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Published: March 18th 2006
Tana Lot Temple
Sunset at Tana Lot.Back in Bandung, Java. After what it seems to be an eternity of Mom knocking on my bedroom door around 4 in the morning, I finally got up and proceeded to wake Beau up at our guest bedroom. In a nearby minaret, Muslim cleric chanting some prayers as a living proof that more than 85% of Indonesia’s population is devoted Islam. This is when I feel to be very spoiled, when you have several full-time maids to do your laundry and to do almost anything you want them to perform, including our long time chauffeur, Pa Enip, who has been serving our family for more than twenty years. He drove us to Bandung’s Husein Sastranegara regional airport to catch our 5 am flight to Bali via Surabaya.
Bali is one of few places in the world that grows on you very quickly through beautiful landscape, exotic culture, taste and smell. Known as the ‘Island of Gods’, majority of Balinese is devoted Hindu who worships many Gods, contrasting the country’s Muslim dominance. The isolated island creates a natural barrier to develop a unique Balinese identity and culture. The Hinduism was brought to Indonesia centuries ago from India, and later on while
Besakih Temple
Closer details on two temples in Besakih complex. the rest of Indonesia became Buddhist and then Muslim, Bali managed to maintain the practice of Hinduism since the beginning. Many of religion forms and ways to express faith were changed from the Indian Hinduism counterpart, creating a unique culture found nowhere else in the world. Still, the elements of Hinduism belief are noticeable in the Balinese society through cast system, three major Gods (Shiva, Whisnu and Brahma) in worshipping ritual, and Rama & Shinta epic love story in art, dance and music.
Located in the heart of Bali, Ubud is a must see region where lush green rice paddy field terraces define the gently rolling landscape. The Balinese agriculture system, called ‘subak’ was perfected for centuries, consists of series of irrigation system channels as a survival response of challenging landscape. As recommended by our guides Pa Dewa and Pa Eddy, lunch at ‘Bebek Bengil’ restaurant (Balinese for ‘Ugly Duck’) in Ubud is a good way to start our family journey in Bali. A combination of seeing rice paddy fields in a nearby hill and enjoying Ubud’s fried duck delicacy is priceless. Life is at a much slower pace here in Bali.
What is Bali without the world
famous wood sculpture? Ubud has several wood sculpture studios that are heavens for art lovers. The studio workshop we visited has a three story structure that filled with delicate wood sculptures in different shapes and sizes. This is where Beau got his pair of Balinese Rama&Shinta masks for 80 bucks, down from US$110 asked price. Dad was helping out with the deal after about half an hour bargaining with the owner. It was something with the fact that Beau and I want to make a gift to our teacher; that we are poor students, and we are going to be back with many purchases in the future. Anything works as long as we made a good deal!
If an authentic, high quality wood sculpture from Ubud’s art studio is too expensive for a souvenir, try the Balinese bazaar of Pasar Sukawati. Anything that defines ‘souvenirs’ can be found here: lower quality wood sculptures, t-shirts, stonework, china, and everything else in between. Chaotic and more local oriented place, it is a good place to be if you know how to bargain. Store owners will try to lure everybody especially foreign tourists to stop by at their stores, and to purchase
Santika Resort
This is what we see from our resort hotel room. something. My bargaining skill was put to the test, and at the end, I was clenching several mini devilish wood masks for two dollars a piece, and some cicak wood sculptures. Poor Beau paid US$10 for his set of four Balinese dishes which apparently he didn’t bargain for, so the next thing he knew, everybody wanted him to buy everything in the market and he became a star in the market. Is he a symbol of rich innocent, gullible tourist in a third world country market?
Staying in a resort hotel in Kuta Beach is a luxury. Santika Hotel offers excellent hospitality, and we were spoiled by their gestures. We have our own beach sector of famous Kuta, and within our complex, there are two swimming pools (regular and salty water pool), spa service, natural paths, water lily pond with wooden bridges and docks, and many exotic plants. The pleasure of being at the equator, where there is no such thing as summer or winter, and swimming in a salty water pool up until 11 in the evening outdoor in January is a normal thing to do. On our second morning in Bali, Beau and I decided that we
were going to copy Jason Bourne in the Bourne Supremacy when he was running along the Indian Ocean in Goa, India. What a dork couple, we were running like crazy at seven in the morning along Kuta Beach, but nothing like Jason, we were huffing and puffing our way running on sand for about thirty minutes, while locals were watching us. Hum.
Balinese use tons of exotic flowers, especially the white Frangipani flowers, in their culture and ritual offerings, and the Frangipani trees can be found everywhere in our resort complex. The flowers are very scented especially in the morning, when we have breakfast at the resort’s banquet room, which has the Balinese traditional architecture with thatch grass roof and wall-less wooden beams and columns. Indonesian food is always exotic, flavorful and appealing, and the buffet is overwhelming. There are more than twenty different tropical fruits to choose from, Chinese, Japanese, Western dishes and fried rice, yoghurt bread and jelly. Is it a breakfast or a day’s worth of meal?
Chewing my favorite pineapple jelly on my bread, I started to sweat as the humidity rise. In a nearby distance, I could hear a set of gamelan being
played in a slower tune that is very relaxing.
Speaking about resort, Nusa Dua resort complex was designed to fulfill the world leaders’ standard of perfection. As a humble citizen, I think the cost to stay here is overpriced - besides, who wants to stay in the famous hotel as Sheraton or Hilton in Bali and spend US$300 a night, anyway, if most of your day is spent sightseeing the rest of Bali? Fortunately when comes to perfection, Nusa Dua beach is for public use that invites many water sport users to practice jet-ski, parasailing, and boating. Beau and I tried to bargain for swimming shorts, and I thought I did a good job when I reached Rp 30,000 (US$3) deal. When I proudly told mom about my achievement, she was like, what, that’s expensive, so she went back to the same seller and got another pair for Rp 20,000 (US$2). Ouch.
My two year old niece Kayla was having a blast watching and feeding fishes with bread crumbs on the glass bottomed boat that brought us to the Sea Turtle Island. If we thought Kayla was having a good time seeing fishes and coral reefs for
the first time, we probably had the same _expression when seeing and petting exotic animals on the Island. Dad was occupied with a mighty python, Beau was busy with a baby komodo dragon, my brother-in-law Julius was holding up a 5’ wing span bat, I was fighting with a monkey, while Kayla, sis and mom were enjoying the colorful tropical birds. It was a chaotic little island, and all of us had an opportunity to ride sea turtles, which weight around 300 lbs each.
Parasailing is a way to see the Nusa Dua from above. Our group, which consists of Beau and I, a young couple from Melbourne, and another young couple from Korea, was brought to the mid ocean to start the chute. While we were standing on a shallow corral reef waiting, I recognize a familiar face in the midst of the crowd waiting for parasailing ride. It turned out to be Edwin, a high school mate I graduated with that I haven’t seen in more than seven years since his departure to Los Angeles (and mine to Iowa), is having a vacation in Bali with his family as well. What a small world. One by one,
we were brought up high in the air, steered by a boat that pulled us around making a big turn. Strangely, I found a serenity hanging up above the emerald clear green water against the white sand, while having rushed wind by my ears.
Garuda Wisnu Kencana aka GWK is a relatively new tourist site in Bali. The Balinese government started the project not long time ago, building a monumental bronze statue of God Wisnu sitting on top of a mythical bird Garuda. As the project scale is humongous, only parts of Whisnu and Garuda are completed, and the whole project is projected to be done in a couple of years.
Balinese dances can get under your skin as soon as the traditional gamelan playing the mystical music. Barong Dance and the fire Kecak Dance are two of the famous ones, and both are based on the ancient Ramayana epic story. Barong Dance uses an extensive gamelan orchestra that has its own side stage to perform, as different instruments require specific movements to produce a harmonic music. On the main stage, split gates become the main point, as graceful female dancers with yellow ornamental dress and headband flowers
Spiders of Besakih
Spider is facing down, meaning that the crops will not be successful. wave their way around the white ‘monkey’ Hanoman. In contrast, the fire dance Kecak has to be performed at night. There are no gamelan instruments accompanying the dance, just a numerous male dancers make different sounds with their mouth, imitating different low and high pitch gamelan instruments. The result is amazing; according to what I’ve read, most of the dancers’ souls are infiltrated by some kind of spirits. They are sitting in an arrangement, circling and worshiping a bonfire in the middle of the stage. Three words to describe the Kecak dance: fire, mystical, spiritual.
Balinese temple etiquette is very straight forward. Sashes or sarong is needed to wrap around the waist for those who wear shorts to cover some bare skins and women having a period are considered dirty and not allowed to be around the temple ground.
Uluwatu Temple in south Bali was built in the 11th century, and it has an unusual split gates design for Balinese architecture. It dramatically sits on top of a strip of narrow cliff, overlooks the rugged Indian Ocean waves crashing on rocky cliff down below. Interestingly, there are many clashes between the native inhabitants of the area (monkeys) and
tourists, as monkeys like to steal loose stuff off tourists. A monkey successfully snatched a brown hat from a Korean tourist, and the monkey tamer had to lure him off a tree top with a bag of peanuts.
An active volcano of Gunung Agung, or Mt. Agung is considered to be a sacred place in Bali. The biggest and the most important Hindu temple, Pura Besakih, was built nearby to guard the mountain. Multiple tiers on a steep hill create separate rooms for different ceremonials that take place throughout the year. The temple itself said to have a special power, notably survive through several Mt. Agung eruptions in centuries. As Besakih is located on a direct path of destruction, the hot magma said to flow around the temple and hot ashes covered everywhere else but the temple. Our tour guide explained another natural phenomenon regarding Balinese spiders. It is a big taboo to destroy a spider web, as spiders can accurately predict on whether the next cropping season would be successful or a disaster. Local farmers would observe the orientation of the spiders in the middle of the web. Facing up to be a good sign, facing down to
be the other way around. Unfortunately all spiders are facing down as we observed several of the biggest ones.
Pura Tanah Lot is a picture of what most people would think about Bali. The centuries old Hindu temple (surprise, surprise) was built on top of a massive rock at a seashore line, which is only accessible during low tide at daytime. A bizarre experience comes during sunset, when high tide starts to surround the massive rock and the temple with rough tidal waves, creating a floating effect. It is a define moment; sitting by the shoreline watching sunset burning up the atmosphere while sipping a fresh coconut from its shell. No wonder why UNESCO tried so hard to protect the temple.
There are countless old structures and ancient culture elements in Bali, but one question remain. Why doesn’t UNESCO try to protect the heritage of the Balinese culture? According to what I’ve read several years back, there was turmoil between the Culture Government of Bali (which is different than the federal government) and UNESCO, who tried to propose several sites in Bali, notably the Pura Tanah Lot, to become World Heritage Site. The Balinese didn’t feel like sharing
Beau with a bilingual signage
Nice English grammar there, buddy! their sacred sites with the world, so in this rare occasion, UNESCO’s monetary help to protect and to support the world heritage structures was rejected.
After having a roast pig lunch in Gianyar, we drove to the heart of Bali of Gunung
Last morning in Bali! Celebrate it with a bungee jumping
Bali, a.k.a. the Island of Gods, celebrates many days for its Gods. Today, the Balinese celebrate the Iron God, and they decorated everything made of iron (which pretty much all metals, according to Balinese).
Having a good feeling about anything metal is guaranteed to work as it supposed to, we were encouraged to fulfill our wish to bungee. If I had thought before that the bungee cord isn't made by any metal, I would've thought the plan twice. But before I knew it, Beau and I hauled a taxi off our resort that brought us to the AJ Hackett Bungee place in Kuta Beach.
AJ Hackett is a New Zealand company who invented the modern bungee. I discovered that bungee jumping was a rollercoaster feeling. I was very cocky when we entered the place; looking up at the jumping platform, and
A decorated car
Iron God celebration day. I thought, oh, it wouldn't be that bad. Piece a cake, all we had to do was jumping. Wrong.
It was more than jumping off the platform. As we were signing our life waiver paperwork (felt more like selling your soul to the devil), we saw pictures and watched bungee footage. Still not too bad. Then, as we rode an open elevator up, and I started to feel a little tingling and nervous. Now it does seem to be up high. But not as bad as when we were standing at the platform, looking down. Are you kidding me?! You want me to do what off this platform?
So long story short, Beau went first, while I was standing up, still at the platform, uncomfortably, thinking of I was about to go next. They strapped the bungee cord around my angkles, and to avoid some embarassments, I chose to jump instead of being push off.
Three .. two .. one .. bungee!!!
The wind rushed very fast around me, as I could feel an adrenaline rush in my blood system. The next thing I knew, I was hanging upside down, swinging up and down and sideways
A dokar
Yippee! like a pendulum, so far up above the pool below. They lowered me down, and as soon as I felt save, I started to laugh. Cross off another entry on my to-do-list-before-I-die!
Unfortunately, we had to go back to the hotel to meet up with my family, and then headed up to the airport to fly back to Bandung.
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