After a short 3 and a half hour flight from Perth we landed, jumped into a taxi and arrived at our hotel, U Paasha Seminyak. I booked U Paasha Seminyak due to it's amazing location on Eat Street, in the centre of the town. We were greeted at the taxi door and helped with our bags up into reception.
Check in was wonderfully quick and before we knew it we were in our new home.
Laid on the bed was a letter explaining that the following day was the Balinese Nyepi Day, which meant that we had to stay in the hotel for 24 hours. Luckily the hotel had arranged a programme of movies to be shown throughout the day, yoga classes on the roof and buffets in the rooftop restaurant. More on Nyepi day later.
As soon as I'd dropped my bags by my bed I ran up to the 5th floor and on to the roof to find the pool...
I was not disappointed, a beautiful pool with views to die for.
After a quick dip we head out to explore Seminyak before everything calmed down for Nyepi Day...
Offerings to the Hindu gods outside of the hotel. In Bali each day the women make offerings which are placed in shrines on the outside of their homes, or sometimes on the street floor. They can be anything from a small palm leaf with some flowers and rice to elaborate offerings filled with money, eggs, coconut and so on.
Ogoh Ogoh are made in each village in the lead up to Nyepi, on the eve of Nyepi day they are carried through the streets during the Pengrupukan ritual, and locals try to make as much noise as possible to warn off evil spirits and demons. They are carried down to the beach and traditionally burnt, followed by lots of dancing, eating and drinking, again to warn off evil spirits. Apparently the best place to watch the procession is in Kuta.
We walked from our hotel to Petinget temple, where the local people were preparing for Nyepi day. It was amazing to watch them carry all their offerings through the temple, they then loaded into vans to head to Kuta for the evening.
We then wandered back along Seminyak beach watching lots of learner surfers trying to catch a wave or two
It was then back to the hotel for dinner, as most places had shut early for Nyepi day. I had an extremely cultural panini, washed down with a mojito before jumping back in the pool to chill out.
The next morning I woke up bright and early, I head up to the rooftop pool and watched the end of the Nyepi day yoga class (I didn't fancy getting up at 5am to join in), before having a morning swim. Nyepi is a day for self reflection and silence, there is a total ban on travel and work in Bali, the roads are closed and there are no flights in or out of the island. It's a fascinating festival, which I am terrible at explaining, but there's a really neat article about Nyepi Day on bali.com it's worth a read especially if you plan on visiting Bali. It was actually really nice to be stuck in the hotel for 24 hours, I managed to grab two sun loungers and only got up to swap my finished book for a new one and to jump in the pool.
(sorry for the dodgy photo!)
The lack of light across the island meant that we were treated to an incredible sunset with buildings creating perfect silhouettes against the bright colours. When the sun went down we had a real treat, more stars than I have ever seen in my life, I wasn't alone in thinking lying in the rooftop pool would be the perfect place to watch them.
The perfect start to our Bali trip.
x
