Bali Trip: Tanah Lot Temple and Making More Batiks

We moved from Nusa Dua in the South to Ubud farther North and stopped at Tanah Lot Temple along the way.  It wash't a long drive distance-wise, but with the two lane narrow roads and traffic everywhere it took several hours.  
The group at the entrance to Tanah Lot
Tanah Lot was a pretty temple, but I've been spoiled with empty Australian beaches so thought the people everywhere took a bit away.  We had some time to walk around the rocks and then explored the surrounding markets where we tried our hand at negotiating.
Luwak - the weird animal that eats and poops the Luwak coffee
Tanah Lot Temple
Tanah Lot Temple
My mom and I with the temple in the background
The temple with people crawling around
After checking into our beautiful hotel in Ubud, our guide walked us around the Ubud market.  That was thoroughly overwhelming, and my mom and I decided to head home for an early night.

The next day we went to another batik factory.  This time we started with a dyed fabric, which meant that the parts we stamped remained that colour.  After stamping, we got to pick a colour to dye the fabric.  It was really interesting to see all of the different colour variations people ended up with, and watching the workers throw piles of fabric into vats of bleach and then boil off the wax was fascinating.
Tjaps for stamping
Melting the wax to stamp with
My mom stamping on a light purple fabric
Me stamping on a red fabric
Bleaching the dyed fabric - my mom's purple fabric is on the right
Drying the bleached fabric
Dying my red bleached fabric turquoise 
Putting salts on the fabric to fade some spots out in the sun
Balinese puppy
Boiling off the wax on my mom's now-blue fabric
Pretty temple
Typical crazy traffic
After lunch, we decided to do some more shopping at the Ubud market.  We found it was easier to bargain with other people helping us, that way one person could listen to the first price while the other person did the conversion and figured out what we really should pay.  It also came in handy to have a currency converter app always ready on my phone.  We shopped the afternoon away, and then a few of us grabbed drinks near our hotel.  It was a fun way to end the day with some new crazy quilt friends.
Drinks with new crazy quilt friends


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