These are the pictures of the hotel I would have taken yesterday if it wasn’t for the rain. Also my breakfast this morning – with my name on it! In melon. Bless.

Today I went on a whole day tour of some of the local sights with Medde (I’m afraid I have no idea how he spells his name), the taxi driver who brought me from the airport yesterday. He is a nice man in his 50s with 4 children and 7 grandchildren, his own home temple and a regular yoga and meditation habit. The hotel organised the trip and said it would be around 850000 rupiahs. How much is that in pounds I asked? £47. OK, I can probably manage that. All their money has way too many zeros on the end. Even the menus seem to say things like ‘sandwich 30k’.

So I was picked up in the nicely air conditioned car and whizzed off for the local sights. Lots of taxis – as it’s so cheap, tourists mainly use them to get around if not in coach sized groups. The locals mainly use mopeds, some of which were being driven by 10 year olds. With their little brothers on the back.

To the monkey jungle. This is a holy site with three temples in it. The monkeys are macaques that have lived there for ever. They are fed regularly and appear to be mainly indifferent to humans.

Then a couple of shopping opportunities. To the woodcarvers where all the actual carvers except one were at lunch. I managed to restrain my urge to buy an 8 ft tall windswept Lord Shiva but did buy a rather nice head of Buddha. I’m not sure how I’m going to get it home.

Then to a coffee plantation where I got to taste a range of teas and coffees. All of them quite sugared. Also saw this lady roasting coffee beans the old fashioned way.

Then to a rather new orchid / butterfly / bonsai garden. The orchids were nice, the bonsai beautifully done but I didn’t see a butterfly.

Local waterfall and traditional rice terraces. Both rather over exploited with cafes, souvenir shops etc.

And finally to the Tirta Empul,a temple built over some natural springs and devoted to purification.

Faith is very important around here – as I started to explain yesterday. As well as important temples like this one, village temples and personal ones in peoples gardens, there are also smaller ones like the little one in a corner of a field dedicated to the Rice God. There were also small offerings around all over the place – including outside the grocers with the atm, on individual steps inside the temple and outside peoples houses.

After all this I had a swim in the infinity pool, has dinner and went to bed.