Cylcing in Ubud - Pt 1

cycling through festively decorated village

The morning after we arrived in Ubud (pronounced oo-bood), we took a bicycle tour through several small villages. Although Ubud seems like one town to outsiders, we learned that Ubud is actually made up of 14 separate villages. In contrast to the horrible traffic in central Ubud, our ride was a pleasant meandering through rice paddies and temples and villages filled with people going about their everyday lives. The locals were obviously used to seeing tourists riding through their villages. Some met us with friendly waves but most ignored us altogether. The nicest thing about cruising at bicycle speed was that it allowed us a real glimpse of the Balinese people engaging in their daily activities. Indonesians lives are not easy, and I am always amazed at how industrious and hardworking they are.

villager washing laundry in drainage ditch

clothes laid to dry on side of road

tiny offerings of cooked rice on banana leaves

lady prepares her wares at market

this ain't Dumbo, kids!

We were pleasantly surprised to learn that we were the only ones touring with our guide that day. That made it especially nice for me because he was willing to let me stop for photo ops along the way.

Upon arriving at the first village, our guide explained that each village has its own elementary school, and asked if we would like to stop and see it. We walked inside the school yard with no one ever questioning our presence.  I couldn't help but think that surely that wouldn't be allowed in US schools. We passed each of the open classrooms in the u-shaped building, peeking inside each one. I even snapped a few photos of the kids, though seeing a bule (person with white skin) taking photos no doubt interrupted their lesson for a few minutes.

elementary school in Ubud village

we peaked inside each class room with our guide

bule!

mixed responses

wonder what this teacher's salary is?

raise your hand if you know the answer!

first grade teacher

 no discipline problems here!

tedious work

In each room, the children appeared to be happily engaged in learning, some of them going over their lessons loudly with rote repetition and others involved in different projects.  All Balinese school children wear uniforms and walk to the village school from their homes in the surrounding community. Many of the parents are rice farmers. Balinese children are required to go to school through elementary (grades 1-6). Then they must pay a small amount to go to middle school (grades 7-9) and more to go to high school. Consequently a lot of families are unable to send their children to high school.

Outside the class rooms, several women were sitting and waiting. One was working on what apparently was a wig. She was painstakingly securing ONE HAIR AT A TIME. Can you say "labor intensive??"

each hair is put in one at a time with a needle

There are 1,000 temples in Bali. Every village has its own and most of the homes have them as well. There are tiny offerings literally everywhere you look. The final part of our tour was to include a meal in our guides home, prepared by his mother and sister. That also included offering a food sacrifice in the temple. We didn't want to offend our host in the event we didn't care for their food and we already knew we wouldn't be sacrificing to the Hindu god, so at the end of the ride we politely excused ourselves saying Ronnie needed to respond to some work calls (which was true) and had him drop us back off at the hotel.

One thing I didn't mention was the coffee plantation we visited. I'll cover that in a separate post, along with more about the rice paddies.