Early in the morning, we had a breakfast at hotel and after half an hour later, Mr Mahdi came with the tourist van to pick up us for today’s activities as per schedule around 8.30pm. We made a very quick stop to a batik processing centre while on the way to Batu Bulan to watch the famous Barong and Keris dances. The traditional show started at 9.30pm. It was performed for an hour, introducing characters of the Mahabrata story a legendary Hindus epic. After the show ended, we continued our trip to Celuk, the village of silver and goldsmith, then directed to Mas village which was the center of fine woodcarving, painting and other’s artistic works. These villages were located next to each other. There were lots of Bali’s craft sold at the merchandise centre here and there’re few items also were given discount exclusively for Malaysian and local. Shopping time coz I think this is the right place to buy souvenirs for relative n friends since the price was quite cheap here and items normally sold in bundle. Bole beli banyak2 n berjimat.
Perut sudah lapar, so our next stop was Kintamani which featuring a very spectacular view of still active Volcano at Mount Batur, with her beautiful caldera and Lake batur. It’s reminded me of Lake Toba which I visited last year. We had our lunch at restaurant called Suling Bali. The wind blew very strong here since we were in the high land area, the atmosphere was cold but very refreshing and we could see lots of kites flew in the air and it added beauty of the majestic panorama around hills and lake here. My first impression about Bali was totally wrong, I thought Bali is all about beaches, but it served us more than that and I discovered that more n more after I continued my next journey.
After lunch, enjoyed a very refreshing air and had a photo shoots, we went down to Tampak Siring Village to visit a holy spring temple of Tirtaa valley Empul. There were lots of fountain from water spring where Hindus will take a bath as one of their practice called “penyucian diri"
Right after that we went to one of the most famous temple at Bali Gua Gajah, but before that we stopped at Sribatu, the nice spices garden of cocoa, coffee and fruits. We also got an opportunity to taste coffee, chocolate and ginger drinks there. We were served by a dramatic scenery of terraced paddy fields clinging to slopes above a valley along our journey and a country site view.
We reached Gua Gajah (Elephant cave temple) at Bedulu area around 3.30pm. It was famous for its history since it was built thousand years ago but yet the construction and details of its stone carving to form a statue of Hindus sacred god “Dewa” was beyond technology on that time. That what made it unique and precious. We went inside the cave where historically had been used as a place for meditation. It’s not very big inside and as a matter of fact, the meditation spa ce also can only fit one man size of human but there were about 5-6 spaces inside the cave.Really cant imagined how a man can stay there, without eat or sleep, in a dark, cold and lack of air condition. But after all, in meditation we will call that as “cobaan….”.
Last stop for that day was a place called Garuda Wishnu Kencana Cultural Park (GWK).The beautiful and serene park, overlooking Jimbaran Bay, was originally meant to be the best cultural park in Indonesia. Besides enjoying the sunset view up on the hill there, another attractive landmark here was a statue of Wisnu, the god of creation, sitting on Garuda, the mythical bird that carries him, with a final height greater than that of the Statue of Liberty. From top of this park, we can enjoyed a sunset scenery.
The park was also to be equipped with a performance center with ampitheather, a street theater, galleries, restaurants and other artistic attractions. We watched a "kecak dance" at ampithere which was scheduled at 6.30pm.
After performane ended, we had a dinner at Jendela Bali restaurant still at this park area. It was Located at the limestone hill so we can have a panoramic view of nearest town, airport and the Indian Ocean. Food as ussual was good and we directed back to the hotel at night feeling so exhausted but very happy n cant wait for tomorrow trip.
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