Categotry Archives: Travel
Trunyan Village and the Bali Aga Cemetery
We split the group in two, and took two boats across Lake Batur, which is a crater left from an old volcanic explosion. That means the lake is roughly circular with a very steep lip. There isn’t a lot of room between the water and the top. Trunyan Village is wedged into that little space. The houses extend right onto the water and the rice fields are terraced into steep slopes.
The Kintamani Volcano Area
There’s a town on the other side of Lake Batur whose name escapes me. It’s set up on a ridge. The ridge is so narrow that only the road down the middle fits. The buildings on either side spill down the sides. We stopped there for lunch.
Forest Fire Season
Forest Fire Season has already begun. Who knew? Apparently the fires started to the East of me. Normally the wind will blow them further East along with the jet stream, so it isn’t too surprising I hadn’t noticed the smoke building up in the valley. The surprising and scary part is that the fires started in February. It seems the central part of Montana had an unusually warm and dry winter. 50 deg. F in the middle of February? Yeah […]
On the Move
Shortly after our visit to the Imperial Palace the winds shifted and we were able to fly from Java to Bali. What a world of difference! Here are some photos I took on the way to our hotel that night. Of course, that was quite the ride as we went from the airport in Denpasar to Ubud, which is in the center of town. The airport gave us a good preview of what to expect – lots of grand statuary. […]
The Imperial Palace
The buildings that had been used by the emperor for many generations have mostly been converted to a museum housing the various items that were used by royalty over the years. They range from portraits to oven mitts. 1. Guardian statue at the entry way.
On the Way to the Airport
The next morning we were supposed to leave Java and fly off to Bali. Like most best-laid-plans this one went awry. The airport in Bali suffered from drifting volcanic ash off and on the whole trip. It happened to be closed when we were supposed to take off, so the travel company arranged a later flight for us. That left all morning with nothing to do. Our guide quickly made alternative arrangements to keep us entertained. She lined up bikchas […]
Rice Cracker Factory
Horse drawn carriages took us to a rice cracker factory where we participated in rice cracker production.
Borobudur Temple part 2
I mentioned before that the walls all tell the story of enlightenment. Did I mention that they tended to be a bit tall? Much of the time we couldn’t see just how high up we’d gotten.
Borobudur Temple part 1
Mostly I just want to show off my pictures. 🙂 Borobudur is one of the largest Buddhist monuments in the world. It’s a pyramid with a 150,000 square foot base and six tiers. It’s made entirely of volcanic rock. The advantage of volcanic rock is that it is relatively light weight due to the gas bubbles inside, and easier to carve than sedimentary stone. There are pieces of it as large as a small car included in the temple. We […]
Independence Day
From the moment we arrived in Jakarta until we left Indonesia entirely we saw flags and bunting. This was three weeks of flags and bunting to celebrate Indonesia’s Independence Day.
Indonesian Veterans
There was a dictator named Suharto. He ruled Indonesia as president from 1967 to 1998. We went to visit with Indonesian veterans in his house and went through the adjoining museum dedicated to him while we were there. Suharto’s home isn’t normally open to random visitors like us. We were allowed in as a special treat offered by the brother of the house’s current owner. They had two lines of chairs facing one another in a long, otherwise empty room. […]
Art Restaurant
Most of the places where we were treated to dinner had an old world feel to them. It might be a Dutch heritage, or it might be the gentility of classic Asian ambiance. Either way, there was a sense of timeless elegance with now and then a rural paradise thrown in. This time we had lunch in a place that might have come from down the street from me. The walls where a cheerful yellow, and all four walls were […]
Breadfruit and Tea
We stopped off at the shop run by the wife of Mah Ri Jah on Mount Merapi for a quick snack. The snack consisted of breadfruit and tree bark tea. They cut the breadfruit into slices that are about a sixteenth of an inch thick then fry it up. A sixteenth of and inch might not seem like much, but it’s more than three times as thick as your average potato chip. Except for the huge size of each chip […]
