Journey to and in Sideman

We drove slowly through the beautiful countryside and fascinating small villages to Sideman. The villages were lined with sweet stalls, drinks stalls and statue stalls. The Balinese obviously must eat a lot of sweets and fill their houses with a lot of statues, as none of these villages were tourist areas at all! I also noticed the IMMENSE amount of dogs just wondering around the street, totally ignoring the cars and bikes. There were a lot of chickens wondering around as well, and I even noticed on a couple of occasions, ducks being herded! Yes, herded - like sheep. There was an option to go on bike, but most of us didn't take it. The driving in Bali is crazy, we probably would have died. Plus, I noticed that the locals all rode motorbike, it was only foreigners who were crazy enough to ride a push bike in the heat.

About half way there we stopped at a Monkey Forest temple. This was, as is probably quite obvious, a temple, in a forest, with loads of monkeys. This was the first temple I went in in Bali, and the first thing we learnt was, of course, the rules. We had to wear a sarong and a sash - to seperate the evil bottom half of our body from the good top half. Also no women on their periods were allowed in, but they were pretty trusting with this one.

So about the monkeys - there were HUNDREDS, everywhere. They were very cheeky, and we had been emphatically warned about them trying to steal things, but we weren't prepared for them to jump on our heads! As I sat down at one point a monkey came and sat on my lap. He was quite a friendly monkey though, so I fed him a banana. He was very, very cute. Some people didn't find them so cute (so I don't really know what they were doing there in the first place). One Indonesian man had a monkey jump on him and was so terrified he was running around screaming. The look on his face was just hilarious.

There was one monkey inhaling a can of lighter gas....

Our next stop on the way to Sideman was at a sweat shop. I never realised how much work goes in to weaving just a sarong and how complicated it is! It is actually really clever - they dye the thread, which is all stretched out over a wooden frame, by dotting different colours in seemingly random places, by hand. Then the thread is woven on some big crazy machine, worked by a peddle, that makes a loud clacking sound and then the dyed thread mysteriously ends up in a predesigned pattern! Crazy. This particular place had won government awards for its designs.

The women seemed to be working in very good conditions, they were all very chatty and smiley, though it must be a very monotonous job. I was happy to notice they were all of working age. However, you have to bear in mind that this was a sweat shop open to tourists, so it would obviously want to create a good impression and may not reflect the usual working conditions in other places.

The hotel we stayed in, in Sideman was set in the most stunning location. It consisted of bungalows owned by foreigners (though not in full as that is illegal) as holiday homes. When they are not in use the hotel lets them out to visitors. We had an excellent one, with a gorgeous view of rice fields, jungle, and a big volcano - Mt. Agung - in the background. It was very cute, like a little mini house. Our bathroom was outside with a tall wall attaching it to the house. It was a shower, toilet and fishpond rolled into one!

The next day we walked through the rice paddies and vegetable fields - they do a crop rotation of them all every so often. It was all quite clever and the irrigation system for the rice was pretty impressive! Though maybe I'm very easily impressed by these things, being very much a city girl. All the farmers would stop to say hello, with the biggest smile on their faces. The little kids in the streets would run up and follow us shouting "hello!" and grinning when we shouted it back. A couple of children even ran up and asked me to take a photo of them. So I did and showed them, they were enthralled by it! It was quite good really, our guide asked us to print off any photos we took of the locals and send them to her so she can give them to them. This is especially good for the children, as their parents would otherwise have no pictures of them growing up, so it is much appreciated. Everyone was so friendly and excited that we were visiting their community. We had a local guide for the walk as well. He was very sweet, if a little shy about speaking in English. We learnt that today was his first wedding anniversary with his wife, who was pregnant, and waiting at home for him to have a celebratory lunch.

As we were walking up a very steep slope through the forest (or rather stopped to rest on our way up the slope) I noticed a rather interesting looking mosquito, with black and white stripes, so I thought I would point it out to everyone. "Oh yes," our guide happily said, "they're the ones that carry dengue fever." Ah dear. DEET time.

When we got the the top of this massive slope we stopped for drinks at a small stall and one of our group bought some cigarette papers. They were crazy - thicker than writing paper, sugar coated, and with no sticky bit, so you had to hold them together while you smoked the cigarette.

Then we went to another temple. Inside, there were lots of women making rice cakes for an upcoming festival. They were all very happy to have us visiting them and to show us what they were doing, even though they didn't speak any English. I wanted to take a photo, but I felt too rude to ask, as traditionally it is considered to be stealing part of one's soul.

The temple was from the 16th century, but the buildings and statues had been replaced and renovated throughout time. It was on top of a massive hill (which we had spent the day slowly getting up) and so had an amazing view. There were all seperate temples within the temple for the different gods of sea, wind, sun, etc. The Balinese actually believe in only one god - but these were all different manifestations of that same god. The main temple had eleven rooves, all symbolising something, but I can't remember what! Though despite my lack of memory, I found it very interesting to learn about Hinduism, because, as I then realised, I know hardly anything! The temple was beautiful and there was such a sense of peace about it that it made Hinduism a very endearing religion, and the Balinese lifestye seem very ideallic.

At this point, before I forget, I have to mention the offerings that are all over the floor in the whole of Bali, just randomly in the street and everywhere! They were little palm leaf baskets filled with rice, flowers and incense. They were placed on the floor to appease the evil spirits, and up high for the good spirits. Everyone in Bali put them out, even in the hotels and bars.

On our walk back to Sideman we stopped by a river for lunch. We went swimming and was told it was fine for us to do so in our bikinis, but soon noticed a LOT of people standing on a bridge above us, staring. I wasn't sure if they were staring because we were strange foreigners, or if it was because we were in bikinis. It was so hot though and the river was so nice and cool that to be honest I couldn't care less. And after the refreshing swim we had an amazing packed lunch that the drivers wife had cooked us and wrapped up individually in banana leaves. It was such delicious food! Curry flavoured noodles AND rice, turmeric tofu, tempe, and amazing sweetcorn fritters. It was so lovely of his wife to do this for us, though I'm sure she probably gets paid for it.