1/14/99: The tour of the island was fantastic. We started at the Elephant Caves, named for some of the iconography, not because it is an elephant burial ground or anything like that… It is actually a former temple turned tourist trap… Because this is a Hindu holy site, Balinese custom demands that all visitors wear a sarong. We had already purchased our own as souvenirs, so we did not need to rent any from the entrepreneurial fellow who sits outside the gate waiting for uninformed visitors who then have no choice but to pay his overpriced fee if they want to see the caves… We looked a bit awkward wearing these simple skirts with walking shoes on our feet instead of sandals as you would at a beach… I must say, sarongs are very comfortable… Later we visited the largest Hindu temple on the island. As we walked up the hill, two teenagers approached us and informed us that they were temple guardians and could escort us around the place. When I demurred with a “no thank you,” they said that, in order to see the temple, we HAD to be escorted by temple guardians. Fortunately, we had been warned how to respond to this ploy, so I informed them that we would welcome their protection, but would not pay them for it, for that would make them guides, not guardians. They frowned at that, and went on to find some other person to fool… However, as we walked further, two more fellows approached us with the same story: we could go no further without their accompanying us. We pointed to the signs (in English!) that clearly informed visitors where they could and could not go, and promised to stick to the path, and then left them standing there… Later on, we ran into one of these fellows again, with two “customers” in tow. One of them looked at us, who were unattended by “guardians,” and in a huff turned to him and angrily asked “Why don’t they have to have a guardian with them!?”… For lunch we made it to a town called Putung, which is up on the hillside with a view all the way down to a town by the ocean… There was also a stop at a “Hindu weaving village,” which, we should have guessed, turned out to be just a tourist trap… And finally a stop at a fishing village, the court of public offices, temple/museums with beautiful ponds filled with koi… All in all, it was a terrific day. Bali is everything they say it is…
NOTE: The photo above shows some Indonesian children we saw wandering the Hindu temple grounds.
