The second half of the day will be less of a pleasure, with the rain setting in quite brutally as we begin the climb into the mountains.
We stop as best we can on the side of the road, first under a tree which will be far from doing the trick, the rain intensifying, we cross the road towards an empty shop to shelter ourselves properly.
Continuing once the rain had calmed down, we climbed up to Kedisan, where a superb viewpoint awaited us (Danau Batur, right at the foot of the volcano).
To get your bearings, here is the actual map I had:
And then, be careful, there is abuse in this temple, having our sarongs we thought we would be safe but there you go, after having paid our entrance tickets, we are ordered to go under a kind of covered playground where tables are lined up with fabrics used for sarongs among other things but also for turbans, which as a man I am forced to wear, in addition for each of us a colored ribbon to wear around the waist (in addition to the sarong that we were already wearing).
All this to take something like 30,000 Rp from us again, which is more than the entrance ticket! (which was 20,000 Rp each) And the worst thing is that it's ONLY rental!
That is to say, wear it for a few minutes while visiting (i.e. €2…). If you have nothing against tradition, the prohibitive price is all the more difficult to accept because once inside, you will come across a few rare tourists, but not all of them had turbans and other items… Only a sarong which is actually obligatory regardless of the temple (and even the “rental” is normally included in the price of the ticket…).
Knowing that the “playground” in question is accessible via an entrance sign placed next to where you pay the ticket, while the temple is opposite, on the other side of the road, so there is no need to follow this sign… (we did it because we thought it was a sort of museum and we were kindly encouraged to go there…), at that price we could have bought them outright, Jitima was angry and got relatively angry (which is rare…) when we brought them their pieces of fabric…
And there, a real challenge to return to the hotel, on a mountain road that we don't know... at night.
This one was also dotted with holes, what's more, when it wasn't the rain that was getting in intermittently... Not to mention the almost non-existent signs... In short; it was a long time...
It took us a good 3 hours to get there! Longer for me, actually, since I'm the one driving and I'm really stressed out!
We were also alone, we hardly came across any other vehicles or houses, sometimes really lost because they are really angry with the signs, as if it was obvious that such a place is in such a direction...
As for the map I had, the scale was too small and tended to mislead me a little... By dint of asking for directions, after probably a detour, I don't know where (by going back down too far in particular), we will end up arriving, back in Ubud without any problem to report, phew!!
