Ubud

An Oggo Oggo for the New Years Eve parade
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Our next stop in Bali was its cultural capital Ubud. It is famed for artists of all kinds, painters, dancers, carvers, chefs etc. As a tiny village set among verdant rice fields and ancient temples, it has developed a huge tourist industry over the years.

Maybe it was because there was a yoga conference in town but Ubud seems to have a very high influx of rich hippie tourists and expats, artist types with lots of money for lattes and designer clothes. Anyone who has read 'Eat, Pray, Love' recently knows it as the setting of the "Love" part of the book. We were trying to come up with an analogy for Ubud and Muskoka came to mind, as Ubud was unknown with no electricity on its two streets 30 years ago and now Prada and Gucci outlets share the streets with the local art shops.

Hippies, Gucci, New Years, arts, culture and a wedding

Children around their Oggo Oggo
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That said we definitely did discover Ubud's and Bali's charms. All the arts and crafts are wonderful. And then there's the vibrant Balinese culture. Much to our surprise upon arrival in Bali we were informed that our second day in Ubud fell upon Nyepi, aka Balinese New Year. Now the Balinese celebrate their new year a little different from the rest of us. The night before the new year all the children in the neighborhood parade floats of "Oggo Oggos", or demons, that they have created. There is then a parade with all the Oggo Oggos where the children hoist their huge and wondrous creations on the their backs while shouting at the top of their lungs to the beat of a Gamelan orchestra (Gamelan is a traditional Balinese orchestra involving only drums and gongs, the music is played everywhere on the island). The Oggo Oggos are then burned, the point of all this being to scare the evil demons away for the New Year. After seeing the great parade we prepared ourselves for New Years Day itself. This is celebrated ... with silence. Absolute silence and meditation. No one is allowed to leave their homes, use electricity or even eat. Ah we said, but surely this doesn't apply to tourists? Well apparently it does, although we were allowed to eat if we found a hotel that could feed us. With that knowledge in hand, we found an extra nice hotel with a pool bordering on rice fields and willing to cook fried rice for our 3 meals, and spent the very tough day of Nyepi poolside getting to know our fellow shut-ins/hotel guests. And at night the stars were amazing, as no one on the island was allowed lights so there wasn't any light pollution.

Getting close to a temple statue
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Other than Nyepi we spent a day biking around Ubud and it's environs, where we visited several temples which were up to 1000 years old. The environs really are beautiful, with terraced rice fields and steep gorges scattered about everywhere. While being given a guided tour of a temple, we were invited by a local guide to a Balinese wedding going on the next day. This was too good of an offer to pass up, so off to the wedding we went, all that was needed was to buy a small gift each for the bride and groom! Upon arrival we ended up being the only tourists. Now the wedding was quite different from what we are used to in the west. It takes place in the yard of a house, and basically the couple sit in front of the priest who rings a bell and makes offerings to the gods for about an hour and a half, while everyone else completely ignores the proceedings and chats with one another. No one is really dressed up except for the bride and groom, who really looked beautiful. So after an hour and a half of chatting to the groom's father and other guests, the food came out! It was a delicious home cooked feast and much to our embarassment we were offered food first, we guess we were honoured guests? It was really nice, for even though we were essentially wedding crashers everyone was genuinely happy to have us there and they made us feel exceedingly welcome. After the food the wedding ended quite abruptly and everyone went home, it was much simpler and less formal than weddings back home, though we are pretty sure that there are other less public stages to a Balinese wedding as well.

Oggo Oggos lining up for the parade
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So having witnessed the vibrant culture, natural beauty and incredible hospitality of the Balinese in Ubud, we definitely understood the fabled appeal of the island.