SANUR - Place Interest In Bali

SANUR
The black and white checkered cloth standard of Bali’s netherworld — is nowhere more aptly hung than on the ancient coral statues and shrines of Bali’s largest traditional village: Sanur This was Bali’s first beach resort — a place of remarkable contrasts.

Sanur today is a golden mile of Baliesque hotels that has attracted millions of paradise- seeking globetrotters. And yet, within the very grounds of the 11-story The Grand Bali Beach Hotel, a war-reparation gift from the Japanese, nestles the sacred and spikey temple of Ratu Ayu of Singgi, the much feared spirit consort of Sanur’s fabled Black Barong.

Just a stone’s throw from any of Sanur’s benchside hotels lies one of a string of very ancient temples. Characterized by low coral- walled enclosures sheltering platform altars, this style of temple is peculiar to the white sand stretch of Sanur coast, from Sanur harbor in the north to Mertasari Beach in the south. Inside, they are decorated with fanciful fans of coral and rough-hewn statuary, often ghoulishly painted but always wrapped in a checkered sarong.

The Sanur area, with traditional Intaran at its heart, has evidently been settled since ancient times. The Prasasti Belanjong, an inscribed pillar here dated AD. 913, is Bali’s earliest dated artifact now kept in a temple in Belanjong village in the south of Sanur. It tells of King Sri Kesari Warmadewa of the Sailendra Dynasty in Java, who came to Bali to teach Mahayana Buddhism and then founded a monastery here. One may presume that a fairly civilized community then existed — the Sailendra kings having built Borobudur in Central Java at about this lime.