Temples – Scribbles and Snapshots

December 24, 2025

Happy Christmas Eve! The next day we pulled into port with an open itinerary, but our server, Gama had given us a recommendation the night before. Rent a motorbike and go exploring.

I can feel our moms shaking their heads all the way over here, but after the day before we were itching for an adventure. It was another day with expensive full-day excursions that were far from the port. I got to work researching what looked cool that was closer to our ship. I found a cool beach and a temple.

We decided that we wanted to make our way to the temple, but now we needed to secure a motorbike. This port stop was a tender ride in, meaning we needed to use one of the ship’s lifeboats to go to shore. We thought it would be a slow process, but by the time we finished breakfast they were practically urging everyone to make their way to the tenders.

Once we got to shore we could already tell this stop was different than Lombok. For starters, we were greeted by musicians and not people hassling us. The store owners warmly smiled at us and gestured towards their stalls, but didn’t pressure us to come in.

In fact, we had a hard time finding anywhere that was renting motorbikes! We walked all the way out and didn’t see a single stall that had rentals. We didn’t want to take a car, even though I’m sure that would have been affordable. I kept reminding myself, the motorbike was the *experience* so we actually started walking back to port.

That’s when I noticed a sign that was official looking that was for tourists to help connect them with their drivers. I wandered up and asked them if they knew where we could rent a bike. Jackpot! They asked where we wanted to go and I showed them the name of the temple. They confirmed it wasn’t very far so they said $10. Gama (our server) had warned us to not let them charge us more than $20, so we didn’t bother to negotiate because we knew it was a fair price.

They had trouble securing a second helmet for us – but we weren’t leaving without it. I’m notoriously clumsy and I certainly wasn’t going to die from head trauma on the side of a road in Indonesia. I might be dumb enough to get on a bike there, but not without a helmet! 😉

They also drive on the “wrong side” of the road in Indonesia, so that took some getting used to. At least for me being the passenger, but we were off! I was Andy’s GPS and quickly assumed the role of passenger princess. I probably should have taken a shot or two before getting on because I was a bit nervous with every pot hole, bit of loose gravel, and truck that got too close.

But eventually we both got more comfortable and we started to have fun! The temple was only 30ish minutes away, but it did feel a bit like an eternity on the way there. I had a vice grip on my phone because I was afraid I would drop it. Nevertheless, we made it to the temple!

The temple was on the top of a hill that overlooked the port and it was stunning. It was very affordable (maybe around $2-3) to get in to Brahmavihara-Arama, which is actually a Buddhist monastery. This temple is pretty unique because Bali is predominantly Hindu and this happened to be the largest Buddhist temple in Bali. We have visited probably close to 50 temples of different cultures in our travels, so we knew to wear conservative clothing (pants and ability to cover our shoulders. As we bought our tickets, we a got a thumbs up from one of the workers who who saw how we were dressed, she had just got done renting coverings to other tourists so they could go inside.

It was a very calm and serene place to visit. There were lots of different features to explore throughout the temple. We loved how intricate everything was and that no details were left out.

We had to follow the same path we took to head back towards the cruise ship, this time with a bit more confidence on the bike. We made it safely, and really enjoyed our time out and about. Would we do it again? Yes! Would we do it any time soon? Probably not. 😂

That evening was a more formal night on the ship – so we freshened up and I was thrilled to break out one of my sparkly dresses for dinner. Another favorite thing about cruising is getting to break out clothes you don’t normally get to wear every day at home.

The next two days are sea days, so I won’t blog those days because they will be rather boring. I’ll pick back up when we arrive in Port Klang/Kuala Lumpur.

Merry Christmas!

Up Next: Kuala Lumpur

Friday we had a pretty early start, as we were cramming a lot into one day. We started with a very brief panoramic tour of Amman. In reality, we just drove to the Roman theater and took a quick picture. Up the hill, we could see the citadel. (I was hoping we would go up there as a group, but it wasn’t part of the agenda). We also drove by a beautiful blue mosque and a Coptic church.

From there, we made our way to the Ajlun castle, which was really neat! It was in really good condition. This castle was built to help defend against the crusaders. It was positioned on top of a hill, and could be seen from miles away.

As we were inside, we saw a very cute cat who was meowing quite a bit. It felt like she was trying to tell us something, and she quickly jumped into a large vase. Upon further inspection, we could see kittens! We aren’t sure if she was trying to ask us for help to get them out or warning us to stay back!

There was a lot to see and do. We quickly made our way to the top to take in the views – from there we went to the “post office” which was actually a rookery.

From there, we went to Jerash. Which is one of the largest and most well preserved sites of Roman architecture in the world – outside of Italy of course! It is an ancient city, and much of the reconstruction was done in the first century AD. By the third century, the city reached about 20,000 people. There was a slow decline in the city due to a variety of different events – crusades and natural disasters that left it deserted in the 13th century.

We toured part of the ruins as a group and at the end we were given about an hour to explore on our own. We could have easily used another 1-2 hours to explore in more detail.

Starting off as a group, we saw their hippodrome – where they would host different events. One of them being chariot racing – but there was also gladiator fighting, etc! There was a large oval plaza that had a ton of columns surrounding it. It was all so stunning to look at.

This is where the chariot races would take place

We also saw a theater – where there were locals who were performing with drums and a bagpipe. It was quite the spectacle. That theater was also able to fit about 3,000 people. It’s just crazy to think about how many people lived there in the past!

The group we spent the week with – view from the Temple of Zeus

It was so vast! You can see the plaza in the background – Jerash is known as the city of 1,000 Columns

We walked a bit further as a group, but then broke off. Andy and I ran ahead to look at the mosaic floors left from a church. It’s mind blowing to know that these tiles are so OLD and exposed to the elements and they were still in incredible condition!

I believe these were in the Church of John the Baptist

We then made our way to the Temple of Artemis – this was one of the Crown Jewels – as you could see its large pillars from far away. Our next stop was the north theater, which actually made the first theater look small. The tile was more intricate – and it was just a stunning structure.

Because it was a bit of a walk to get here, we had the place to ourselves!

We knew we were running out of time – but we could see a gate in the distance so we decided to see if we could make it over there to get a few pictures. We had that whole section to ourselves! It reminded us a lot of the Roman forum, but far less busy!

The giant pillars from the Temple of Artemis

You could see a structure that used to be a fountain, I’m sure it was incredible during its time. This was along the Cardo, which was the Main Street. This is where the hustle and bustle took place in the city.

It must have been a sight to see when it was a bustling city

It was easy to feel so small! You can see a bit of difference in the color of the columns due to how buried in sand some of them were!

We made it back to the group right on time and even had enough time to grab a freshly squeezed pomegranate juice.

We returned to the hotel and hung out for a bit before heading to another hotel that actually was serving wine during Ramadan. It was a short walk, so quite a few people from our group ended up there as well.

Because it is Ramadan, the hotel was putting together special banquets in the evenings. There was a lot more food from when we stayed at this hotel on the front end of our trip. We called it an early evening because we knew we had a busy day following.

Hotel:

Hotel Gerasa (Amman)

Up Next:

Desert castles

Dead Sea

Tag: Temples

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Jordan – Day 6 (Jerash)