Tanah Lot, Bali

Tanah Lot in Bali has got to be the hottest tourist attraction. Almost everyone that has been to Bali has seen Tanah Lot. In fact I’ve visited Tanah Lot about 4-5 times already (you can view my last trip to Tanah Lot here)and this is considering I tend to rotate around the places I see in different trips.

In fact, on this particular trip I left out Uluwatu Temple (one of my personal faves even though the monkeys there can be scary – last trip photos here) and the Holy Monkey Forest. I also chose to leave out traditional Bali dances like the Barong dance and the Fire dance.

Lots of ducks and chickens around too!

Tanah Lot is an important sea temple in Bali and the name literally means land in the middle of the sea. During high tides, the looks like it is floating in the sea and cannot be accessed. But during low tides, you can walk to the temple to visit. When I was there this time round, the tide was still low enough for me to access the temple itself but the tide was quick rising and each wave came nearer and nearer!

There are quite a number of poisonous sea snakes in the temple which are treated as scared animals because it is said that they are there to protect the temple from evil spirits or harmful humans.

The crashing waves are quite a nice sight… too bad Tanah Lot is always crowded with tourists. Most of them come to view the glorious temple during sunset where it looks the prettiest. You can also head into the temple for some blessings and holy water if you so wish.

For some strange reason that day, while I was getting my photos snapped with my trusty little pocket camera, I had a lot of requests from the locals for pictures with them. I had no idea why they all wanted to take a photo with me but they seem so happy I didn’t know how to say no to them. In fact when they first approached me with the cameras I thought they wanted me to help them take a picture of them!

It started with one family and soon more people started queuing to ask me for pictures…. whipping out their cameras and cell phones. It was just so weird… girls, guys, young ones, older ones… and they were all so thankful and sweet, saying nice things about me. I wonder if it was a case of mistaken identity followed by the ‘monkey see monkey do’ phenomenal.

It was a little like a prize giving ceremony… photos followed by handshakes and thank yous.

Gosh… it was a little embarrassing with more and more people looking so I made a quick break once I got the chance! It’ll be nice to find out that they were just blog readers of renzze.com and spotted me in Bali… but I really don’t think so.

A last parting shot with a chicken before I scooted out of Tanah Lot!

Here’s the video.

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