Our driver met us out front and we began our drive up to the mountains, for our Barong dance. As we left on our tour early our driver made a stop to a Batik traditional weaving factory. We saw the step of weaving, to dying and cutting. It was impressive to see that all of the fabrics were hand made. With this excitement we went inside, but were quickly shocked at the high price. We looked around and ended up buying a few batik designed fans, which were reasonably priced.
At about 9:15am we arrived at our concert hall for the dance. This is a unique dance where the music comes from unique chimes that a group of men play. The music is really unique and suits the performance. This is a performance about a lion-like creature and the king of spirits. Its a story about good versus evil. It is about his battle with the evil queen Rangda. The show great and very unique and entertaining. Once again I recommend everyone see this show.
Once our concert was completed we made our way to Ubud to see the Monkey Forrest. We were lucky our driver took us to the back entry, that way we easily found parking close. Our driver went with us, and straight away we saw monkeys! There were old ones and even cute baby ones. We paid a few dollars to get some bananas so the monkeys could jump up on us. They quickly climbed up and were eating bananas on our heads! We then continued to walk through the forest and saw an impressive quick flowing river. The vistas that we saw were impressive, and we really enjoyed our time here. In the river there was a monkey who found a coconut, and he dived in the water to get it. This happened to cause a mini war over the coconut. We would've stayed but we had to go.
We then began our long driver to Kintamani, this is a large caldera formation with Mt Batur in the middle. This volcano hasn't erupted in some 15 years. Lucky on our day it was clear, and we had impressive vistas of the whole landscape. We were lucky to be eating our buffet lunch overlooking the mountain. We sat down and immediately noticed an extreme amount of flies. There was very little selection of food in the buffet, but they had freshly grilled pork skewers which made up for it. Their fresh fruit was good also.
As we finished lunch we began our journey to Ubud, with our first stop at the Unesco World Heritage listed Gunung Kawi. Our drivers warning of the amount of stairs to the temple ended up being right. After a while we finally made it to this very old temple carved into the rock face. It was interesting to learn that the temple was once lost under soil then was rediscovered. Our driver explained the Balinese Hindu religion the whole time, which was very informative.
Our next stop was the Goa Gajah or Elephant Cave. Which is where there is a temple built into the rock face. We learnt that this temple dates to very early times. We had learnt that each temple is very unique.
Our last stop was our new home, the Kayon Resort. We were met by porters and the front desk manager. We were shocked at how each of the porters carried our bags on their shoulders down stairs to our rooms. She took our photo at the resort sign before leading us to their restaurant for a welcome drink.
I'm not a very big mint fan so this plended mint drink wasn't really to our taste. We were then taken to our Kayon River Suite, where she explained the room and gave us our key and wifi password. My first comment was that this wasn't the same as the sofitel. It was a very different style of hotel, but it was comfortable.
For dinner we went to their restaurant, where I enjoyed their Pork Skewers in the midst of many mosquitos. I found the dessert to be not of good quality, especially when my Panna Cotta arrived half melted. But overall the quality of meals were very good. One comment I have make is the service, it is top notch, but it can tend to be intrusive, especially when circle your table like a pacing lion. We then retired to our room for the night.
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