Bali I--Motorcycles and Monkey Jungle

 We quickly learned that we were not properly dressed for touring temples in Bali without a sarong and a sash for both David and me.  Our driver kept sarongs and sashes for us stashed in his trunk.

On June 16, 2016, we arrived in Ubud, Bali, and settled into our room at the jungly Gaja Biru (Blue Elephant) hotel.  Bali is renowned for its beaches, but we followed Michael's advice to stay away from the overrun beach towns and spend our time in the highland art center of Bali, Ubud.

 In the outdoor lobby was a huge statue of Buddha, adorned with fresh flowers every day.  We walked to our room through an outdoor corridor draped with vines and lined with jungle plants.

 We ate breakfast at a tiny cafe down the dirt road.  The menu included specialties of many cultures.  Dave ordered eggs and sausage every morning, and I had fried rice (nasi goreng) and watermelon juice.

This photo shows how exotic Bali was--the woman dressed in sarong and sash, with tray balanced on her head; the red parasol and stone temple behind her.

 All over Asia, motorcycles are everywhere.

 Trucks and cars hurtle down the street with people hanging out the top and back.

 There are delightful carved stone gods and demons everywhere.  Many of the gods are decorated with leis, flower and food offerings, and clothes.

 We stopped at Ubud Palace and bought tickets for the dance performance there at night.

 Plants that are nurtured as house plants back home grow wild in Bali.

 You can never see too many monkeys.  It was spring at Monkey Jungle, and the babies were out.

 We watched priests and pilgrims bear offerings at the temple at Monkey Jungle.

 This mama monkey held her baby by the tail!

 Our driver, Rajin, took us to many "factories" (actually, small groups of workers with a large showroom) to see Balinese crafts.  We watched painters turn out scenes of rice fields and Balinese dancers at the "painting factory".

 We visited a plantation, which grew coffee, spices, and tropical fruit.

 A woman toasted coffee beans over a grill.

 David sipped "spicy hot chocolate', with a jolt of ginger in it.

 We visited a wood carving factory, where men seated on the ground turned out exquisite statues.  We bought a dragon for our coffee table.

 We visited a jewelry factory, where workers soldered silver, and then the omnipresent showroom.

 And we visited a batik factory, where women designed the patterns for the cloth, painted the cloth with wax, and then dyed it.  They then turned the cloth into shirts, scarves, and tablecloths.

 Bali has thousands of temples, with intricate rock carvings.

 Craftsmen at the temples, like this woman, make baskets and other useful and/or decorative pieces.

 Our driver delivered us to an excellent restaurant for dinner, looking out on a rice field.

 Finally, we attended a dance performance at Ubud Palace, with female dancers dressed in brocade and heavy makeup and demons in shaggy, hairy suits.  The dances are tales of good and evil from the Indian Ramayana.