This temple is located by natural spring water ponds and is used by Hindu to purify the mind and body from bad thoughts and influences. Visitors are welcome to use the spring as long as they wear a sarong and give an offering. This temple was founded in 962 AD and has grown since to include 2 pools with 30 showers, several temples and koi ponds. It's a beautiful temple and very peaceful despite dozens of other tourists wandering around. When visiting temples in Bali men and woman should wear a sarong. I bought a beautiful sarong near our hotel for $15.00 you can find some as cheap as $2.00 though. Chris borrowed one from our guide. Our next stop was at the Satria coffee plantation. I love coffee! This was one of our favourite stops. Our driver took us through the gardens explaining the uses for various plants and how Balinese people will use these natural remedies to heal themselves. When we reached the coffee making demonstration a lovely young woman showed us how they produce their organic coffees and teas. We had the chance to taste 15 different types of teas and coffees for free! Here they also produce Kopi Luwak. It's going to sound awful but Luwak coffee is made from the excrement of the luwak (a catlike mammal). During the night the luwaks' go around having their fill on only the best and ripest coffee berries. The next day locals go through the forest collecting the luwak droppings which look like little bean clusters. At some point in history coffee farmers realized during digestion a type of fermentation happens to the bean that concentrates the flavour and cuts the bitterness making really excellent coffee. This process makes the coffee extremely rare and fetches a pretty penny internationally costing around $600 US per pound! We can honestly say after tasting the Luwak coffee along side regular Bali coffee it's a stunning brew. You need to be careful where you purchase Luwak coffee however. There is a practice in Bali of capturing, caging and force feeding the luwaks in order to keep up with demands. Unfortunately the Satria coffee plantation did have a couple of luwaks caged and on display so visitors could see the animals that produce the famous coffee. When we asked if they used only wild luwaks for making their coffee they said they do and they pay local people for the excrement they bring in to the plantation. Whether or not it's entirely true we'll never know but it was a interesting experience regardless. We were pretty hopped up on caffine by this point so our driver took us to a well known waterfall, Tegenungan Waterfall, just outside of Ubud City. It was worth the stop to see the beautiful waterfall. As we climbed down the steps towards the water it became more and more clear how much garbage the river had accumulated. It was really unfortunate to see all the rubbish washed up everywhere. Despite the conditions tons of people were still swimming around and playing in the water. We decided against it and enjoyed the views for a while instead. After climbing back up to civilization we continued to our last stop, the Elephant Caves locally known as Goa Gajah. It's not the biggest temple you can visit in Bali but it's certainly one of the more unique ones. It dates back to the 11th century built as place for meditation. Inside the cave there are small areas for shrines and offerings. The site wasn't discovered until 1929 and many years later in the 1950's a bathing spring was found near to the cave mouth buried under the ground.
Hiring a private driver for the day was definitely the way to go, we had a fantastic time! There are literally hundreds of temples to visit in Bali though many are off limits to visitors so having a guide suggest where to go was super helpful! We have a few more days here before heading to Canggu so more adventures to come!
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