19th February 1992 Day 214

The Diary
We decided to hire a bemo to take us to Tampaksiring and Gunung Kawi. After not having much luck getting a public bemo we haggled with a driver and agreed on a fee of 4,500rp each.

Driving through Indonesia has to be experienced. Overtaking consists of tooting your horn and going for it. The assorted animals in the middle of the road, the people walking on the side and the traffic coming in the opposite direction will all get out of the way. Or so the theory goes.


At Tampaksiring, as usual, we were expected to cover our legs and wear a temple scarf. I was wearing long trousers, Beth had her sarong and we'd all brought our scarves. Good job, because they wanted to charge us 5,000rp. I think the temple was to the holy spring of Tirta Empul. We weren't particularly impressed. Bali has running water everywhere anyhow.

Next it was Gunung Kawi and our temple scarves alone were enough to get us in. We ignored all the usual sellers and beggars and made our way down the steps. Yet again we weren't really impressed. The burial towers were carved into rock and although it probably was a great feat, they just weren't very interesting to look at.

Back at Ubud for lunch we chatted to an old couple from the Isle of Wight. They were taking 3 months to travel and only had a week or so left. They'd been caught in a blizzard in NZ and her luggage had failed to turn up in Bali. They've had more bad luck than us in our 7 months of travelling. Well, Oz did get run down by a car.


And not much else happened.