Saturday, July 9, 2011

Bali trip - Day 1(01/06/2011)

Bali is considered to be the romantic getaway for couples so we decided to spend our anniversary in Bali.
We booked the tickets around one month back through Garuda Indonesia. Tickets to bali are always costly,it was around SGD 400/person. This time around we spent some time doing some research about the places that we wanted to visit.


Bali offers a huge variety of places depending on your interest. So there is everything for everyone here.We reached Changi airport at 7 in the morning. I hate getting up early in morning during such traveling schedules. I did rather sleep and miss the flight.Well this feeling lasts only till I reach the destination !!!

Rows of ships waiting near Singapore port .


The flight to Bali took around 2 hrs. Around 15 min from landing we spotted this awesome mountains. As you can see they pierce straight through the clouds.


I am not sure which mountains are these but as seen from the map these are mountains in the north of Bali.


We arrived at Deepansar airport at around 11.On arrival visa can be obtained in Bali for SGD 30 /person.It took us 30 minutes to reach our hotel "Champlug mas hotel" . The hotel is conveniently situated just a walking distance from Legion beach.But we were thoroughly disappointed when we arrived here. The hotel had a construction going on in the new wing so the old wing was completely neglected,the reception lobby was dusty.

Although the hotel looked appeasing as a budget hotel but turned out to be
the worst hotel we have ever stayed.That's the risk you take while booking a budget hotel (I will be soon writing an article on traveling on budget).

Bad hotel experience aside let me directly get straight into our little trip to Bali.

Bali's official language is Malay . Well we were surprised to find that they speak the same language as spoken in Malaysia.Bali is called "city of Gods" . You will realize this once you take a tour of the city. Almost every street and house has a stone structure of god .Offerings like below can be found scattered at various places like shops,even restaurant tables,near god statue ..


Our first destination was Uluwatu Temple. We left hotel at 4 by transport arranged by hotel ,it costs us 180,000 rp(SGD 25 ) for a half day trip.

The streets in Bali are adorned with small temples,huge symbolic structures and ofcourse traffic.


The streets are small and our driver was so frustrated ,he kept on telling us traffic has become bad in Bali now. It was bad indeed- Slow moving traffic plus the heat. It dint bother us much because our surrounding was new.

There is a very small entrance( SGD 50 cents) fee for the temple. As soon as we started walking past the long path which leads to the temple we were greeted by none other than monkeys, that too very aggressive ones. They kept on snatching things from people.So its advised to leave any bright colored stuff like accessories , specs ,hairbands at home.



Monkey eating chocolate.


We moved along with the crowd as we dint wanted to be targeted by the monkeys .The temple is located on a cliff but we dint go till there as it would have been quite a long walk and it's hard to locate the temple that far. We were actually searching the temple .


The huge sea waves hitting the cliff bottom , the naughty monkeys waiting to snatch things from you , the small temple dome at the edge of cliff , huge crowds - these are some of the sights that you will find here .







Some pictures of sunset







Lastly how can the visit be complete without any of your things being snatched by monkeys . My hairband was pulled by one and Naveen's specs was swiftly removed by another and we had almost lost hope of getting back the specs when a man who was standing there feeding the monkeys made the monkey drop the specs by throwing food at it .

That's my hairband in the monkey's hand !!!!!!!!!




He ofcourse expected us to give him some money in return of the specs but I guess was bit hesitant to ask .We offered him 5000( around SGD 1 ) but he said he wanted 10000 . You sometimes start wondering whether these monkeys are being trained because they get food in return of the snatched items .But we might be wrong also . Maybe he was just a gentleman who helped us . We will never know.

The drive back to hotel took two hours because of the now famous traffic in Bali .

We ended day one with a nice heavy meal .

2 comments:

Happy.Bark.Days said...

Beautiful photos! I didn't have a chance to visit Bali's coastal areas and now wish I had more time to do so.

Oh dear, sorry to hear about the monkey who stole your hubby's spectacles. Although there is a bit of humour in the story, I have heard of this story one too many times from friends and family... It's quite incredulous, isn't it!

Chaithra and Naveen said...

Ya you will see lots of monkeys around. So if you take maple make sure to carry him in a little basket :)

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