Day 3: Seminyak, Bali

Monday, May 23, 2016

Today's Highlights:

    -Surfing Lessons!

    -Accidental nap

    -Wandering Kuta

    -Tanah Lot Temple

What a day! We started our trip out in a busy beach town near the airport for one main reason. It turns out, a lot of the activities we've planned are for early morning hours (like crack of dawn wee morning hours for some of them). We've been trying to figure out what to call these. Our AM Adventures? Our AM-ventures? Our Sun Salutations? Anyhow, today's was a first for me: Surfing Lessons! Hey-o!  🙌🏄🏽🙌

Though Rob was clearly better at it than me, we both succeeded and it was so fun! We tried getting a picture with both of us up but failed miserably multiple times before it worked (at least, one of us did. Let's see if you can guess who from these pics).

I like to call this one, "Where'd she go?"

Tipping!

Giving Up:

Almost there....

And finally:

Nailed it. Kind of.

Turns out, surfing is super tiring! By the end, we had paddled so hard and gotten wrecked so many times that neither of us could push ourselves up anymore. But man, what a blast! Our surfing instructor's name was Wayan (again) and he was awesome! He even had Rob takin on big mama "green water" waves by the end. We ended with a quick dip in the hotel pool and I remembered why pools and tired traveling go really well together. 

Our plan after surfing was to go shower, get dressed and then explore the busy beach town. Parts A & B went as planned. But then we accidentally saw the bed and in a zombie-like manner, laid down just to rest for a second....

Two hours later, we woke up. And even then, we still had to FIGHT like mad to escape the clutches of that amazingly comfortable king-size miracle. This 12-hour time change is KILLIN us! But after much pep-talking and psyching ourselves up, we got up and went out to explore! Visiting shops, Indonesian lunch, and almost getting run down by scooters  about 25 times made it a pretty exciting afternoon. 

This cute guy above let us into his shop and taught us all about different religious types of worship. He's holding a "singing bowl" which when you rub a leather stick around it makes a ringing sound that gets pretty loud. If you hold it close to your face/body it rids you of negative energy and/or sickness. It's crazy, as he rang it and then held it close to us, I could feel the bowls vibrations. So cool!

We finished the night visiting Tanah Lot, a Hindu temple on the coast. Apparently it's a popular destination for sunset so it was lucky that we happened to show up right around that time! It was such a beautiful spot and although we couldn't walk up to the temple itself, we admired from afar.

 At one point, we were told to wash our faces with holy water and then were blessed with rice on the forehead and a flower behind the ear. It was an experience for sure!

Rob thought it would be funny to have me pose for a picture with the pretty scenery. I quickly learned his ulterior motives.

Our driver's name was Gusti and we spent the whole two hours in the car asking him question after question about Hindu life and culture. Well, except for the half hour when we passed out in the backseat. Here are a couple things we learned:

-Hinduism believes in one God, but he takes on many forms/manifestations. That's where you see all the different looking Gods sitting cross-legged like Brahma the creator of life, Vishnu the upholder of life, and Shiva the destroyer of life. There are a ton more, many with different animal heads. There's even a God that looks over "taksi" drivers, named Pasu Pati (Gusti made sure to tell us about how important he is). 

-Each family should make offerings every day to show their devotion. These offerings are made of fruit, flowers, cake and you can add more items if you want to show extra respect. We see these offerings everywhere, on the ground in front of shops, on the dashboards of taxis and shuttles, even at our hotel check in desk. 

Cool stuff! Anyway, We got back to our hotel at about 7:30pm and almost immediately fell asleep. Yep, at 7:30pm! But I'm not even ashamed. The only downside was waking up at 1:30 this morning with a very confused brain that wouldn't go back to sleep.