Life is....

Vacation at "The Island of Frangipani"
Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Map taken from www.baliproperty.com

Please click on picture to enlarge the map.

You got that right.
We were in Bali for a week.
Fantastic place.
Local people are friendly.
Places of interest are aplenty.
Superb hospitality.
Thousands of tourists.
I could say so many good things about Bali, the island of frangipani.

Day 1
We arrived at about 10-ish pm at Ngurah Rai International Airport.
The airport is being named after an Indonesian national hero, Gusti Ngurah Rai, who was killed in Battle of Marga during the Indonesia Revolution.
To know more about Ngurah Rai, please go here.

Be prepared to wait your turn in a long queue just to stamp your passport at the immigration counter.
While waiting, you could take some brochures at the rack and read to kill time.
Make sure you have completed any forms so that you won't have to follow the queue again. Otherwise, you will be asked to step out of the line and complete the form and rejoin the queue...at the back.
It happened to a young lady in front of us.
What a lousy day for her.
After standing for more than 20 minutes, we finally got our passport stamped.
Then, we collected our luggage and walked out of the airport.
As we were exiting the door, there were many people holding signages. Our tour guide spotted us first before we could finish reading the signages around us.
His name is Ngurah.
It was already 11-ish pm and we were beat.
We checked into our hotel at Sanur Paradise Plaza Hotel in Sanur.
We conked out early.

Day 2
Had our breakfast early.Our tour guide met us at the lobby.We headed to Batubulan village to see the Barong Dance.
It is also another story telling dance, narrating the fight between good and evil. T
his dance is the classic example of Balinese way of acting out mythology, resulting in myth and history being blended into one reality.

Hubby playing with his new toy

The huge crowd turnout

The masks of Barong and Rangda are considered sacred items, and before they are brought out, a priest must be present to offer blessings by sprinkling them with holy water taken from Mount Agung, and offerrings must be presented.

Tour vehicles

After Batubulan, we headed to see the Batik making.
No biggy as we do the same here.

Then we proceeded to Celuk village where we witness the making of Gold and Silver.

After Celuk then we went to this place where we bought a painting of a lady dancing the Barong Dance.

We then continued our journey to Kintamani where we had our lunch while enjoying the magnificent view of volcanic Mount Batur and its crater lake which is the biggest lake in Bali.

Mount Batur

The view from Kintamani

After Kintamani, we stopped by at a temple ( I can't recall because I was having a headache and took a nap in the coach).

Then, the second destination (I was still sleeping), to the coffee making place where hubby tasted different types of coffee.
But he didn't get to taste the most expensive coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak.
Luwak is the name of Common palm civet, a weasel-like animal.

This animal which eats the raw red coffee beans.
The civet digests the soft outer part of the coffee cherry, but does not digest the inner beans and excretes them.

In fact, the internal digestion ends up adds a unique flavor to the beans, removing the bitter flavor, and then beans are then picked up by locals and sold.

The most expensive coffee beans can cost up to $600 a pound, and up to $50 per cup, if you can get over the fact that you are drinking such a strange brew.

After that, we headed to Goa Gajah at Bedulu Village.
This time I joined in. The Goa Gajah is carved into the rock face, reached by a flight of steps down from the other side of the road.
There were never any elephant in Bali.
The cave-hermitage maybe takes its name from the nearby Petanu River.
You go into the cave through the cavernous mouth of a demon, while gigantic fingertips pressed beside the face push back a wild jungle of surrounding stone carvings.

In front of the cave are two square bathing pools with water gushing into them from water spouts held by six female figures.
These were only uncovered in 1954.

After refreshing ourselves at the hotel, we headed to Jimbaran Beach.Jimbaran is a sleepy cove where fleets of fishing boats colour the scene.
Local families and tourists are drown by its beauty and also come here to enjoy the seafood from the superb restaurants along the beach.
It is a very popular spot for windsurfing and small sailing craff.
Stretching right along Jimbaran beach is a succession of simple beachside seafood restaurants. Coming alive after sunset, the restaurants grill the choicest prawns, squid, snapper, and lobster over coconut husk fires.
The setting is unbeatable with the tables right on the water's edge.
You get to choose your fish from the ice boxes, pick a table and enjoy.
This is definitely a must-do while in Bali.
Our dinner was accompanied by beautiful serenades by strollers who went from one table to another.