Bali: Exotic Mix of Serene Temples, Lush Resorts, Rich History

Day 53, 2025 Grand World Voyage

Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025; Bali, Indonesia.

Bali is just as magical and mystical as you might imagine. It’s also packed with traffic, hot and at this time of year, has frequent and fierce rain storms. Let me just say that I have no idea how we never once saw Julia Roberts sweating in the movie Eat, Pray, Love. The magic of movies, I guess.

There’s no way around the fact that the picturesque spots in Bali are not near the port of Benoa. We arrived accompanied by roaring jet skis from nearby resorts and cargo and tanker ships. Tours face a drive of at least an hour and frequently more to reach the postcard-perfect sites. As a result, there aren’t many four- or five-hour tours, my sweet spot.

During my first visit here in 2017, I joined two friends for an arts and crafts tour to the Ubud district, where we saw batik dying, wood carving, silver making and coffee roasting. We visited a waterfall, a local home compound and the Balinese Hindu Desa temple.

In 2018, a friend and I traveled to downtown Denpasar, the capital, for a walking food tour – one of my all-time cruise highlights. Our driver said tourists never request drop-offs in the city center. We were glad we did.

Today I went in a different direction, on an all-day tour to the eastern side of Bali. Local dancers and musicians greeted us as we left the ship.

Our tour started with a 90-minute drive through heavy traffic on narrow roads. The drive was mainly in typical Bali urban areas, with lots of small establishments selling everything from tires to concrete statues.

Our first stop was the Klungkung Palace in Semarapura, the smallest of Bali’s regencies, a type of administrative district. In the center is the Bale Kembang, a pavilion “floating” in a moat of waterlilies. By late morning the air was hot and humid, and we gathered in whatever shade was available. Other passengers reported heavy rainstorms closer to the port, but we escaped them.

Lunch was at one of dozens of lush resorts dotting the coast. Our open-air dining area remained cool enough with breezes from the ocean. As is typical on these tours, we served ourselves from a buffet of chicken and fish, each in its own sauce, with rice, vegetables and fruit. A cold beer washed it all down.

Next was Tenganan, the oldest village in Bali and now open for tourist visits. Our guide said we were extremely lucky in seeing a number of water buffalo wander through the village.

Vendors at a few tables sold arts and crafts, but otherwise there wasn’t much sign of life beyond the chickens and roosters that wandered the streets. It serves as a tourist attraction now, with most people appearing to live outside the compound. We did see lots of roosters, hens, chicks and a lazy cat.

I managed to get a drive-by photo of dozens of monkeys hanging around one temple entrance, and we stopped for roadside for photos of rice terraces. Everywhere were small shrines and offerings on the sidewalk.

We ended the tour at Pura Goa Lawah, one of Bali’s six key sea temples. Designed to protect the island from evil spirits and sea dangers, it also is known as the Bat Cave Temple due to the thousands of bats that inhabit a cave behind the temple.

I wore long pants today, knowing that temples would require women’s knees to be covered. But not to take a chance, everyone in our tour donned the colorful sarongs offered, with local women tying them in the proper way.

I was as captivated by the locals who came to present offerings and pray. Most Balinese are Hindu, in contrast to the whole of Indonesia, which is mainly Muslim.

While we were away for the day, about a thousand members of our crew’s families came on board the ship. Some live in Bali and some traveled many hours by car and ferry from Java. Most of us declined cabin service for the day so our cabin stewards would have the day off. As much as I enjoyed the day touring Bali, I was disappointed that I missed seeing so many joyous reunions.