Tokyoahead - Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Ubud is a very touristy town as it seems on the first look. It is full with shops that sell huge paintings, carvings, handcrafted items, but it is a very old town that has a long history of art. Some buildings date back 600-800 years, most of the houses are old, with the traditional Balinese layout, surrounded by a high, decorated wall and a large gate. The details of the city are vast, and you do not know where to look first. You can spend about 3 days here only browsing through the shops in the center of the town, but months going to the nearby viallages, each specializing in different things such as wooden, stone or metal sculptures, kites or many other crafts.


The many details of this town ask you to walk slowly, and discover each of the hidden corners. be it narrow pathsways with unknown end, bright-green ricefields visible only through the backwindow of a shop and mystical entrances to private houses that seem more like a forgotten temple of a action movie.

The streets offer more to the eye, be it the merchants going from shop to shop and selling food to the shopkeepers, the stacked houses with their mix of modern and traditional elements or the suffed shops with their proud and friendly owners.

While some walls have only very basic ornaments, some others have very intricate carvings all over. They are, as one can see on construction sites, done directly on the wall. The many designs of guardians that are supposed to fend off evil spirits and other unwated things often show the same handful of topics, but the execution is always different and always interesting.

If you enter one of the hotels around the town, you discover hidden paradises with calm and relaxing elements, mixed with traditional statues and architecture.

For those who get up early, and due to the many roosters in every home it is hard to avoid, it is recommended to visit a market and see how the daily trade of food is done. The main items sold are vegetables, live animals and decorative offerings for the temples or shrines.

The live stock sold is mostly poultry of any kind and age and piglets. However, you can find the roasted insects cought in ricefields or smoked fish.

There is an open section of the market, and a building where the more weather-sensible items are sold such as rice, spices, packaged items and household goods.

Many rice-based readymade dishes are sold, often sweetened with palm sugar, Banana leaves for steaming and decoration are sold in neatly wrapped bundles.

There are many temples in the area of Ubud, some quite large and richly decorated, asking for a donation from every visitor to maintain the gilded ornaments, intricate carvings and paintings. The better the economy of a village, the nicer its temple.

Every single building or shrine in the complex has a very special meaning, and offerings to this temple will bring good for business, talents, health or other specific issues.

Although many homes feature the same elements as temples do, they are much more detailed and concentrated in the temples.

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Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

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