My guidebook told me the place Gusti, our driver took us to, Goa Gaja or 'Elephant Cave' is near Bedulu, below the road of east Teges. I didn't know quiet what to expect, so I read a little bit more... it's a 10th century carved cave, that was rediscovered in 1923. Brilliant. And it was. Except I had to wear a Sorong. Everybody who visit's temple's has to wear one. Here are some of my favourite shots from the visit.
This used to be on telly when I was a kid and then later, a Prodigy tune. What does this gritty docu-video actually tell us though? Well, in brief summary kids, use extreme care when playing out.
But looked at in more detail at the film, there is a lot more to be read than first meets the eye. Imagine if the boys name was John Conner.
We instantly assume we can trust Charlie. No, not the nasty drug, but the talking, ginger, gurning champion cat who can balance whilst walking on it's front paws. We think because of his tricks he is our link with reality here, our earth rod. He seems unusually honourable as far as cats go. Much more dog like in many ways, a boy's best friend. His frame rate is too high, but he looks after the boy. A good unit
Alas, much as you'd like to, you shouldn't trust Vera with her back door temptation's. Vera is too tall to be hanging around with small boys. Probably drives a red Ford Fiesta as well. Dave has the basket, which could be holding anything. Even though he looks like he could just be the victim in this scenario don't trust him, he is with Vera. They are working together.
Seemingly glossed over, we don't even set eyes on him, is the milkman. He is a big concern in terms of the future Conner family situation. He spends ages talking to the mother. Is he asking her questions or hitting on her? Either is bad. It is possible he is a Terminator.
Equally important, if Mum was brunette when she is at the door talking to the milkman, but blonde only shortly later on in the film, something is up. If, say when your down the park, she is wearing a totally different outfit all of a sudden, it could be more than your average matrix glitch. She is clearly disguising herself and has something to hide. If the milkman shows up at the picnic, it's not just coincidence. Take cover, throw the cat in and let them all fight it out.
I'm only telling you all this for your own safety.
Another night out in Ubud with some traditional style Balinese entertainment, a performance of Wayang Kulit. I guess you could call these shadow puppets "Lo-fi cinema". The shadows are cast on to a screen using a kerosene lamp. Although there are a number of people behind the screen, only one controls all the shadow puppets. The others play traditional gamalan or drums to add drama as the leather puppets dance in front of the lamp and a narrator tells the story. Amazingly, he does this in a number of languages, including the use of traditional Ubud style phrases such as "You need taxi?"
So, yeah, ok.... I am still working my way through the pictures from Bali, but I am also out taking more photographs too. If I don't start adding these up I will just get such a big back log.
These photos then, are shots I have taken at Clapham Common with the kite rig. The kite gets pretty far up... Apparently I have about 300m of line and it was getting close to the end.
Look carefully and you should be able to spot Battersea Power Station and a little tiny version of the Gherkin! Thats about 3 1/2 miles from Clapham Common just to give you some idea of the range.
One evening in Ubud we strolled the relatively short distance from our villa to the resteraunt Laka Leke for a buffet and some local style entertainment. Laka Leke apparently means hide away. We did get their early and it was quiet until suddenly bus loads of tourists arrived. Apparently they were not aware of the meaning of the name.
The other tourists had arrived on the promise of dance performance of a local traditional dance called the "Kecak" (otherwise known as the Ramayana Monkey Chant). You could understand why there was such a big crowd when over 100 performers made their way on to the open stage.
Kecak, is a form of Balinese musical drama, where the dancers percussively chant "cak" in a trance-inducing fashion whilst waving their arms around in the air. I have to admit, I found it very difficult to get good photos. Lots of moving fire in the dark made it tricky, but luckily they switched on some lights at the end and you could see the amazing costumes more clearly.
News to me. This is because I'm all learnt up and edumacted, me is! Check it :-
"Julian Davies was educated at Queen Elizabeth Cambria School,
Carmarthen, and the universities of Bath and Kent. He read Applied
Biology at the University of Bath before going on to the University of
Kent where he awarded a PhD for his thesis on the biological response
to climate change in Antarctica. "
Just added up a handful of pictures of things I found interesting as we wandered around the small town of Ubud. I couldn't really group these shots up with others. No crazy photography techniques here. No hdr, no pano's, no kites. Just simple shots of things like people whizzing around on mopeds.
Kids playing on the out on the street. When they saw me taking photos with my big camera, they were begging to have their photo taken as well.
Collections of batik cloths for sale in the local shops. I know my mum will love these.
There are more shots too, just click on any of the shots above to be taken to the gallery with the other.
Some more pictures from the beautiful grounds of our first hotel, Alam Shanti. At night, you would find some stuff around the gardens, such as this Buddha statue, lit up.
This pool was literally shared between the room we had and 1 more room. Getting early morning photos of it looking this nice was actually quiet easy.
Another early morning shot of the undisturbed pool. So peaceful. The only noise around here was the crickets.
This was the hotels main reception. No hustle or bustle. Not even walls. No big crowds or fuss. It was even rare to see the other guests here.
Finally, the outside of our little apartment room at night. It really was a little bit of paradise.
Between our Hotel and the main town of Ubud, there is a forest that is inhabited by over 300 long tail macaques monkeys.
These cheeky little beggers are so funny to observe and would happily go through your bags or pockets looking for bananas.
For the first time ever in my life I realized what it really meant to have "a monkey on my back". One of them actually jumped up on my shoulder. A little later Yati had the same thing happen too. When I tried to shoo the monkey from Yati's should I was shown a mouth full of teeth. I showed him my teeth back but he didn't want to move.
Some of the monkeys were actually doing some stuff that looked incredibly rude. Have a look around in the gallery shots for the ones I have animated for a bit of a laugh.
You may remember a little while ago I was talking about stealing an elephant. Well Yati in with her new capacity as wife/sensibleness advisor had already decided against this. On the plus side, she did agree that riding an elephant would be much fun, so we did. There are far too many pics to put up here, but do look through the gallery where you can find our lovely new friend, Laura taking us for a spin around Bakas Elephant Tour.
I have never been on an elephant before, it really is something else. As you can probably tell, I did not take all the photos in the gallery. Some were taken by the elephant handlers (all bought and paid for), some by Yati, and one or two by me. I'm not taking the credit, just breaking the news.
I have never had a lean up against such a big animal before this shot. Laura was such a nice, sweet, hard-working lady elephant but I think it is fair to say, she has a big fat arse though. To big for my suitcase.
3 1/2 hrs after leaving KLIA, we arrived at Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport. Our hotel had arranged a driver, Gusti, to come and pick us up and so we headed north to Ubud. Shattered from the journey, all we wanted to do was shower, settle and rest for a while. What an amazing place to do it. We were staying at Alam Shanti which is in a quiet area just outside Ubud. We simply loved it there. Our apartment room was breath taking, as I am sure you can tell from these panoramas.
Even the extended bathroom was a beautiful sight to see. The open show had views over the paddy fields, as a Venus like statue poured water on you from a jug.
At the other end of the bathroom, there was a decorative stone garden, which I think was there more for aesthetic rather than anything functional.
So we are back and now I am sorting through the massive pile of photos I took while away in Bali and Gili Trawangan with Yati. We had a great time, did lots of cool things and met some really nice people on the way.
Late night / early start with a 13 hr flight and I was a bit zombie but for me the holiday all started here, in the airport in KL. This is when I realized I was away from it all.
Not much blogging going on here at the moment... I am in Bali on honeymoon with my beautiful wife.
I must have taken 2000 photo's already and they are going to take some sorting through when i get back to the UK. Probably a 12 month project in itself as we are just over half way through the first week of two away.
Bali is a truely amazing place... here is a little taster just so you can see how paradise looks from our hotel room this morning.
For the last week or so I have been trying to get a Kite Arial Photography (or Kite Aided Photography) rig working. I bought the rig from Brookes, who are a US site, well known in the field of KAP. Unfortunately they only ship inside the US. You can buy their kit outside the US but I did the maths and it turns out that it would have cost me up to £200 more. A bit crazy for a £100 kite kit, so instead, I had it shipped to a friend in NY who sent it on to me (Thanks cousin Roman, your a star for that).
I have built the cradle for the camera, which is actually really clever. It dangles your camera about 100m away from the kite on the line. It has a servo that turns your camera 30' every 10 seconds and with the help of hacked firmware on my camera, CHDK, fires the trigger and takes a shot. This means when it is up in the air it is all automagic. The rig looks like this :-
When you buy the kit, they recommend your get very comfortable flying the kite before you go adding the camera rig to it. In particular, you need to get used to knowing how much wind will take the kite up. Not understanding could spell disaster for your camera. The kite I bought is a Flow Form 8, which flies well in winds above 9mph. They also do bigger kites, like the Flow Form 16 which is good for 7-20mph winds and the Flow Form 30 which is good for 6-15mph. BBC weather said the wind would be about 7mph when we went out today. This is a bit low for my kite, but I was pleased when I did get it airborne for a while.
It's all good practice. I have read it is best to practice with a water bottle as a dummy camera weight. I guess that will be the next phase. So watch out, Yann Arthus Bertrand, because it won't be long before I am taking shots from the air
