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Published: March 28th 2006
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Well here we find an interesting little array of pictures! Needless to say I didn't choose these! Yes the scenery is mystical and stunning but please ignore the person in the bright turquoise shawl!
Anyway, as you will have realised I have been somewhat slack on the whole Travelblog front in recent months! I intend to rectify this but you will have to bear with me.
Lauren is very kindly adding some pictures to update backlogged blogs and I will try and fill in the blurbs as and when. This seems as a good a place to start as any though.
I arrived in Kuta, Bali's busiest and in our eyes coolest resort numerous hours after Lauren did AND I left a couple of hours before her too!! Reason being I was flying Singapore Airlines and had the opportunity to do a free mini sightseeing tour of Singapore while I enjoyed my 7 hour stopover there.
While I was being ferried around the river and important monuments of the city lauren had arrived and settled herself into a very nice place for us both to stay that night.
Bali has experienced some terrible bombings that targeted tourists
spots, the island as a result has been effected really badly. And almost everywhere we went showed signs of lost tourism. This is sad considering that bali is still one of the most interesting and beautiful places I think I will ever see. The Balinese people are lovely and although tourists complain about the constant hagglers and pests, it is no different a phenomonom than any other Asian tourist destination. Bali is well worth a visit. I wish we had, had longer to explore.
Dewi Sinta is a beautiful Hotel set just off the main busy road in Kuta yet amongst tropical gardens and Indonesian architecture that would look more at home on a temple than on your everyday house, you could have been a million miles away from a bustling hive of entertainment and bargain heaven.
We couldn't believe our luck when we discoved that DVD's were 7,000 Rp when bought in bulk, thats the equivalent of about 40p each! And you were allowed to check them all before buying. In true tunni style we spent our evenings exploring shops, stalls and of course restaurants where we wanted to discover nice Indonesian cuisine.
I think lauren
will agree with me when I say that Nasi Campur (a selection of curry's, vegetables, egg, satay, rice and chilli) Gado-Gado (steamed selection of veg with peanut sauce; not as nice as others but still good) and Mie Goreng (the Indonesian equivelent to Pad Thai, but with chilli) were our favourites!
And so it was that we spent the first couple of days In Kuta. From there we knew we wanted to go to Ubud as recommended by others and so thought it might be nice to see another resort further up the West coast. In truth we didn't realise that Tanah Lot was going to be so beautiful but by pure luck this is where we chose to spend the next day and evening.
The first few pictures are actually of the gorgeous Tanah Lot. It boasts a spectacular and intricate temple set on an island in the sea, also one of four of the most sacred temples in Bali.
Its absolutely beautiful and the pictures really dont do it any justice. It didnt help with the weather being pretty grey and overcast but you can still see that Bali for us was a completely different
experience to the one we had travelled in for the past three months.
The coast line here has so many visual delights on offer. There is of course THE temple on its island, and a little further down the coast is a spit of land with an eroded archway in it. This acts as a mini walkway type thing to another small temple, see picture, ignore my dark face!
Its not only the coast that looks beautiful, Tanah Lot town is a network of market stalls offering all pretty much the same thing but still fun to browse. Not forgetting the particuarily special tunni statues that guard the entrance to the Temple! Technical name of course!
This place is pretty much geared up for tourists and there are only a couple of places to stay. Once it gets dark, it pretty much shuts down and the combination of rain that we experienced meant that we were banished to our resort for the rest of the eveining. We ate in our restaurant, which turned out to be a great meal. We discovered Mie Goreng and drank Pina Coladas in hollowed out pineapples. Yum!
Next morning it was
off to Ubud. We shunned the expensive proposal of our hotels taxi service and instead went and found a nice man to take us for less.
Again we had no idea where to stay or what it would be like. Ubud, is situated in central Bali up and around the mountains. Its also the art capital of the island and almost every shop and market here has a wide selection of artistic styles.
Our taxi man was sweet and I think we had disturbed him from sleep or work or something as he came speeding up on his motorbike when his wife told him he had to give us a lift! He did however manage to find us a cheapish but amazing place to stay in Ubud. A place called Nick's Pension-very Indonesian!
We had a lovely big room near a big ravine for a river, except there was no river! Ooh and can't forget the old Danish couple who told us to turn down our quiet Dire Straits and Bernard Fanning music! Still a lovely big room, although a little damp and in a beautiful location only a few steps away from the main street in
Ubud. Even managed to get the room rate down, still not the cheapest place we stayed.
We set up camp for three days and enjoyed the delights of Ubud. The weather wasn't fantastic but we did have an interesting experience with our guided tour to Mount Batur, an active volcano and Batur lake north of Ubud. Along with stops at numerous temples and factories, including a coffee plantation, rice paddy's and the Artists Community, where men study to become the best artist there ever was and earn the title 'master' which take no less than 40 years to achieve! Dedication or what!
We had an unfortunate incident with our guide who we found to be rude and annoying and in the end we just wanted to go home. He was relentless though, and continued to try and take us to some temple that we couldn't afford to go to. We won, of course and got taken home.
Due to lack of time and lack of funds we decided that although it would have been fun to go to Candi Dasa on the east coast it was probably best to return to Kuta. Besides we both really liked the
feel of Kuta and wanted to get back to cheaper accomodation and beaches if we were lucky with good weather.
We were more than lucky, we stumbled across the cheapest accomodation possible, about 80p per night each and had lovely weather for the last couple of days.
Kuta as ever was fun. we shopped, me in particular, sorry lauren and thank you for taking my stuff home, legend that you are. We rewarded ourselves with a mexican as 'the last supper' very sad to be saying goodbye to Lauren but the time disappeared before we even realised. Its been the best three months of my life and I've loved every second. Its very scary to think that time can go that quickly, but still we did do so much. Wouldn't change a thing.
Suddenly it was time to leave each other and set off on new adventures.
If I had a glass I would raise it to you Tunni and all our wonderful adventures. Goodbye Bali.
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Wow
Just nice photos, hey?! Did you go to Dreamland beach?? Such a nice place to hang out. Take a look! http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Indonesia/Bali/blog-35130.html Kisses