The Girl Who Can't Drive

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Bali Bali Bali

I'm so upset with Blogger and it's text editor - the colours on my previous post don't show up properly! In case you're confused, the red fonts are excerpts from Maddox's article. There's a particular paragraph that's half red and half olive, which I can't seem to fix. Grrr...and 'Lesson 3..blah blah..' is supposed to be dark blue but text editor has once again failed me. I have a feeling that editing Html will be more fool-proof but unfortunately, I'm Html illiterate.

The rest of this post shall be about my Bali experience. I feel that 4 days and 3 nights wasn't enough for me to fully appreciate the beauty of the island; I spent a total of FIVE minutes on the beach and my skin's like, only half a shade darker. Boo!

Day 1, 16 June 2007, Saturday
Met up with the extended family - all 17 of us altogether - at Changi Airport. Departure to Denpasar, capital city of Bali via Singapore Airlines (yay Daddy). Flight was 2 and a half hours, too short for me to finish watching "The Number 23" on Krisworld. Upon arrival, I was kinda disappointed by the airport standards...I mean, you think Bali and you imagine lovely island paradise with plenty of smiling, welcoming people...warm and cosy lighting.....at least that was what I anticipated. Instead, you get this:

This picture was taken from the web, and it's actually one of the better ones...the only thing that redeems this shot is perhaps the Polo store. If I could I would show you a picture of their gloomy-looking arrival halls but I wasn't in the mood to whip out my camera while carrying my luggage. We met our tour guide, Jacky, an Indonesian Chinese national, and were each presented with a garland of frangipanis as a sign of welcome:

I took this using night mode..the garland made my skin and nose itch, so I took it off after awhile. Those are my new purple specs..hehe..funkymunky.. Our hotel was the 5-star Inna Grand Bali which wasn't really 5-star quality, but I guess quality is relative to the standards of locals in a country. After checking in, we all went to the seaside bar for supper where I had the worst-tasting Singapore Sling ever; it tasted more like Robitussin cough medicine. As expected, there were also all sorts of weird-as-shit insects, including Rambo houseflies and mozzies which proceeded to feast on my legs.

Day 2, 17 June 2007, Sunday
Started the day with a visit to the Balinese Painters' Colony in Ubud village, where there was alot of overpriced Batik for sale.

Next, off to watch this hour-long dance performance called "Barong and Kris" which was entirely in Bahasa Indonesia, so we had a pretty difficult time following the story. On top of that, it was quite boring and the mozzies were having a blood feast...the ang moh in front of me was actually reclining sideways on the bench! Hehehe...one of the actors playing the role of the villain:

My brother says his hair looks alot like mine. Twit.

Being the mountain tortoises we are, we got super excited over the sight of REAL cows in a field. It kinda reminds me about "Rice Without Rain", our sec 2 Lit novel. Remember, Dao? :-p

After that, it was off to Mas to visit some woodcarving shop and check out gold and silversmith handicraft at Celuk. At the latter, my shopaholic instinct kicked in and I was able to get a handcrafted silver necklace consisting of inter-linking silver hearts at 50% off! One of my uncles got a couple of wood-carved PENISES to display in his home. Erm...

Erm.

Really quite big ah.

Proceeded up to the beautiful mountain resort of Kintamani, which offers a stunning view of the volcano and magnificent Lake Batur. If I'm starting to sound like a travel brochure, it's because I'm lifting the descriptions from Hong Thai Travel's 'Enchanting Bali' itinerary. Lunch was at Penelokan, against picturesque scenery of the volcano and lake. It was Indonesian style buffet, with lots of meat items so I didn't have many choices.

Last on the list was the old Gao Gajah or Elephant Caves, which date waaaay back to the 11th century. Apparently children who aren't very bright are encouraged to rub the trunk of the statue of the Elephant God...my uncle heard that, and pointedly looked at me. -_-" No pictures allowed at the sacred grounds, sighh.

Top: Charmaine (my 13 year-old niece) and me, bottom: Walter (my 13 year-old brother)

Day 3, 18 June 2007, Monday
Woke up early to enjoy the fresh morning breeze. The quality of air in Bali is tonnes better than Singapore's...quite comical to watch my cute aunties attempt to inhale as much mountain air as possible into their lungs. Lovely view from my hotel room:

After breakfast, we proceeded to Bedugul to visit the countryside and another mountain resort, and lunch was at a local restaurant overlooking peaceful Lake Beratan. It allowed us such a wonderful panoramic view of the place, and the air was so freshhhh... at that moment I had a fleeting desire to move there and live in spiritual retreat for the next 50 years. Then I remembered Orchard Road, (relatively) insect- free toilets, my friends, my closet, my growing shoe and accessory collection, and abandoned the thought.

We also went to the Royal Temple of Mengwi, Monkey Forest and Tanah Lot Seaside Temple. More beautiful scenery....

Top: Mummy and the back, with her cousin. Below: attack of the suah ku- PADI FIELDS OMG.

Below: Royal Temple shots

Monkey Forest was scary, in my opinion. Which is why I have only one picture of brave Mummy here posing in front of a bunch of potentially dangerous primates. A monkey actually went to hug the leg of one of the ladies from our tour group and she screamed like a freaking banshee. I was busy looking forward half the time, trying not to notice the curious hairy things as they followed us or leapt from tree to tree overhead...as I was making my way back to the bus one of them actually followed me, probably 'cos of my big bag. like, (monkey's thoughts) 'bag. bag = food. food = good. biggest bag = most food.' :-s

Below: Tanah Lot Seaside Temple

aaaand views from the restaurant.....

oops...mummy caught in an unglam moment....

The adults went for SPA treatments at night, leaving us in the care of my 30sth cousin Andy and his girlfriend Genevieve. I finally tried the famous Krispy Kreme doughnuts! Hehehe...

Walter and Andy wearing their KK paper hats!

Day 4 was departure day...nothing much happened, no pictures either. I've spent 5 hours on my ass blogging and uploading pictures...gonna go off now and bathe. Taa.

Labels: Vacation