Exploring the Balinese countryside!

Sep 28

Sep 28 Exploring the Balinese countryside!

I celebrated my 12th birthday in Bali, Indonesia. On my birthday we decided to do tour around the Bali countryside.

After being picked up at our Airbnb, the first stop was a coffee plantation in Ubud. Ubud is one of the well known cities in Bali for it’s temples and being the cultural capital of the island. The coffee plantation was really cool because, not only could you see the coffee plants and the Lewaks (the cute creatures that eat and “process” the civet beans), but you could see other interesting plants like mangosteen (a plant that looks like garlic on the inside but is sweet), salak or snakeskin fruit (a fruit that looked like the outside was made of snakeskin and the tree that it grew on was very spiky), giant passion fruit (it was really big), the cinnamon tree and many more interesting plants and herbs.

After eating a wonderful breakfast at the plantation and trying different teas and coffees (made of the different plants that grew there), we drove to the nearby volcano Mount Batur. Mount Batur had a recent eruption in 2000 that destroyed many houses and blackened the land (as you can see in the picture). To the right of the volcano there is a hot water spring lake and to the right of that there is Bali’s oldest village.

When starting the bike tour we each picked our own bike, except for Madeline, she rode on a kid seat with my mother. Then we set off. The biking was fairly smooth except for the occasional bump. At one point the tour guide stopped behind, what he called, a ‘chicken hotel’ to look at some really big spiders. The guide grabbed one of the spiders and let us hold it. (Madeline was very brave and the first one to hold it!) Although huge and scary looking, the gold web spider, was harmless!

Along the tour we rode past rice fields, villages, and temples. One really cool temple was at the top of a tree that was 300 years old! To get to the top, you had to climb the tree, there were no ladders. It was so interesting to see the country side living in the small villages. Kids going to school, old ladies drying the rice and working the rice fields, etc. We finished the tour at the Tibumana waterfall, where if you wanted to, you could swim around at the bottom. The tour was run by one big family of cousins and uncles (there were 7 uncles) and aunts that all lived in one big family complex, which is where we had lunch.

The food that they offered were foods from Bali and was made at the family farm (half of the family worked at the farm and the other half ran the tour). It was amazing!!! I got four plate-fulls piled with the delicious food. In the end I ate thirteen Sates (chicken on a stick which was rolled in peanut sauce)!!! After eating, all of the kids in the family came and sang happy birthday for me and gave me a cake. How nice of them!!! When we were leaving and saying goodbye to everyone, my dad (since he was doing a meditation class in Ubud) left in a scooter and we left in the car back home.

I had an amazing 12th birthday and I would recommend the tour to everyone going to Bali!!!

Click here to go Jegeg tours website (that was the tour that we used)