tourism at large // pura luhur uluwatu + some monkeys

Pura Luhur Uluwatu is the epically famous Uluwatu Temple in the south of Bali on the Bukit Peninsula where there are some pretty insane waves, tourists with zinc all over their faces, and tons of mopeds you can rent that may or may not work.   This is one of the 9 directional temples designed to protect Bali from some mean spirits...the kind you really don't want hanging around.  At sunset we pull up on our not so trusty moped which at this point doesn't go uphill too well, and almost get swiped by one of the dozens of tourist busses.   Dori hops off the moped, and runs up to the main entrance to pay for admission...immediately getting hustled by these dudes selling us bags of peanuts to keep all the temple monkeys off our gear...the monkeys are notorious for being crafty little thieves. The guys decide we need 4 bags of peanuts, which is really 3 bags too many and tell us to just go ahead and throw the entire bag of peanuts, plastic and all to the monkeys when they try to steal your sunglasses....an eco-tour basically.   We get the bags, but completely refuse to toss an entire plastic bag of peanuts at the monkeys.  

So we enter this beautiful place, and this one man is totally focused on us getting to the Kecak dance (which starts in two hours...we tell him we're on it, and wait for another group to pass by so he can hustle them).  We walk around a bit, totally lost, and start to follow the herd.  We find ourselves on this insane staircase over a cliff, where every single person on the cliff staircase is taking a selfie.  So we take a selfie.  After the staircase of selfies we wander to another cliff corridor that is a total chaotic and insane monkey feeding frenzy.  Literally hundreds of people hucking their bags of peanuts at the monkeys...I am totally weirded out by this so I start taking photos of the people's monkey interactions, and then find myself taking a few images of the monkeys...I mean they're pretty irresistible, and I have never taken a photo of a monkey before, especially of one sitting two feet from me eating on a bag of peanuts.  I immediately hate myself for it...but then I forgive myself.  After we leave the hallway of monkeys, we enter the amphitheater where hundreds of us tourists wait to watch the Kecak dance.  We watch it, are mystified by it, love it, and take way too many photos of it.  We'll show you a few in the next post.