day 6 : ubud

This morning we met up with Mike and Maryam and their tour group. Mike walked us throught the monkey forest. The monkeys are very territorial , we several fights between the monkeys over food or trees. We also saw them cleaning themselves. The afternoon was relaxing - walking around, swimming, Dave got a massage. In the evening, we went to a temple Odelan, which is a big celebration that happens every 210 days. It was beautiful, the size of the offerings that the women carried on their heads were incredible. It takes them 6 weeks to prepare for this celebration (temple birthday). Even the youngest children are dressed up in the celebration garb. We all got dressed up too. We sat with the Balinese who were praying, lit incense, and had holy water dripped on us. A little boy gave us flowers and incense and helped us with the rice (you put it on your forehead). We may not have done it all correctly, cause he giggled at us. After that, we saw a Balinese Reggae band and had a late night snack.

Daniel:

It was a little funny actually and a little scary because our friend had a bag of coins in his pocket and the monkey thought it was food cause he saw the bag. And he grabbed the bag of coins and he tore open the bag and he tried to eat the coins but he couldn’t eat them so he was like ‘well these aren’t food’ and he threw the coins off the balcony into the water – almost. We also saw a monkey cemetery. It was cool. They had the dates of their deaths on the stones, but not the dates they were born. A went swimming with a friend, Daniel, from Singapore. The temple Odelan (birthday) was cool and fun. They must get ready 6 weeks before the temple birthday.