Well, I need to get better on uploading to the blog more often. I am so far behind but between kids, YouTube, Instagram and actually enjoying my time here in Bali, it's pretty busy! I promise I will be on here more often.
So we are going back in time to ten days ago when we took a two and a half hour car ride across the island to go visit the Lempuyang temple at the foot of the Agung volcano. We have been using the same driver pretty much all month, so we coordinated an early pick up time with him and hit the road.
Although the distances driven are never long, trips on Bali take forever. The traffic is horrendous and the roads are all narrow and filled with scooters. Hugh sat in one of the regular seats with a seat belt on his little body. Not exactly up to Canadian safety standards, but car seats are not really something that they do here.
When we arrived at the temple our driver had to park in a main parking lot and hand us over to the locals. They piled us all into the back of a covered truck for an extra fee and drove us up the super steep mountain side to the entrance of the temple. It was intense.
When we got to the entrance we all had to get dressed appropriately. In the Bali temples everyone must wear a sarong and have their shoulders covered. Earlier that week I had gone out to purchase sarongs for our entire family. It was fun to figure out how to tie them and get Hugh to actually wear his. He was actually so excited to put it on. I'm sure it was a bit of a novelty for him.
Lempuyang is actually 7 different temples on the side of a mountain opposite the volcano. The main temple is at the base and you have to walk up 1700 stairs the visit the others. We knew that we would only make it to the main temple so we had lots of time. One of the things we wanted to go was get picture in the main temple gates (also known as Heavens Gates). I won't tell you how the photo is taken (the retails are in the video) but I will tell you that we waited about an hour and fifteen minutes in line and it was totally worth it.
When we were finished we took the truck back down and hopped into our car to head to our next stop. The boys were so tired that they had a quick cat nap on their Dad's lap.
At our second stop Tirta Gangga we sat down to have some lunch and rest a little longer before going in to walk around. The food was great and the setting was so beautiful. We had a mix of banana pancakes, curry, pizza and spring rolls. Typical for a family with three picky kids.
Tirta Gangga was so insanely beautiful. It was originally a royal palace that has been converted to a temple. The photos below show only a fraction of it's beauty.
At one point a local family ambushed us to take photos of our kids with with theirs and selfies with us. This has become a normal occurrence here. I guess that's what happens when you look different! Luckily the kids are such good sports about it all.
The last stop of the day was back in Ubud. Just outside of town is a temple called Tirta Empul. It is a holy water temple with springs of purifying water that draws in many, many people to bathe in them. We decided to take part in the entire ritual and it was super interesting and educational for the kids. The one thing I will say is that the water was freezing. The kids did a great job of remaining respectful and curious and even Hugh ended up getting in on the action.
By the time we returned home it had been eleven hours on the road. We managed to pull together a quick breakfast for dinner, shower the kids and everyone went to bed early. But what an experience!
Steph
