Each day in Ubud can be as exciting as you want it to be. Today,
we had asked Made to take us to the Bali Bird Park and Tanah Lot, which I had
heard was a “must see”! He suggested we add in the Barong dancing at Batubulan.
The dancing was obviously very commercial….at 9:30 a.m. in the
morning, who else is going to see it other than tourists? They handed out a
sheet of paper which attempted to explain the story but to be honest, it was
hard to follow. The Barong is a likeable lion-like mythical creature and leader
of “good” making him the enemy of Rangda a mythical demon queen. Barong dancing
portrays the battle between the two which is the eternal battle of good vs
evil. The “kris” or “keris” is a “distinctive, asymmetrical dagger from
Indonesia which is often considered to possess magical powers.
The costumes were amazing, and the dancing was quite good, but I
felt the clown act was a little tawdry
and inappropriate for a traditional performance such as the Barong Dance, especially early in the day when the audience is likely to include some young people.
However, it was all very entertaining. Unfortunately, there seemed to be
something wrong with my camera, perhaps moisture in the lense somewhere? It is
quite humid here. Anyway, the pictures give you some idea of the costumes and
setting.
After our dance show we continued on our way to the Bali Bird
Park. The Bali Bird Park has been around for over 20 years and is committed to
preservation, conservation, and breeding of Bali birds and birds from other
countries. There were birds from Indonesia, Latin America, Africa and
Australia. The park was well laid out by the various regions and birds where
possible could move around in the exotic foliages surrounding them. In addition to the exotic bird population, there were also special programmes you could watch. We chose the one on birds of prey, and amazed at the eagles, owls, herons, and other birds the trainers worked with to catch prey in flight, pick up prey from a volunteer’s head, or pick up prey from the ground. There was also a beautiful fly-past by 4 South American macaws! And there was a short, random, exhibition put on in the restaurant over lunch. Check out Robin….the “Bird Lady”!! The park
boasts 1000 birds and 250 species! I
don’t know how many we saw but we spent an amazing few hours wandering around
and sharing the avian world. For bird lovers this was a true paradise!! Here are a few pictures!!
Our tickets to the Bird Park also got us into the Reptile Park –
another extremely well done exhibition of the animal world. We had the
interesting experience of watching a python devour a mouse, but most of the
other snakes were “sleeping”, except one, a cobra, that watched me quite carefully as I tried to photograph it!! In addition to
the snakes we saw a komodo dragon, huge crocodiles and some iguanas.
Finally, we were on our way to Tanah Lot. I had read that the Pura
Tanah Lot was an interesting temple set on rock formations in the ocean….which
it was. But I also thought it was going to be beautiful. Mmmm, from a tourist
perspective, I struggled with this site. There were masses of people, they
charged more than some other temples for admission, they charged you for dirty
bathrooms, and the beauty in the site wasn’t there …..for me. But, we had
visited it at low tide and I think it may also be more spectacular at high
tide, and maybe if we had seen it at sunset, it would have been more magical. There were tables set up for sunset viewing at the restaurants high up on the cliff overlooking the site. For the Balinese, this is an important temple, and we could only peer at it from the outside as we were not allowed inside. So, all in all, I am glad we went to see
it.
We had a full day’s activity, and in the evening went in search of
Hujan Locale, a comfortable restaurant on Jalan Sri Wedari with a fusion Asian
menu. The food was attractively presented and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Then
we trekked back along the road with our flashlights to our villa in Penestanan. We enjoy these evening walks home in the cooler evening air after a good meal.
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