Bali, the sunshine island. Surely it couldn’t be raining? Sadly it was. At least it was a travel day, we were off up the eastern coast to Amed. Putu our host had kindly offered to take us there via the water temple Tirta Gangga (‘Water of the Ganges’).

The drive was uphill and took in some amazing rice terrace scenery, all lush and green. This provides quite the contrast with brash and busy south Bali.

We arrived an hour later at Tirtagangga Village. The temple, of the same name, was built by the last King of Karengasem in 1946. It consists of a myriad of pools containing swimmers of the human and fish kind all surrounded by statues and gardens.

The centrepiece is an eleven tiered fountain surrounded by ornate carvings.

The surprising thing is that what we saw was a full reconstruction of the original as the whole area was destroyed in 1963 by the eruption of nearby volcano, Mount Agung!

It a here, also that Putu’s girlfriend’s family resides so we were invited to have tea with them, which was nice!

With the rain easing we stopped to take more photos looking out over the rice terraces..it reminded us of Sapa in Northwestern Vietnam.

Once we had descended the hills we arrived at the start of the Far East coast region of Amed. The name is misleading as it’s really a string of ‘dusun’ (small villages) along the coast between Amed in the north and Aas in the south.

The dusun we were staying at was called Jemeluk.