Bali: The Isle of Gods Day 2 (Part 1 of 2)

19th March 2010
Part One

Today is going to be a long and exciting day as I have made plenty of plans for sightseeing. I managed to engage a certain Pak “B” to drive me around on the rented Avanza and the fees that he charged is very very reasonable at IDR150,000 which worked out to be around ±S$23 or ±US$16 for the entire day! Although it is fun to drive and explore on your own, when time is of the essence, it is always better to get a local driver and in this way, both parties win. I get to have a driver at a very low price and Pak “B” gets to earn roughly a week’s worth of his monthly salary for a single day’s labor! Please see below on the list of questions you might ask and the hopefully satisfactory answers to those Qs:

Q1- Tour package also provide a driver, so what’s the big deal?

An – Yes they do BUT bear in mind that tour operators charge you the driver’s cost per pax. Pak “B” charge per car and Avanza can take up to 6 pax excluding the driver! Go figure.

Q2 – Tour package shows you much more places, right?

An – Yes they do, including places that you may NOT want to go. For my case, I just pick up one of the many brochures from the airport, go through the itinerary, choose where I want to go and show it to Pak “B”, voila!

Q3 – Tour package includes meals, entrance fee, etc. That is better right?

This varies from on to the other. For meals, the price has already been included in the tour package and again, the food you get may either include things that you do NOT eat or it is customized for tourists (Read “safe & boring food”). I like to be more adventurous this area and get to choose & pay for what I really wanted. One thing that is PERHAPS good about tour package is the inclusion of entrance fee as sometimes and some places, it may vary (If you know what I mean) as it happens to me. The reason I said perhaps is that the tour package might have included the entrance fees at a premium... but since we don’t see the breakdown, no one could tell right?

Sunrise at Mount Batur

Other benefits include the flexibility of staying and stopping at any location that you wanted for a shot, option to leave to another destination without having to wait for the slow post in a tour group, able to take photos without the crowding of tour group, trapped in the tour vehicle for hours and treated to a cocktail concoction of all sorts of aroma (Read “Body odor”) and finally, instead of sitting shoulder to shoulder, we get the luxury of space. Yes, there may be some risk and uncertainties but that’s the way I like it! It makes the trip all the more memorable and I get to know a new friend. If you need the service of Pak B, you may drop me an e-mail or comment and I will help to link you up. The reason why I did not divulge this information is it may jeopardize Pak B’s permanent employment.

Let’s move on to the itinerary shall we? The itinerary that I have planned for the day is to head towards the northern part of the island in the early morning to Danu Bratan, the location of the picturesque Pura Danu Bratan temple along the Bratan Lake. The next destination would be to Gunung Kawi whereby you will find the magnificent stone carvings of the Hindu Shrines carved right onto the cliff. However, with the expertise of our local driver Pak B, he advised me that it will be a long journey to the Bratan Lake and we will not be able to reach in time for the sunrise and the distance between Bratan Lake and Gunung Kawi is far and there is nothing much in between. Instead he suggests to head to Mount Batur followed by Besakih, then to Gunung Kawi. Having the rough map in my mind, I agree that it is a better choice and besides, I have plans to come back to Bali again and the Lovina beach is going to be part of the itinerary equation.

Mount Agung and Danu Batur

The ride from Ubud to Danu Batur (Danu = Lake) is roughly 1.5hr drive. The lake is situated between Mt Batur (The Wife) and Mt Agung (The Husband). Due to us departing late from Ubud around 6am, we only managed to reach the lake when the dawn has break. Still, the scene is a beauty to behold and I could never fathom the full brilliance of the Batur sunrise until my next visit back to this Isle of Gods. I understand from Pak B that they have a Batur sunrise excursion that I could join but the excursion will start at 0230hr (For those not accustomed to the 24-hour system, it is 2.30am!) Mt Batur is still an active volcano and the last it erupted was in 1963.

Instead of burial, the local Hindus at the foot of Mt Batur Place their

dead on a raft and sent it out in flames towards the centre of the lake.

We drove down to the Pura Danu Bratan temple beside the lake and I would have to warn you that it is not worth the ride. The temple is very small and doesn’t really have much to see. Having said that, I am glad I’ve been there as at the very least, I could tell others that I’ve been there and tell them to miss this site if possible. Oh, remember to wear long pants, long skirt and no sleeveless or low cut tops! As the temple is a sacred place, the temple attendant ensures that any person entering the temple is properly dressed. If you are not properly attired, you will have to rent a sarong or scarf to cover up the unnecessary body exposures. These donation or more aptly “fees” may vary. I was told that it will cost IDR2,000 per sarong but later was asked for IDR20,000... weird? I thought it is IDR2,000? Mind you my understanding of the Bahasa is adequate to differentiate between 2,000 and 20,000. However, to avoid being viewed as a cheapskate I just pay and move on.

[Tips: Remember to wear long pants or long skirts to enter temple. Note that those that wore sleeveless tops and low cut shirts will be barred from entering the temple]

Pura Danu Batur's entrance

Well, that's about all you will see in this temple...

The next location is to Pura Besakih, which many addressed as the Mother Temple of Besakih as it is the largest temple in the whole of Bali. ~The temple is actually a complex made up of twenty-two temples that sit on parallel ridges-source from wikipedia~. Note that there is parking cum entrance fee to enter the Besakih site, which is very minimal. I can’t recall the exact amount but it is definitely lower than IDR10,000 per pax. There are plenty of shops at the entrance of the temple complex renting and selling sarongs to tourist. Having been charged IDR20,000 per sarong earlier, we decided to purchase one instead and I got 3 beautiful sarongs at a discounted total price of IDR150,000 or ±S$23 i.e. S$7.70 per sarong.

[Tips: Some (The majority if not all) of the Balinese vendors may be pretty superstitious in their belief that the first customer of the day determines their business for the entire day. With this piece of information, use it wisely! Always go in the early morning and give your best shot. Be warned however to NOT walk out of the shop empty-handed if you are the first customer!]

Site map of Pura Besakih Complex

When you had your sarongs, there is one more hurdle between you and the Pura Besakih and that is the temple guide. I am not sure are they genuine temple guide or otherwise but they will ask you to donate any amount that you “feel in your heart” before entering and upon donating, assign you one of the guys to bring you on a Besakih tour complete with narration and photographer. At that point, I didn’t have much money on my wallet and felt that it’d be an insult to donate IDR10,000 so I told my wife in mandarin with a laughing manner that “I don’t have enough cash, so how? I can’t possibly give IDR10,000 right?” The guy at the counter felt offended and asked me “What is so funny? I don’t find this funny!” Whoa! That’s surely uncalled for but then again, it helped me on my conviction that they are not local thugs but are genuine temple guides (I may be wrong). I donated IDR50,000 and they assigned an old guide to me! Oh well, its fine as long as he knows the stuff and besides, he is likely not to walk too fast that we couldn’t catch up.

One of the many shrines in Pura Besakih

Besakih sits on the hill terrace and thus gave a picturesque view from the top

You will notice that these door entrance
are ever present in all temples, not just Besakih.
These entrance are made by blocks carved from the hardened
magma from the many volcanic mountains in Bali

There is simply something magical about the sky in Bali. It is ever blue!
This shot was taken at the left corner of the temple's summit
Our old tour guide also doubles up as a
photographer for us. Poor guy is suffering from
Parkinson's disease evident from the constant
unrestrained shaking of his hands while
helping us take shots like these.

One of the guardian gods at the Pura Besakih's dance hall

Next we headed to Gunung Kawi and along the road, we saw plenty paddy fields as the locals would plant paddy whenever possible whether it is an empty field or a patch of land right beside the main road. I imagined that it would be a beautiful view when the paddy field turns golden upon the ripening of the crop. To reach Gunung Kawi, you would have to walk quite a bit down several flight of stairs and naturally, it is easier going downhill than up. The walk back from the shrine is uphill so be prepared. The consolation though, is that when you are tired while scaling up the stairs, there are rest stations in between and it offers a beautiful paddy field view to help you recover. Although the temple in itself is nothing much to rave about, a picture of the cliff shrines and journey alone would have given you a story to tell back home.

This is only the entrance... be prepared

Entrance to the shrine
Shrines carved onto the cliff

You will pass a small stream prior to entering the temple

Time to head back home.... errr, how many
flights of stairs did we took coming down???
At least these beautiful view of the paddy terrace provides some
sort of consolation while you rest in one of the many rest stations

That is all for our Ubud sightseeing adventure. I know many will complain that how come I did not cover the Ubud Palace, Art museum or the Monkey Forest. Well, one of the reasons is because I would like to come back again and leaving something unexplored would help me enjoy my next trip better. Besides, for attraction like the monkey forest, I think I had my fair share of the Macaques in my hometown as well as my wife’s hometown in Malaysia, so I guess I can afford to skip that until one day I felt that I really need to go there.

Beautiful paddy field. It would've been
awesome when the harvest is ripe and golden

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