The World is My Oyster

First thing first, ‘pura’ means ‘temple’, ‘taman’ means ‘park/garden’, and ‘ayun’ means ‘swing’. So to literally translate it, ‘Pura Taman Ayun’ is ‘Swing Garden Temple’. So when I heard the name of the place, I imagined there would be a big long swing bridge somewhere in the middle of the garden. But of course to my disappointment, there wasn’t any.

First day we went to 4 places, which are marked by red dots on this Bali map:

I like to have sense of where I am in the map. We stayed at Kuta beach so that’s the red dot at the very bottom, at the foot of the chicken (Bali sure looks like chicken). Kuta is the busiest, most crowded, most famous, most touristy beach in Bali. So our trip that day included Pura Taman Ayun (the red dot with black aura), Crocodile Park, Beratan Lake, and Tanah Lot. Will put all of them in separate posts. Note that this trip already took us the whole day. So the next time we want to go somewhere further like the head or tail of the chicken, we gotta plan better, or stay somewhere in the stomach of the chicken. If you can’t see any chicken, don’t ask me where, I can’t help you! It’s so obvious!

We rented a car (usually comes with a driver) for Rp300.000,- (note that in Indonesia dot is used as the 3-digits separator and coma as the cent separator, boy how I found this weird after so many years using them the other way around..) – that’s for 1 day (~8 hours) all inclusive. Our driver was supposed to be Pak Polos, but since he was occupied that day, he asked his friend to go in his place, who happened to be very quiet like a mouse. I had to ask him questions, otherwise he would just stay quiet. Nice man though. Overall I found Bali people are still very nice even with so many touristy stuff going on, not like Bangkok which is totally stained.

The temperature was super hot the time we arrived at the Temple. I almost got a bit dizzy because of the heat.

Started with this big grassy garden and long path to the gate. The grass was so neat and green, a sign that they maintain the place quite well. In case you’re wondering, the guy standing there is my Rendy, not just any random guy I asked to pose for the picture *grin*.

That’s me at the front gate. I love this particular “two-towers” architecture, it’s sooo Bali! Do you know anywhere else in the world that has similar architecture? (it’s an honest question)

They have so many small buildings inside of the inner garden, but I don’t think we could go there. So we just went along the long walls. I found this information about the court afterwards:

The temple was built by I Gusti Agung Anom, a founder of the Mengwi kingdom in 1934, and were skilfully and renovated in later years, giving its present appearance which tourists find so attractive and interesting.
The name itself means beautiful garden.
It is built on a high tableland which is surrounded by ponds.
This gives the effect from afar that the temple is floating on water.

In the innermost court, there are twenty nine buildings which function as places for the gods and goddesses.
There are other buildings which house religious regalia used in the ceremonies.

There are multi-roofed structures, some of them having eleven roofs called ‘meru meru’.
The central section is surrounded by a small pond, thus the whole complex is symbolic of the great Mandhara Mountain turning in a sea of milk.

~ taken from indo.com

This is the multi-layers roof/ multi-roofed structure they stated above. I totally love this architecture too. It’s just soo Bali. Again! :)

Even though we couldn’t go in, we saw some local people in the inner court, fishing. There are fish in the pond!

There are some shades along the way when you walk further. I think it’s necessary when the weather was THAT HOT!

Two swans at the pond. So sweet. Do you know that swans mate for life? :)

There was a painting studio/shop somewhere in the area. Hope I don’t violate any copyright issue by putting one picture of the paintings here :). I was just particularly intrigued by this piece. It’s a beautiful one. In the future when I have my own house, I want to buy paintings from all over the world and hang them on the walls.

Pura Taman Ayun
Mengwi district, Bali
Indonesia

Admission: Rp3000,-