Gianyar, Temesi and the Monkey Forest

Today was our only full day in Ubud and so we had a lot to fit in!

We started the day with a look around Gianyar market, the second biggest in Bali.  Gianyar, one of the most populous regencies (districts) of Bali is (Ubud aside) not particularly touristy, and the market reflects this.  Our guide took us to every corner of the market, but in over an hour of exploring, we failed to find a single I Love Bali t-shirt.

We did however find an awful lot of chickens, bananas, rice crackers and flowers.  And what do all of these items have in common?  They are all used in offerings which Balinese Hindus make at their temples and to bless their homes and businesses.  In fact, most of the items for sale at the market seem to be tied up in some way with religion.

Though an interesting experience in its own right, the reason for our visit to the market was to see where all of the ingredients for our next activity – a Balinese cooking class – were sourced from.  I had assumed we’d be buying our own ingredients in fact, but it turns out that we were there too late for that – all of the best produce is sold soon after the market opens at 4am.

Our cooking class took place in a traditional Balinese house compound in the village of Temesi, half an hour’s drive to the SE of Ubud.

We started cooking at 11am, and it’s a good job that we did because the menu was extensive and we didn’t tuck into our creations until well after 1:30.  On the menu:

• Soup Gedang Mekuah – a spicy chicken soup made with green (young) papaya
• Tempe Manis – fermented soy beans fried in a sweet and spicy sauce.  Our favourite, and absolutely delicious.  Reminded me of Chinese crispy shredded beef.
• Gado Gado – mixed vegetables (in our case, carrots, string beans, cabbage and bean sprouts) served with peanut sauce
• Corn fritters – deep fried, sweetcorn fritters
• Pasan Be Basih – Fish (in our case tuna) wrapped in a banana leaf, steamed and finally grilled
• Sate Ayam – Chicken satay
• Bubuh Injin – Black rice pudding, served with coconut milk

After lunch we were taken next door, to the Yayasan Masa Depan (Bali Kids Future Foundation).  This is a volunteer-ran community school teaching English to the village kids.  In exchange for smiles and a lot of fun, we were tasked with teaching some English to the students.  A potentially daunting task perhaps, but we weren’t the first to be invited to do this, and so the kids knew the routine already:

First we played a game of Pictionary.  Kit and I would draw a picture up on the white board, and the first kid to stick his or her hand up would get to name whatever we had drawn (in English of course).  If they got it right, they would come to the front and write it up on a board, and that would earn their team a star.

Through some careful orchestration, we were able to keep the game close, and at 5 – 5, a tie-break was required.  I wanted this to be a challenging one, and suggested ladybird.  Do they even have ladybirds in Bali, and if they do, what would be the chances of these Kids knowing the English word for it?  Well… how wrong could I be?!  As soon as we stood aside to reveal the picture, every single hand went up, and we soon had a classroom full of children jumping up and down (with their hand in the air of course), shouting “ladybird” over and over again at the tops of their voices!!

We couldn’t possibly choose a winner from that rabble, so I picked one boy and one girl, gave them both a pen and they were in a race to see who could write “ladybird” up on the board the fastest.

After the game, the kids fired a few simple questions at us (what is your name? what is your favourite colour?), and we did the same back to them.  The were all aged between 8 and 11, but have only been attending classes for a little over a year, so weren’t really up to conversational English yet.  One word they certainly do know however is “thank you”, and after we’d wrapped up and taken some group pictures, we both had our hands eagerly shaken by every one of the 30 children, each one of which gave us a very energetic and seemingly heartfelt “thank you” for our time.

It was a really great way to finish our visit to Temesi, and an experience we will never forget.

Mid-afternoon we were driven back to Ubud and dropped off at the city’s most popular attraction: the Monkey Forest.  Although I had expected a tourist trap, the Monkey Forest is actually well worth a visit.