Bali Day 3

On day 3 we went to this "Barong and Keris Dance" in Batubulan. This is a story of the battle between the good (Barong) and the evil (Rangda). The play was very abstract and even with the brochure explaining the storyline with us, we had trouble understanding it. The story began with a monkey and a tiger becoming good friends and then three men appeared and their children were killed by the tiger and they got angry and attacked the tiger which was helped by the monkey and one of the men got his nose cut off by the monkey. I have no idea what is the whole point of this beginning act and what it's got to do with the whole story. But hell, all myths have weird beginnings, like Ling Yue said.

Anyway, the real story then began. It was all very confusing with the many characters like Dewa Kunti, Patih (prime minister), Rangda, Sahadewa, God Siwa, Kalika, Barong... Oh yeah, and their servants. So first the servants of Dewi Kunti wanted to meet Patih and the servants of Rangda changed into a witch and entered the servants of Dewi Kunti and Sahadewa came up and Dewi Kunti wanted to sacrifice Sahadewa and a witch entered Dewi Kunti and another witch entered Patih and Sahadewa became immortal... Erm... Let's not talk about the detail. In short, Barong is good guy, Rangda is bad guy, Barong killed Rangda. There!

We also went to place called Kintamani. It was a hill situated opposite of one of the volcanos in Bali - Batur. We had lunch and took a few pictures.

The volcano Batur. It's only sleeping...

There was a lake beside the volcano. And some houses.

The people there were very scary. They would approach you, pester you, beg you, do anything to make you buy their goods. Here is one picture of Ling Yue having no mercy and ignoring the poor souls.

All the entrance to their buildings are like this. Very narrow and as if it's chopped into half.

This is... erm... another temple which is don't remember where. They all look the same to me. From left, Keng, Zi Lin, KC and Lao Ann.

I would highlight that if not because of Lao Ann the great entertainer, we would be bored stiff during the long hours of bus-rides. And also, credits should be given to his co-entertainers such as ChouDe, YoYo, XiaoMing etc etc...

Lao Ann looking like Conan from the Detective Conan comic.