Bali Trip Day 2

The main attraction for our second day of Bali trip was the majesty Kintamani Volcano and Batur Lake. Kintamani is located in Kintamani sub district, Bangli Regency which is 3 hours by car from the place we stayed, Kuta. Kintamani is the most favorite tourist destinations in Bali with the active volcano of mount Batur and beautiful lake. The volcano has erupted about 24 times since year 1800 and still active up to now. Lake Batur is the biggest lake in Bali and functioning as irrigation source to all farmers around it. The best time to visit Kintamani is from morning to 2pm as the area will be surrounded with heavy mist after 2pm.


The first day in Bali(ya first day as we arrived at night =)) started with a buffet breakfast in Maxi's Hotel Restaurant. The variety is not much, but the food tasted good for us. On the local dishes, they had nasi goreng, fried mee, chicken, baked potato and also mixed vegetable and also keropok =) But I still prefer their selection of western breakfast which is toast with jam, honey, butter and also variety of egg eg. omelette, scramble or telor mata kerbau =D Yummylicious. I would stuffed myself with the breakfast every morning together with 2 glassess of fresh juice because no one know when exactly is our next meal.

Maxi Hotel Restaurant

Maxi restaurant, overlooking Kuta street

We completed our breakfast at 9.15am and waited for our driver, Jhony to arrive. He had agreed to meet us 9am in the morning but it was already 15 minutes past 9 without the sight of him. When I was just about to make a call from the receptionist desk, a young man came to greet me, saying he is the brother of Jhony. We followed him to the his van and off we go exiting the busy Kuta town. The route to Kintamani took 3 hours, with the average speed of 50km/hr. All the road is Bali is relatively small to compare to Malaysia and most of the vehicles on the road were van,van and van. Alright, and also motorcycles (a lot!) of the local. So, 3 hours, we though we might have some time to sleep in between but we were wrong because there were so much of attraction on the road. Temples, Balinese house, stone craving, wood craving, furniture stores, and also street sellers. They even had people that sell you newspaper during traffic light wait, not local newspaper mind you, they were selling foreign newspaper. I saw Apple Daily, wei, from Hong Kong ler....and also our Sin Chew Daily. So convenient can!

In less than 1 and half hour, our van make a stop at Batik Shop at Gianyar. We knew our driver might get commission from there but he said we can also choose not to buy from there instead, to take a look at the temple behind the shop. So, we went in and the first thing that got our attraction(the gals) was this strange looking bag made of coconut. How creative! The variety of Batik clothes was plenty for women and men too. I bought a blouse for Mum and a dress for myself. The price was quite reasonable as every item in this shop will have a discount of 50% if we present them the sticker that our driver gave us. If you would like to buy Batik clothes, this shop is a good choice, better than other place in term of price and quality. The price might be a little higher, but the quality is obviously on a higher side.

Bag Kelapa =D

Tell me I look nice in that can? ~Rp52000

The small temple behind the Batik shop

Garden behind Batik Shop

Next, we went to Pasar Sukawati. Hooray for the girls, our first and second destination were shopping!!!!!!!!! Sukawati is the best place to buy souvenir at a price you will never get in Malaysia. One key point you must own is to thick up your skin to bargain endlessly until you get the price you want ^_^ At the end of the trip, we girl regretted because we were too kiam siap during the this stop, we all concluded we should had buy more during this stop. Really, there are really alot great bargain in Sukawati. Sighs, girl and shopping is inseparable.

Sukawati Market, wooden craft




Sukawati Market, Mirror

The next stop is Goa Gajah. The entrance fees is Rp6000 per person and we required to wear their sarong because all of us were wearing shorts. I guess it was a sign of respect to the temple. Nothing much here except the entrance to the cave looks like a stone craved elephant.

Getting down to Goa Gajah

Entrance to Goa Gajah

See, I tell you that we have no time to rest eventhough Kintamani is 3 hours drive from Kuta. The road getting narrower and bumpier as we getting closer to Kintamani. Our driver was kind enough to help us to avoid paying villager toll by using the other way, which the narrowest and bumpiest rocky road I had encountered in Bali. Thanks to him, we managed to get a view of orange/mandarin plantation for the first time in my life. After some rocky affair, we were finally welcomed by a superb scenery of the volcano from afar. As we getting closer to the volcano, the wind got stronger and cooler too. 6 of us got "wa waa waaa wahhhhhhhhhh" all the way to the volcano. Alex even joked that he gonna to suicide if his DSLR battery failed this time =D Kintamani is best to be visited in the morning to 2pm due to heavy mist in the afternoon. We reached Kintamani at 2pm but we were lucky because it rained prior to that. So, we got a clear view of Kintamani yay! The wind there was so cold that we shifted from sitting outside to inside of the restaurant.

On the way to Kintamani

Kintamani Volcano

My Flying Hair

Group photo at Volcano

Lunch @ Kintamani Rp70k

Another view of Kintamani

We were brought to Coffee Plantation. Here is famous for its Kopi Luwak, which is also the premium on of coffee. If you haven't get to guess it, kopi luwak is actually is the the coffee seeds that were not digested by Musang(i dunno wat musang is called in Engrish). It is said the Musang will only choose the best coffee to consume and the enzym in from his digestion system will bring give the coffee seeds a better texture. Each small bottle of Kopi Luwak cost approx RM50. Now I am regret because didnt get one for SuperDad. Aiya. I am so stingy I know. Aiksss...

Japanese girl in coffee plantation =D

Coffee plantation, coffee sampling but I sampled the Ginger tea instead

The next stop was Holy Spring Water Temple, Tampak Siring. There were two holy water pool inside where a lots of the locals do their prayer here. We were tempted to dip inside the icy cool pool but we didnt get to do it because we did not have any extra clothes along. Anyway, to show our kiasu-ness, we did washed our feet and hands and face there to get some prosperity. We shopped a little outside of the temple. The seller was desperate to let go their goods that they will normally cut down the first price they ask for to more than half. Also, when you are leaving, be warned to not to take any banana from the lady seller no matter how she persuade you to try on it. You need to pay for that.

Statue before entering to Tampak Siring



Another sarong wrapping session



Locals waiting their turn for fresh holy spring water



Wash away the bad stuff and get prosperous =D

>

Victim of banana lady =D =D Rp10, 000

This is tegalalang. Their hill paddy aka padi bukit. Nothing much we did here except to just take a photo. This type of paddy field view is almost everywhere except Kuta, so nothing too special here.

It was almost 6 pm when we left Tegalalang. Our last stop was Ubud, the center of cultural art of Bali. All the shop lots were either selling wood craft, paints or clothes. We stopped at Ubud Market which was going to close their business soon. I managed to grabbed 3 sundresses in fast action bargaining =p at the price of Rp 30,000 to Rp 35,000 each. Satisfied. Tell me where I can get such type of dress in KL for just RM12. Ohooohoooo. A good pat for myself. Next, our driver drove us to the Oh-So-Famous Bebek Bengil Crispy Dirty Duck of Ubud. Sadly, no picture of the Crispy Dirty Duck was taken but it was good, really yummy you must try stuff there. The dinner cost us approx. Rp70, 000 (RM28) each. The food worth every cents of it to compare to any food we ever had in Bali. The only trade off here was the distraction of the mosquito during the indulgence might be irritating as Bebek Bengil is situated inside the paddy field oh did I mention the sceneric paddy field view as our wallpaper of the restaurant. Thumbs up.

Prosperous Alex, after dipping into Holy Water =D

Bebek Bengil

Fried Calamari

Juicy BBQ Pork Ribs

So our second day ended with dinner at Bebek Bengil, Ubud. We were actually so a little panic when we saw no sight or our driver waiting for us outside the restaurant. Alamak, takkan is because it's over time, he had gone home. God Bless, he was actually instructed to park his van at a designated car park nearby. Some guy with walkie talkie that was connected to the carpark helped us to notify our driver to pick us up in front of the restaurant :) What a good service.

One and half hour drive and we were back to our hotel in Kuta. We girls put our stuff and off we went to shop hunting at Kuta town. Girls being girls.