4 days & 4 nights duration.
A place I wanted to go since 2 years ago. Smart choice indeed.
I was having some tough days prior to March 20th. I was rushing undone cases & chase acceptance while preparing all necessary to go to Bali. Since this is the 1st far away trip from Mas, me & my gals have no idea on the flight procedure. Anyhow, we made it on time to the airport with some ample time to spare.
The long flight roughly around 2 hours plus was easy as we have so much to update with each other. We talk non stop until we reached Bali. My ears were tortured badly by the air pressure when the plane was about to land. I suspect throat ache has something to do with it.
Reached Bali around 9-10pm. We met our driver and headed straight to our hotel at Denpasar, Ibu Kota of Bali. This town is situated in the middle of Bali. Hence, facilitated us to move upward to North Bali for the subsequent days.
Once checked in, being new in town & still fresh from the flight, you wouldn't expect us to catch some rest.
So we went out to hunt for supper at 11am. Walk punya walk, nothing really catchy to us. We eventually ran across the road to a Malaysian Kopitiam!! LOL!!! Ran I said & to Malaysian food. There ain't decent restaurant nearby in walking distance & the traffic was horrific. The road was highly endangering & I must say, Malaysian pls be thankful for our traffic system.
There we met a lady who was super nice & she found familiarity with us.
She was once in Mas, A Jawanese but currently married to Bali. :)
The night was pretty long as we took turn to shower, unpack stuff & plan some favourite route to cover.
The budget hotel named Pop; Harris hotel was highly recommended. It was slightly small but it was new & smartly designed to fully utilize space. Necessities were well covered. Big bed for us 3 to sleep comfortably~ none of us fall down from the bed though. haha.
8.30 am; the gals were ready to have breakfast. Well dressed & we were served with some Baliness simple & delicate food. 9 am sharp our driver came & picked us all up for a full day trip to north of Bali.
On the way, we passed through Tohpati, Batu Bulan, Mas & Ubud where most art values are stored. These places produce Batik, woodcraft, silver & goldsmith & statues manufacturing. I wouldn't recommend you to drop by each location if you wish to save time for better view else where. A ride in the car was enough for you have a good look on these places. We did drop in to a Batik manufacturing house but it was boring.
Roughly about an hour of site seeing, we headed out & off we went to Mount Batur. Long ride to the hill but it was all worth it. You will be amazed by the view of the mountain & the lake while having lunch at the hillside restaurant. They served buffet, Rupiah 110K per person. It was said that the gigantic mount is still an active volcano mount & the last time it erupted was almost 100 years ago. The chilling wind was truly a welcome gift from the nature of Bali to me. March in Bali was hot n humid. So get yourself an UV protection every time you expose yourself to the sun. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Spectacular view :)
We went to Luwak coffee production site on the way to Tegalalang. :) There were free testing for all sorta coffee flavours but Luwak coffee is @ rupiah 60K per tea pot. It was bitter & the way the provide the drink to us was very organic. If you know what I mean.
Then we were sent to Tampaksaring temple if I'm not mistaken. Erm... nothing there la. But that was the place where I finally learned that Bali has this infamous notty lil dicky wood crafting~ WOW!! I'm impressed.
Rupiah 10K to 60K for each dicky keychain depending on the location.
LOL!!!
Bali has over thousand of temples. A number of popular ones & each are individually special. I didn't feel attached to this visit but no denial that it's a beautiful temple too.
The next destination was to go to Tegalalang which is famous for its terrace paddy hill. It was green, high terraces & comfortable. Me & my gals were super excited to find a way to go down trekking. Being gals & excited, we were clumsy, clueless and senseless. LOL!!! We bloody care about the consequences, we hiked the paddy hills like nobody business. It was a lot of fun but dangerous as the hill was steep & nobody was around doing what we did. My advice, stay up at the hill or get a local to come down with u.
It was adventurous I must say but the walk up to the heavenly stairs was beyond difficult.
The last horrendous exercise I had was the journey to see Langkawi waterfall in last August 2012.
Our driver was frantically looking for us as we just disappeared into the greens.
We were so tired, we just wanted to go back to Hotel after that. It was close to 7pm when we reach the Hotel. Bali time zone was aligned with Mas. But much to the east. Hence, by 7pm, the sky was all dark.
Im super tired & hungry.....
After some rest, we finally were ready for dinner. I even had time to catch American Idol on TV :P
We walked for some distance again, but failed to find something luring. At the end, we chose an Indian cuisine just across the road. The night was still young which makes it even harder for us to run across the road. I thank god that I purchase PA coverage prior to this trip. Something I told my besties to note that if anything happen to me in Bali, my mom will be covered for at least RM360K. So said la. HAHAHA
The food was good. Really. But having Indian food in Bali sounds ridiculously wrong.
But the hell, it was delicious!
Bali is rich in culture & I'm very lucky to have come to this place after their main celebration named Nyepi.
It's a celebration of silence. My driver ain't a Balinese & not Hindu. Hence, from what I learned from his saying is that this celebration come once a year. Prior to this day, strong believers will build a lot of scary ugly gigantic statues/dolls to represent evil spirits. Then days before Nyepi, they will burn these down & on Nyepi actual day, all Balinese will hide at home. It's a public holiday, where everybody is banned to come out from the house, to work, to switch on TV... basically, zero activity. Even airport will be frozen for a day.
Anybody going against it will be lock up even tourist. So counter check this information & the exact date of this celebration next year before going there. This year it was conducted somewhere on late Febuary/early March.
So happen that some people chose to keep some of the figures & they are fascinating, classy art statues. I didn't manage to shoot each of them. Regret no. 1 in Bali.
Then I recall the fact that majority of Balinese are Hindu, but culture wise are much influenced by animism. History lesson came calling... LOL. History was my fav subject until Form 5 where Formation of Malaysia took place.
Kindly check the information righteousness as they were all unfiltered information I have collected from my Driver. I'm really too tired to check em out for the moment.
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