What a great time we had today with our guide/driver/friend Komang as we meandered through the very cute Ubud area of Bali, returning to the bone carver we saw 2 days ago to purchase a wonderful selection of bear, sea turtle, owl etc carvings to make into jewelry. The carver brought us into his studio.which consisted of .a floor with 3 people sitting on the floor…. with dremels and hand carving tools designing meticulous miniature artworks. While I watched they quickly converted my 23 carvings into pendants with sterling bails. (see pix below) Also are pix of the batik factories where the sounds of the antique wooden looms are like music as they weave and hum in unison
Our main purchase was a piece I had hoped to find but none of the carvings had spoken to us until this beautiful “Barong” came along, created by one of the master carvers in the village. The Barong in Balinese culture has similar duties to the Foo Dog…to protect and guard. I have a Barong pendant I wear on each and every one of ouir travels and have always wanted one to hang above our front door. We are pretty excited to have found one we both agreed on as each village has a different depicition of the Barong
A wonderful visit to the sacred monkey forest gave us the opportunity to get up close and personal with the Macuquacs and their recent brood of babies. There are over 200 monkeys in this wild troop of characters. They were very tame, eating out of our hands and tugging on our clothing for more bananas. Common sense here was the name of the game. Ignorant tourists that don’t understand animals..stay FAR AWAY…these monkeys are gentle but opportunistic as well. They read their “audience” like a book.
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