The Three Stooges Visit Tanah Lot Temple

Today the Long Island Girls decided to venture out alone with our driver Eddie to visit the beautiful Tanah Lot Temple which stands on a rocky island just off the southwest coast of Bali. One of Bali's most sacred sea temples, Tanah Lot is dedicated to the guardian spirits of the sea. The word Tanah is interpreted as a reef looking like gili or isle. Lot or Lod  means the sea. So Tanah Lot translates as the small island floating on the sea. The temple itself is said to be guarded from evil by the sea snakes that inhabit the caves below.

Once again the drive through traffic was as exciting as an amusement park ride, especially from the front seat.  We arrived at the temple and were in awe of the sheer beauty of the structure which rises from the sea, waves crashing around the rocks, thankful for the sea breeze and the smell of the salt air. There was a ceremony of some kind about to begin as Eddie tried to explain to us. Poor Eddie, he doesn't speak very much English, and we speak no Indonesian, and the little I have attempted I have really butchered something fierce. He tried to explain to us that we should come back later as the ceremony was about to begin. (just let me take a moment here to say that the Balinese people have a ceremony for everything, and they are happening all the time. God should be very very good to them) It took a few minutes of duh, and what, and ok, and just let me go see, before we finally took his word for it, and decided we would go and do some shopping in the stalls that line the walkway to the temple.

Being kind and not wanting to drag poor Eddie along on a torturous shopping expedition, we pulled out some Balinese money and stared at it for a while, gave him about $.13 and told him to go and have lunch, we would see him in about two hours.  He was very sweet, and went and sat on a rock over by the sea looking out at the temple. Not sure if we offended him, maybe he wanted to shop with us, maybe he liked to sit on a rock, whatever, but then we decided, maybe we gave him the wrong money. Snooky dug around and got some other kind of money and gave that to him and we apologized and waved goodbye.

We shopped until we found a really cool bat hanging from a perch, he was super cool! I will never look at Dracula and be ascared again! He was just primping himself, like a cat, lickin his cute little legs, looked me right in the eyes! Two beings, both blind as "bats." It was a moment...   It was time to eat again!

Lunch was at a little place that had food, we didn't care what it was, it was food, we were hot and thirsty.  The waiter came over and asked us what we wanted to drink, and pointed to these huge green melon things. WOW! What could they be? "You whan yanconnana?" Huh? "You whan yanconnana?" What? We all looked at each other and decided we better get a pencil since we were never going to remember what this thing was, had to write it down because it was freakin' impossible to spell...."You whan yanconnana?" DUH! The lightbulb went off for all of us at the same moment, it was a COCONUT, a YOUNG COCONUT!  We laughed so hard we started crying....lunch was fairly entertaining for the patrons who were there as we did a bit more laughin until we finally decided the temple awaited us.

Off to the temple...you have to make your way across the sea, well not the entire sea, but a good bit of water which can be tricky if you aren't careful or you slip some booze into your yanconnana, which we didn't.  With some assistance from some very nice Holy Guys, we made it to the other side and waited patiently for the Blessing where you put your hands in the small waterfall, get sprinkled with the water, annointed on your forhead with rice, a fllower is placed behind your ear, and then you are given a blessing by the priest. Time to make your way back across the water to the other side. Quite lovely.

Now we were only about 30 minutes late for our scheduled meetup with Eddie.  When we reached the beach, we passed the sign where the Holy Snake lived. I wanted to go and check him out, but it was late, and there was Eddie waiting for us!  The ride home was filled with trying to take pictures of trucks packed with water buffalos, motor bikes carrying loads of goods, "groups" of people on a bike, chickens by the hundreds in cages on trucks and watching Eddie play chicken with oncoming traffic, watching rice drop off our foreheads.....just another day in Paradise...