After they almost did not let me to fly away from NZ (I didn't have an onward flight from Bali by the time I was flying away from NZ) I survived 2 long and boring flights and finally landed in Bali last Friday. In the more than week here we (me and my american buddy Ben) managed to see and experience quite a lot of Bali already:
Right the next day after my arrival to Bali we left the busy touristy part and traveled to quiet NW part. Just for one reason - Ben got us a deal to stay in his friend's super fancy villa in Pemuteran for free for few days. It was a perfect place for honeymoon or family vacation, so obviously being 2 guys staying here made us definitely a gay couple in eyes of all staff and other guests :) still totally worth it... on the picture is the resort, our villa on the left.
The NW part of Bali is one of the best spots for diving and snorkeling in Bali. Ben did his diving course here, I went snorkeling couple of times and it was amazing!
As I don't have any underwater picture-making device, I tried to google and find a picture from the area where I went snorkeling. And believe it or not, it literally looked like this!
On the way to and from (and around) Pemuteran we stopped at couple of nice temples (Bali is flooded with them). This one is a monkey temple just next to Pemuteran.
Tanah Lot - one of the most famous and visited balinese temples
Balinese dancer at Ulunung Danu
Sunset on the way from Pemuteran to Ubud - our next stop
First day in Ubud we went to cremation ceremony of some probably important or rich man (judging by how big the ceremony was)
First part of the ceremony was to bring the body and all the other stuff through the long street to the temple where the actual cremation took place
After some dances and celebration rituals they took out the coffin and...
...put the body inside the big animal.. and burned it.
Luwak coffee - poop coffee. Balinese special coffee - they let an animal named Luwak (something between cat and possum) eat the coffee beans from the plants (Luwaks are picky and only eat the best beans) and then they collect their poop and make coffee out of that (Luwak's digestion somehow makes the coffee special - I'm not a coffee fan so I can't really tell if it was that good. But people say it was :))
Here it is - liquid shit for 50k rupees (it is around $5, which makes it quite reasonable amount of money here in Bali - e.g. enough for meal and drink in restaurant for 1 person)
Monkey forest in Ubud. Ben found couple of friends there.
This guy was my favorite - all of the other monkeys were running around and trying hard to get some food from the people and this guy just sat there with hands full of crackers and looked really happy
And one more temple to finish the post - Gunung Kawi.
The next plans are to go to S of Bali and finally get some surfing (I only went once until now) for few days and then to go and experience the hip Gili islands and maybe some more surfing at Lombok. I have 2 more weeks here in Bali and then I fly to Singapore on 19th August..
No comments:
Post a Comment