Early in October, Streetdirectory flew me and a bunch of crazy and fun people to Bali, 8 of us to be exact. We have been talking about this trip for months and planning what to do, where to go, what to eat in Bali. It was my first time traveling to Bali so obviously, I was super duper excited as I heard many people told me how much they love that place, the scenery, the foods and beaches. They added more excitement to me and I counted every single day to this date:
5th October 2012.
At 6am, we all gathered at the airport for breakfast before taking our 9am flight to Bali. Before I continue further, I must warn you that this blog entry is gonna be long with lot of photos, so be prepared but don't skip reading the text *I knew it*. This is the first one! :D
Group photo at Changi airport while having our breakfast. The happy and sleepy faces!
Gangnam style in Changi Airport! The man in black shirt standing behind us is my dearest manager. He went all the way to airport to say "Goodbye" to us. How sweet he is!
After approximately 2 hours, we landed in Bali safe and sound. Once we walked outside the terminal building, we saw this.
While waiting for our bus to arrive...
Welcome to Bali!
On the way to our hotel, everyone was looking fresh and happy again.
With Carmen- my roommate camwhoring using Self-timer in my iPhone! Gosh, my hair looked so long here.
20 minutes later...
I was happily tweeting this photo to my Singapore followers while waiting for foods.
Food was served!
They look yummy, don't they? They taste yummy too!
The hungry monsters at La Plage restaurant.
I love their tables and chairs. They are made of many pieces of round woods joined together. So unique and creative!
Seminyak street in the afternoon.
Group photo before we went on our own: own time, own target. :D
When it comes to Bali, you can never say no to..."Bikini". There are so many bikini shops every where: Roxy, Rip Curl, Surfer Girl, Billabong, etc... they are really cheap. I bought 3 sets at only SS$30.
Potato head.
Ocean view from the pool.
Looking at the sunset from the bar area.
Or if you want to have up-close and personal touch with the sun before it goes down, you'll get it.
And because it was too beautiful, I couldn't stop myself from taking many photos of.....myself with the sunset. Hahahha! Very lame! People tell me that I should take more photos of the places that I visit instead of myself. If you want to look at scenery photos, go to photo stock and buy it. They have tons of beautiful scenery photos with high resolutions for you to choose. To me, if I want to take a picture of the place that I travel to, I must be in it.
Something like this:
and when people asked me "Where was it taken?" I would say "Bali" *wink*
At night, we went to have dinner at a restaurant along Seminyak street which was close to our hotel. Some of my friends went for shopping, some went for body massage, only I, Carmen & Camile went to Potato head to chill. In fact, we were busy taking photos of ourselves more than we chilled and when we realized the sky went dark, it's time to leave the place for dinner.
The most popular beer in Bintang is Bintang :D. You just have to try it when you are there.
That's my dinner. Yummy?
Some other dishes that my friends ordered.
Don't ask me how much did it cost because I don't remember. Overall, I think the foods are not super cheap like what I expected.
Getting some drinks at Balimoon bar while listening to music and having random conversation were the last things we did on our first day in Bali. Perhaps, we were all exhausted and sleepy. We went back to our hotel around 11pm as we had to wake up early at 6am for the next day tour.
That's my sleepy face after a good shower and I was about to sleep. zZzZzz
Day 2: Bali land tour.
God! This blog entry seems to take forever to end. I'll try to shorten it as much as possible. Are you ready? Here we go!
Second day in Bali started at freaking 6.30am. Our tour schedule was packed from morning until 6.30pm as we wanted to visit many places at one day so that we could spend the next entire day by the beach for sunbathing. With me, my favorite sunnies from Coach, leopard printed hat and simple T-shirt, short shorts on the go.
God! This blog entry seems to take forever to end. I'll try to shorten it as much as possible. Are you ready? Here we go!
Second day in Bali started at freaking 6.30am. Our tour schedule was packed from morning until 6.30pm as we wanted to visit many places at one day so that we could spend the next entire day by the beach for sunbathing. With me, my favorite sunnies from Coach, leopard printed hat and simple T-shirt, short shorts on the go.
Bali is developing, thus you will see construction, road works every where. It was early in the morning yet the traffic was already that bad.
Our first stop of the day: Tohpati- Batik home made village.
This is the place where Balinese traditional cloths are made. It's amazing to watch all the artists using wax to draw on the white cloth just dots and lines but they turn out to be many beautiful faces, scenery and images artistically as what you are seeing in the photo.
Wax pot and special bamboo pen are the only tools to create the colorful Balinese batiks (*means: clothing).
Once painting work is done, it's time for cutting and sewing process to make shirt, dress, skirt etc...Notice the uniforms worn by the artists? They are the finished products.
After 30 minutes at Tohpati village, we went over to visit Celuk silver village.
As the name itself, it's a village specialized in silver jewelry making. They have many different silver products: jewelry, souvenirs, clocks, novelties, etc...
Third stop: Batuan painting village.
This is a major painting center and it has many different types of painting for sales. I didn't look at the price as I didn't have any intention to buy but I believed they are relatively cheaper than ones in Singapore. The only thing that attracted me was the beautiful painting wall when we first stepped inside. Immediately, we took out our camera and shoot, shoot, shoot :D.
Self-shot.
Shoot the shooters.
Group photo of us.
and of course, it wouldn't be complete without a photo of myself, lolz.
Left painting village, we went to one of the most famous places in Bali: Ulun Danu temple located in Beratan Lake. This Balinese Hindu temple is dedicated to God of Lakes or Waters. I love this place and will definitely visit it again.
As Beratan Lake is located in plateau area with cool atmosphere surrounding it, it will give you instant chill when you first step out of the car. But after all, it feels amazing right here! Look at this place!
Beautiful scenery, nature, architecture like a complete piece of art.
The weather was so cooling, the wind was blowing, they made us feel alive again, so relaxing and peaceful.
A very common architecture in Bali.
With this beautiful nature backdrop, we couldn't resist photo-taking time.
Jaqueline & me.
Me
another me.
and me again. Sorry! I have too many beautiful photos to share and I don't want to skip any of them.
Camile's favorite photo taken by me. Isn't it cool?
Beautiful flowers.
Like I said earlier, the scenery in Beratan Temple is so picturesque. Look at the one and only backdrop for my signature dance pose.
"I wanna dance...
and dance, again" with the panorama of the lake.
It was so quiet there til we started taking some un-usual photos, a group of people came from nowhere sat around to watch us as if they have never seen people taking dance photos in their entire life.
Though I wanted to take alot more photos here but we did't have much time as we still had another 3 more destinations to go, we had to say Goodbye to Beratan Lake and continued our journey.
It was also about lunch time so our driver dropped us at Pacung, a highland with very cool temperature and an epic view of rice terraces, mountain and greenery.
Not everyday you can have buffet lunch surrounded by beautiful nature.
Actually, she was drawing Pacung exactly like how it is. I was very impressed.
After 2 hours lunch, we decided to continue our journey regardless the downpour because we didn't want to waste time. But we were so lucky that the rain stopped when we were on the way to Alas Kedaton- Monkey Forest.
I was expecting the place must be huge to be called "Forest" but when we walked inside, it took us only 15 minutes to finish seeing what we needed to see. Well obviously, the monkey! They ran everywhere and so many of them.
From the entrance.
to the rooftop
in the garden. Yeah! It's should be called Monkey Garden instead of Monkey Forest. I felt like I was being misled like that.
We were told to be extra careful and not to hold any small items in hands (i.e handphone, wallet etc...) as the monkey here are very aggressive. They just grab everything they see in your hands and run away. Many people have lost their handphones before.
I bought some peanuts to feed them. They are very cute indeed.
Carmen wanted to do the same so she got some peanuts from me and while she was looking for a monkey somewhere, there was one from the tree jumped right on top of her head to snatch it, lolz. That's how aggressive they are. I was freak out as I was standing next to her when this happened. It was so funny and we had a really good laugh and memory about this incident.
That was all we did in the Monkey Garden *I insist on calling it a Garden*. When we were about to leave the place, some ladies tried to take us to their shop and hard-sell to us their cloth, souvenirs at the shop. My friends bought some, I didn't. I hate being forced to buy something that I don't like, even though it's really cheap.
Anyway, our last and most awaited destination is here: Tanah Lot- Temple on the Rock. This is an extreme popular tourist place and is so crowded especially in the late afternoon to early evening, sunset time.
We arrived at Tanah Lot around 6pm and we almost missed out this magnificent l scenery:
Carmen, Camile and Nicole with their "See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" pose. Nicole's face looks really drama, lolz.
Stunning view from where I stood!
Talking about Tanah Lot temple, it's is dedicated to the guardian spirits of the sea. It's said to be guarded from evil by the sea snakes that inhabit the caves below. If you travel to Bali, you definitely should visit this place to be amazed at the beauty of nature.
Last photo I managed to take before the sun completely went down and we made our way to the city for dinner and party.
Our bus driver dropped us off at Legian street, the most popular street for shopping and partying in Kuta (Bali). The street has varieties of bars, shops, restaurants and dance clubs from the beginning to the end of the street. It's so vibrant, busy and of course noisy too like Patong Beach in Phuket or Bangkok (Thailand) but way more happening than that, to my point of view.
We wanted to party in one of the disco clubs but we ended up being so exhausted after a long tiring day and at that point of time, there was only one thing we wanted to do is:
This
Getting foot massage at 12am before we passed out in our hotel room later on.
Day 2 in Bali ended just like that.
Day 3 started again at 6am in the morning.
(To be continue)