Bali, Indonesia - pt 2

Our next stop was at a place deep in the jungle of Ubud called Swing Heaven. https://swingheavens.com/ We had never heard of this, so we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. As it turns out, "swinging" literally meant being swung out over a lush valley with a river rushing through it. Beautiful? Yes! Scary? YES! So NO. Even if they strap you in (?) I wasn’t interested in swinging out over the valley. If I had fallen into it, they might never find my body! Of course there was a waiver to sign just in case - even for only the picture taking part. Check out this website if you want to see what this place was like - it's a bit hard to describe here.

hook up for one swing - valley below

So we opted to just pay the entrance fee and get our photos made in some of their photo settings. That was enough for me. I failed to mention that if you wanted to swing, you could choose a long flowing dress to wear that would look pretty flying behind you in the photos. You could also choose between different settings and they would take your photo or make a video, depending on what package you purchased. From the pictures, you can see I wasn't too daring.

choose your flowy dresses/gowns and choice of packages

I have a little fear of heights, especially if there is nothing to prevent me from falling over the edge, so I'm afraid we only made it halfway to heaven in the picture below. ha! We did probably a half dozen settings but nothing too risky. It really was a gorgeous place though!

 

reflection in the water below

see what you're swinging out over!

such beautiful photo settings!

In Bali, 90% of the population in Bali are Hindu. All generations of the family live together. The property is not for sale; it just passes down through the generations. Even siblings families can live together. Ronnie asked our guide what the palm leaf decoration on the fronts of the cars was for. Yogi explained to us that twice a year they have a ceremony where they make offerings and pray for blessings on their cars. 

 

Twice a day, they pray for their cars and scooters. In the morning, they pray for blessings of safety on them, and in the evening they say prayers of thanksgiving. I read that Hindu's have 330 million dieties they pray to, so I guess they have one for their cars. However, Yogi did say there are a lot of car/scooter accidents. It would be miraculous if there weren’t because there are relatively few traffic lights. Mostly they just negotiate their way through intersections. Motorcycles are like water – they tend to just “flow” around cars that are stopped. Dogs get in the road and many of the roads are very narrow, especially for the amount of traffic they carry.

Re: offerings – there are tiny offerings to their "gods" and other objects of worship lying around pretty much everywhere - even in the streets. These are little square boxes made of palm leaves that hold flowers and sometimes even cigarettes or candies. I left my shoes in the photo of the one in the street to show size.

little altars

little offerings

Yogi also took us to a wood carving place. Again, the workers were sitting on the porch carving their designs. They use ebony, walnut, hibiscus, mahogany, teak and crocodile wood. They carve designs that have been handed down through the generations and they don't use any patterns. The finished carvings are shined with bees wax. They are very intricate but most of them are of their Hindu deities or related. None were appealing to me, but I could appreciate the craftsmanship.

skilled wood carvers hard at work

sample products

Our last stop of the day was at Teba Sari, a local open air restaurant. Our table was on the side with a view of the rice paddies. We enjoyed a meal of nasi goreng (rice) and chicken satay. The Indonesian people love spicy foods, so one needs to be cautious with the small dishes of condiments.

sate and nasi goreng

 

Teba Sari Resto

our table view with rice fields beyond

At that point, we were still about 1.5 hours from the ship. Our last stop was at a pharmacy. Ronnie showed the pharmacist a bottle of Azithromycin and she sold us another round of it for $8 in Indonesian currency – no prescription necessary. Unfortunately, they didn’t accept American currency or credit card, but thankfully we were able to exchange $8 in Rupiah for US dollars with our driver. 

Since we were spending the night in Bali port, the ship had some local entertainers come in for our show last night. It was a long but enjoyable day.