Similar to yesterday, Benoa is a port serving the island of Bali (yes, we are still on one of the many islands of Indonesia). However, rather than jumping on the standard “Learn About the Locals” tour bus, I am waiting until the late afternoon for a Silversea pre-scheduled world cruise event.

I don’t understand why Silversea feels the need to give presents and unique events to those passengers who take world cruises or grand voyages (a grand voyage is about 10 weeks, where a world cruise is about 20 weeks). But they do.

Today is a trip to Tanah Gajah, a resort in the town of Ubud on the other side of the the local city of Denpasar. You can tell they were worried about transportation, as right from the initial invitation it calls out how the buses could take as much as two hours each way to travel 40 km. Once on the bus you understand why. It was 40 km of endless cinder-block buildings built right on the one-lane road. Several times traffic police needed to hold back the other lane so the bus could make a left turn.

However, once we got there it was lovely. Standby for statues.

Just inside the front gate was a series of shrines to receive your welcome wishes.

The resort has lovely grounds. Seems there is about 20 hotel suites from which a guest can wander the facility and gain “wellness” by the method of your choosing. Rather than having 140+ world cruise passengers wander in and out of their double-classroom sized buildings, they offered many experience sites, like hawkers at a carnival. I visited the “laklak” (a coconut and flour confection) cooking stall.

Strangely, the four build-your-own-Bali-cocktail were more well attended. I wonder why. Leaving the initial grounds there were places for massage, calligraphy, bamboo weaving, palm reading, even dancing and silversmithing. I took a metal-working class in college, but it was 30 years ago.

It was kind of a Bali “renaissance festival”. No harm done, so it was fine. However, the meal afterwards was excellent. We all moved to the open-air feast hall.

I liked the ceiling decorations – braided rice stalks below LED lighting. Simple, but it worked.

Quick side story. As we ate we were serenaded by a lithophone band – kind of a stone xylophone – on an outdoor stage. Soon after we sat down a thunderstorm rolled thru. Without a word the band stopped and softly single-file paraded off the stage and out of sight. After twenty minutes the rain stopped and duckling-following-mother duck made their way back and started again. They were well practiced.

Our first show were by the local kids. I have mixed feelings ethically about children being part of paid entertainment, but I found it amusing how all the mothers were filming their kids like it was a school play.

Here is the statue used in the later performance.

I’m showing this now as the teen performance was in the dark. The resort plainly is not designed to support so many people at one time. It was a temporary outdoor stage lower than our eating floor, so only the front 10% had good views. And without good lighting I could not get decent photos without pushing my way up front and blocking other people’s views. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

They performed a scene from the Bhagavad Gita, the major Hindu mythological text. At the end, after the hero defeated the overlord (or whatever), they light the statue on fire. Looked impressive, but hard to photograph. Seems this event is part of the standard resort offerings (per their website). I have to admit, their picture of the food offered is better than any of mine.

As we left I stole a video of the performers in some better light as they escorted us to our buses. It’s not much…

A fun time was had by all.

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I’ve been enjoying origami classes during sea days. A month ago our instructor suggested the goal of folding 1000 cranes. He thought it would take 10 weeks and we did it in two. Silversea will mail them to a shrine in Hiroshima, Japan.