The Mad rush

After a somewhat laidback day on the first day, day 2 seemed to be a considerable rush... images from the Amazing Race once again comes to mind. The positive thing out of it was that none of us would be eliminated. (Sounds scary, but who cares?)
The day started pretty early (for people who are actually on a holiday)... Before anything started, though, we had to first reattain our 'millionaire' status... hehehe only to return to normal, non-millionaire status at the end of the day. Fair enough!
The batik place, aka Galuh was our first destination. Obviously, batik and all sorts of sarongs and clothes were sold here. It was evidently a tourist destination judginom the number of tour busses (or bis pariwisata) around. An attempt to get hold of a ready made local costume was unsuccessful... there goes my chance of getting another piece of garment that will most probably never see daylight (or moonlight, for that matter).
An hour later saw us at the silver place (or celuk)... I hope I got that right (2 weeks is a long time to remember details of this sort). Between browsing, and bargaining... browsing and buying... have to give credit to ES for her skillful negotiation skills. Kudos, girl!
Next we headed towards the art gallery which sold mastepieces from a renowned artist (or was it renowned artists?). The 3 of us immediately fell in love with this particular piece of the goddess of education... man, it was gorgeous! Besides that there were abstracts, and sceneries and stuff... Apparently the artist(s) has an affinity towards nudity among others.
Tired and hungry, we trudged over to the next spot without much enthusiasm... the wood carving place. Despite the fact that the carvings were magnificent in thir own right, it only took us a lil' while to browse around and exit the place without even showing much interest.
Me thinks I have muddled up the arrangement of the visits... but yeah, I suppose it doesn't really matter, because, well, it's not really important (except, that our hunger pangs should be justified... but then again, nevermind)
Yeah, we also saw the first temple on this day... known locally as 'pura'. What was interesting, is that this place was first built in 944... a historical monument. Although the facade is kinda new, the original architecture is still maintained in the temple itself, and not stashed off in some swanky new museum (in other words, we got to see it... which for me, is quite a good thing, as I recall wanting to be an archeologist a long time ago). We had to wear this piece of cloth tied around the waist (a sarong) upon entering the temple. This is for keeping temptation at bay :)
A set of stairs, a holy tree, a cave, and a water structure is what Goa gajah is about. According to our very informative guide, the cave used to be a meditation place, but not anymore due to the tourists who throng th area (us included!). Yeah, we definately were starving by this time, but we managed to stay upbeat and enjoy the visit. And we also took some young coconut water (not iced, though...). I was amazed that I actually enjoyed it as I had sworn never to touch young coconut water ever again after being force fed with it during the chicken pox days... I guess, when you're hungry (or thirsty) anything goes...
To be continued :)