Southwestern Balinese Temple Touring with Bali Ari Tours
It’s the low seasons and it’s hot.
You should see how hot it is during the high season.
Bali Ari Tours & Driver tl;dr
- A Lot of Temples
- Informative Tour
- Got to Eat Local
What to do? We’re in a foreign town, wanting to see foreign things, and we’re on a time and financial constraint.
Call the best tour guide on the island is what we did. For nearly the whole day, for a couple dollars an hour, we were able to go all over, seeing as much of Bali’s history as humanly possible.
Where Are We Going
The action packed schedule for the day is taking us all over the southwestern Bali looking for temples and food:
Pura Taman Ayun Temple and Garden
Padang Beach
Jimbaran Beach for dinner after sunset
Nadia and I were lamenting to our guide that our visit to a famous pork eatery wasn’t as good as we had hoped. Our guide asked us whether we would be willing to give their local babi guling, pork dish, another chance. We hungrily agreed to go where ever he would take us to eat.
He immediately pulled a u-turn and parked promptly at what seemed like a random openair roadside restaurant. We sat down to the most delicious Balinese pork we ever tasted in our lives. I wish I remember where and what the place was called.
Learning About Bali
I learned that there’s more to Bali than what I previously thought based on the movie Eat Pray Love. I had asked about it and they said that more people have come after watching that movie. Ironically, our guide explained that the practices of yoga, massage, and surfing are not necessarily native to Bali.
I saw a lot during our tour:
- Temples
- Shrines
- Monkeys
While Indonesian faith at large is predominantly Muslim, in Bali they are mostly Hindu in origin.
Did I Mention the Monkeys
Tradition Meets Technology
Another thing we found out is that there’s a lot of local trash polluting the beaches because traditional habits and modern technology didn’t mix. As it turns out, they used to wrap everything in banana leaf. They would get their food wrapped in banana leaf, and then proceed to throw away the leaf after eating.
Fast forward to today with everything wrapped in styrofoam or delivered in plastic bags. It’s wash and repeat as if the containers were banana leaves. The main difference being that the aforementioned banana leaves biodegrade after time and don’t accumulate on the shores and rivers.
Fascinating
There’s a lot of temples in Bali. I can’t even imagine being in Bali during the high season. We were told that the current low season weather was colder than the hotter peak season weather. I found it hard to believe, I don’t think what they said means what they think it means because I was still sweating profusely.
Hotter weather and larger crowds make me a grumpy person.
- Jl. Raya Mawang No.5, Lodtunduh, Ubud, Kabupaten Gianyar, Bali 80571, Indonesia
- +62 812-3995-180
- Email | baliaritour@gmail.com%20.com
