Mountain Temple + Padangbai

It was an early start this morning since we wanted to climb Batukaru Temple, the Mountain Temple, before the sun became too harsh. There are actually 4 temples in total, none of which are really spectacular, but the views from the top were amazing. With something like 1700 steps, not including the steep climb up the road, we were pretty tired on the way back down.

The first temple with our local guide:

View from the first temple:

Second temple...just "eh."

But view from the second temple...we're going higher! We started near that very small building in the picture. Yes, it was a climb.

Third temple and view:

And this is when the clouds started rolling in - we looked up to see where the fourth temple was, another 1 km, and saw only clouds so we decided to head back down.

We went back to Candi Dasa for lunch and headed over to our hotel in Padangbai. Since we were leaving early the following morning for the Gili Islands, we wanted to be close to the boat dock. This is when the hotel nightmare began. Nyoman had taken us to check out the hotel a few days earlier - the manager showed us a room, nothing fancy and the price was right, so we made a reservation. When we brought our luggage to the room, we noticed a large number mosquitoes circling around. They were everywhere. And the room had clearly not been cleaned properly, things on the comforter, pillows had stains on them, etc. Needless to say, we weren't happy and found another, cleaner, hotel. Steven argued with the hotel staff to try and get some of our money back - after quite a bit of yelling and Nyoman calling the hotel manager, we were refunded almost all of the money.

And that was the end of our eventful day. Oh wait, we forgot to mention the Muslim prayer that being broadcasted over a loudspeaker at 4am the following morning.