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I’m back from the valley of the dead…Happy New Year folks. Guess I’ll start my first post of the oxy year on a trip to Bali island last November with my favourite bunch of project partners. It was a 4-Days 3-Nights stay at Risata Hotel, approximately 10 minutes drive from/to the airport, guided by a friendly (and very informative) local tour guide by the name of Mr. Putu Mega.

If memory serves me well, it took approximately two and a half hours to reach the island from Malaysia. Upon arrival, we were greeted by two Balinese women who put a ring of fragrant flowers around our necks, after which we were ushered into a waiting bus under the scorching sun (thank goodness I brought sun block with me!).

The road in Bali is rather small and narrow (two lanes). Almost every building I saw was old, like pre-historic type? There were also tremendous amount of wooden and stone craftings on display, usually on the roadside.

Most of the roundabouts do have some sort of gigantic fierce-looking statues (errr….perhaps the Hindu Deities/ God), like this one:

We checked into our respective rooms at the 3-star hotel, refreshed ourselves and off we went to a nearby restaurant to silence our noisy stomachs. Though there were flies buzzing around our food, we ignored the uninvited visitors and feast on some fried fish, weird vegetables, rending chicken, minced beef, keropok and fruits.

Our next destination was the famous Uluwatu Temple. While it is a mission impossible to visit all the temples in this beautiful island (there are like 10,000 or 20,000 or more of them!), this Uluwatu is, I’d say, a must-see temple! In case you didn’t know, more than 93% of the population in Bali are Hindu.

The temple had a rather…errr…unique dresscode to it. Visitors who wear short pants/skirt need to wear the sarongs provided, and for those who wear long pants, they’ll need to tie a piece of cloth around their waists. I have no idea how much is the entrance fee to the temple nor any other fees/charges to other places during my entire trip because it was all fully paid by the partner’s company.

We gathered at the bottom of the steps leading towards the temple for a briefing by Mr. Putu. He strongly advised us to take off our eyeglasses and necklaces and be wary of our belongings because those cute furry creatures – the monkeys – will snatch anything within their reach in lightning speed. But how can I see anything without my glasses?!

Here are some pictures from the top of the Uluwatu temple:

The Balinese people do believe in karma. Mr. Putu told us about good and bad karma, how it happens, yadda yadda yadda, and I used this ‘new’ found knowledge to tease one flamboyant dude who loudly said “If there is any monkey who dare come near me, I’ll kick his ass and fling him few metres away!” He made that kung fu gestures with an evil grin on his face.

Well, serves him right, because soon after, while he was walking along the walls heading towards the Kecak dance area, a monkey grabbed his eyeglasses and his cap from behind before he can even blink his eyes! Tsk…tsk…tsk…Bad karma on you, mister! Lucky me, on my way to the Kecak dance area, I tucked my camera into my bag, took off my glasses, hold onto a project partner’s bag and followed closely from behind coz’ I can’t really see!

<* Perrinator silently thank God that she did not grab anyone’s ass by mistake *>

But he was lucky to have his cap and glasses back. One of the project partners told me that he gave chase after the monkey, who was far ahead of him, and tossed the cap and glasses on the ground, only to be picked up by a local man, who then handed back his cap and glasses with a…’fee’. Yeap…some of these monkeys were trained by the locals to steal from the tourists so that the locals could take the dropped items and returned back to the owners with a fee! How absurd!!

Oh, none of us were allowed to enter the temple. It’s only for the priests. There were several signboards around the temple that says “DO NOT ENTER. FOR THE WORSHIP ONLY”. Hence, we could only take pictures around the edges of the temple. We were early for the Kecak dance performance, so, we chose the best possible place on the bench, and enjoyed the view and the wind from the sea. Aaahhh…

Each of us were given a piece of paper (printed in English), telling the story behind the Kecak dance performance. My, my, my…at first, we were enchanted by the chanting and dancing, but 15 minutes later, we begin to feel…bored. Yes, too much of repetitive chanting (CAK! CAK! CAK! CAK! CAK! CAK!) and clapping of hands soon got onto my nerves! And the entire show lasted for an hour! My ass was completely sore that time!

However, the show got a little more exciting towards the end with fire display! But be forewarned…if you ever wanted to watch this performance, it is best to choose the seating high above, not the first two or three rows in front because it was too close to the fire and you might get toasted a little if they accidentally kick the ball of fire towards you (which they did, and it scared the wits out of the little girl seated in front with her mother) . The smell of the kerosene was so strong that it is guaranteed to kill whatever perfume that you had on you!

Here’s the short compilation video of the dance.

After the performance, we got back to our bus (some of us were infected by the Kecak dance and kept howling CAK! CAK! CAK! CAK!) and headed towards the Ganesha Pudak Café for a candlelit dinner by the beach – Jimbaran Beach, to be exact. How soothing! How romantic! Ahhh…

The seafood was excellent, served with a few types of sauce and gravy, but I like this one particular sweet, spicy, black sauce and I can’t seem to stop dipping my food into it! My throat was totally dry the next day.

Alright, that’s the end of day one in Bali. For more pictures, well, you know where to go! Facebook!