Day 109 - Goa Gajah and Pentaransasih Temples and the Kecak Fire and Trance Dance

Today was full of stuff to do. We grabbed a bemo in the middle of the city to get to the Goa Gajah and Pentaransasih Temples. Haggling here is a way of life like it is in every other South East Asian country I've been to but here it's different. Here they ask WAY too much and don't back down easily. They always want at least 4 times more than what something is worth. So I finally negotiated 10000Rp to get there instead of the 100000 he had asked for.

The Goa Gajah is called the elephant cave temple which is believed to be Buddist and was discovered in the 1920s. The carvings on the outside of the cave were spectacular. As we were walking to the second temple, Pura Penataransasih, about 500m from the first temple it was so hot I was dripping sweat by the time we got there. It was past noon and it was boiling! It was about 35-40C. Unfortunately this place wasn't too impressive as there were a lot of areas that looked abandoned and filthy. It wasn't up kept at all. The big thing about this temple was the large bronze bell that it housed. Unfortunately it wasn't up kept well either.

We grabbed a bemo back to the city and bargained a ride down from 50000Rp to 10000Rp though it should have cost 5000Rp. Damned foreigner prices! And yet again, we were asked if we were single and automatically made up fake husbands that were waiting for us at the hotel.

The Kecak dance is different because all the music is vocal and consists of a choir of about 50 men sitting in concentric circles, swaying, standing up and lying down as the story develops. The men were singing different chorus lines as the players of the story of Ramayana danced through them. It was absolutely amazing.

The second part of this was really quite unexpected. They put a pile of coconut shells in the middle of the ground doused them with kerosene and sent them on fire. This was the beginning of the Fire Trance dance where through chanting a guy is dressed up like a horse and puts himself in a bit of a trance and starts to kick around the coconuts that have just been set on fire with his bare feet. It was quite insane. He feet were black by the end of it all. Bali is brilliant!