Bali Land Trip

6-10 January 2011
Ubud - Telaga Waja - Batur - Uluwatu - Tanah Lot - Kuta


6 Jan 2011

This is the first trip of the year. Most of us made use of the in-lieu (replacement holiday) for Christmas and New Year that fell on Saturday, and it’s not a bad time to travel because we just got out from peak season, however, it’s so called monsoon in Bali.
I got feedback from two friends who just went there that it’s raining season in Bali . I have only encountered rain in Bali few times, it rarely counts and it lasts only a while, the rest was hot, hot, hot (To be fair, I have never been to Bali in January though). Anyway, I guess this time is a bit different, I read a piece of news sometime before our trip that waves in Kuta had reached unusual height that the beach was closed, and also right after we came back. So, I was a bit worried that the weather might affect our plan.

Anyway, beside diving trips where we didn’t have enough time to explore Bali land except once, it was me and hubby first oversea trip together (not counting Singapore ), coincidentally Bali was also the first trip together for our travel companions, our couple buddy.
So it brought back memory, respectively, 9 years ago for me and hubby, and 19 year for them. Whew! It’s about time!

We had planned this trip right since August, right after Menado, but we slacked on other arrangements like things to do and hotels because each of us were busy with works, other trips and other things until December, we started to panic because it was difficult to book hotel. Nah lho!

I always wanted to do water rafting, and yet didn’t have the luck to do so. With my university’s outdoor adventure organization,
I often had to choose between other outdoor activities, study, going home so I only signed up once for rafting, two three days before the event, the river dried up because of earlier summer. So I was determined to make this one. Anyway, the rafting here is a commercialized tourist activity, so it should be easy to arrange.

Beside water rafting, I was interested in seeing Bali high up there from the mountain. I thought the ideas would not be popular among my these traveling kakis, so I would be happy to do just either of rafting or hiking. Since no one has any suggestions for the activities yet, I proposed to hubby for these two activities, and dolphin watching. While rafting and hiking requires physical fitness, dolphin watching involves just waking up early, board the boat and float with the dolphins, so I thought they might choose dolphin. Instead, to my pleasant surprise, hubby chose both rafting and hiking, for dolphin “nothing special, let’s just try to find them underwater”. When we proposed the plan, our companions also chose both. Wohooo!!

We bought night flight and went to airport directly from work. Got Texas Chicken for dinner, and somehow we didn’t have much time left, but there was still about half an hour. We walked leisurely among duty free shop and suddenly saw in info monitor that it was last call for our flight, and, we were still far far away for the boarding gate.
So we had to start to run. It was quite crazy and tedious and we had backpack with cameras and other stuff. Anyway, our gate was no where in sight, according to number sequence; we really needed to do some serious sprinting.

It was like never ending sprint, basically we had to pass every single gate because, of course, our gate is located at the latest. My worry was that since none of us had check-in luggage, they could leave us behind on ease. So the goal is to have at least one of us made it to the gate first to prevent them from closing it.

We were panting like mad, and went through the security machine when finally reached the gate, before even finished with the passport checking, we were told to proceed directly into the plane. Why the rush? Maybe it’s the new Air Asia method to prevent delay. Anyway, we still spent sometimes waiting inside the plane before it took of.

The flight took about two and half hours, we were going to touch down Bali near midnight, and from there we had big task on hand, self drive to Ubud, our first destination.
Reached Bali almost twelve, we got no problem finding the guy who rented us his car. Soon after some briefing and filling up petrol, he left us.


7 Jan 2011

My friend got used to manual car really fast, Indonesian cars mostly run by manual system. Hubby’s license had expired, so we only have him to count on. We dropped by 24 hour mart (there were lots of them) to find supply for water, tidbits, toiletries. I asked for direction, actually only to double confirm what the previous guy told us, and was given totally different direction. Eh..? Anyway, we decided to stick with previous guy but we were getting further from our destination, so we made a turn back.
It was midnight, but thankfully, all the roads we travelled were lit up well and smooth. Normally upon reaching Bali, we would travel 2-3 hours to our diving destination through dark and winding roads, so this time we should be alright.

We stopped two times to ask for direction, with hubby's outdated memory about Bali's road, very simplistic tourist map, bit and pieces of printed out maps from internet, and determination of four people, we reached Ubud safely, stumbled on Monkey Forest entrance, before finding the road to our hotel. The hotel area was nothing like I imagine, I though it would be very village type of environment, with villas and houses further. Instead, it looked like simplified Kuta. Our hotel was only slightly visible from outside so to make it easier, the hotel guy waited for us outside, luckily the hotel name was prominent enough.
We reached hotel around 1.30am. It was a simple hotel with quite cozy bedroom and bath, and uniquely Bali, as usual, the hotel rooms are always very dimly lit, a bit too dim for my liking but we only needed it to sleep. After registration etc, I went to bath first. The water was cold on the first try even though the heater was on, then it turned into boiling water,... then it stopped. Wah! I thought it was joking, so waited, water came back, a few drop, then stopped, then came back, the stopped for good. WHAT?!
I have to admit that it really pissed me off that time, well, it's not a great feeling stuck in the bathroom with soapy half-way bath and hair soaking with shampoo at 2 am in the morning for a hotel that consider costly in developed tourist area. But the management acted quickly, and we were upgraded to deluxe room, not much difference, but they have Jacuzzi in the much bigger toilet. My main concern was to finish my shower and got good night sleep.

We slept around 2.30 or 3 o’clock after both of us had shower and we had briefly prepared the things we needed for the water rafting tomorrow.
Woke up early, I think around 7+, we showered again and proceeded to have breakfast. The breakfast was very standard, and our friend’s room also being upgraded because of the same problem. The hotel kept reminding us that we had to move back to our original room, to which we said of course, if you get the water running, obviously. Anyway, it didn’t leave good impression with me, furthermore, they moved our belonging back to our room without permission when we were away, thankfully, everything was fine, water was fine. But set aside everything, I did appreciate their effort to remedy the situation, but stop walking around the room with the shoes on while we were bare footed! That is my pet peeve..!

Fortunately, like usual hotel Bali, they has nice rustic style landscapings and decorations, even though the hotel is very small (consisted of only 8 rooms).

We were picked up by Water Rafting operator on time at the lobby, inside there were already three ang moh, we had the car ride for I think almost one hour? Can’t really remember the details. The rafting was in Telaga Waja River. There were choices between Ayung River and Telaga Waja, while Telaga Waja being the more adventurous one, Ayung was more family friendly. And, Telaga Waja has the climax of 4 meter drop!

We stopped at a coffee plantation nearby the rafting site because we still got some time before the rafting. We walked down through short distanced narrow earth road between various plantation before we reached a very unique ‘natural café’. There was a civet cat in the cage along the way. I’d prefer them to just put some pictures instead of putting the real civet cat to promote Kopi Luwak, the most costly and unique coffee processed from undigested coffee bean by civet cat, yup, the cat ate it and the coffee bean went through the digestive system. The idea is not glorious, but I wouldn’t mind to give it a try. Of course the coffee beans had gone though some cleaning and processes, and might be much better in hygienic level than most of the food we eat daily.

The natural café was a narrow flatten earth overlooking the plantation valley. The area was just nice to occupy small table with four seat and small corridor to walk. It’s actually really nice sitting there and looked at the green surrounding while enjoying hot coffee. They gave us free samples of ginger tea, ginseng tea, lemon grass tea, bali coffee, and chocolate? For Kopi Luwak, we ordered three cups, this one had to pay.
The Kopi Luwak indeed tasted different (but it’s not shitty in case you wonder) it’s very thick and rich, however I’m not a coffee avid or coffee lover, imho, it tasted like Kapal Api with less sweet and thicker mixture. I only drink Kapal Api coffee anyway, so my comparison is not reliable.

There was a small shop above up, we had to walk up a little bit of earth terrain and it was there. Although they all made up like marketing scheme or tour (where you go somewhere then you buy their product) somehow this one was a little bit more unique and I didn’t mind. We like the ginger and lemongrass tea, our friends like them too, they also like the Kopi Luwak.

After shopping, we boarded the car again and proceeded to water rafting area.
On the parking lot, we already saw colorful rafts, helmets and people preparing themselves for the rafting. Excited, I did the registration and we were greeted by our guide who briefed us about the safety and operation procedures, we also ordered group pictures.
It was simple, forward means we paddle forward, backward (I hope I remember correctly) paddle backward, lean back is leaning back, so far is simple.
Another one is Boom boom, basically means you have to put you paddle aside, try not to let it collide with something outside, then lean back and grab the safety rope in the raft because boom boom means we were going through something rough like hitting onto the rock that can affect the balance and the contain of the raft.
There you have it.
All our slippers were tied together using long rope, valuables are kept in one dry bag. Each of us had a paddle, the guide told us to sit in formation where one guy in front, one guy behind and the middle were the ladies. I found the most tedious thing was to make sure that my paddle didn’t hit anyone or being drag outside.

Not long after starting, we needed to get out of the raft and walked down staircase because there were two tiers of high drop that was not safe to get through since it was very rocky. After that we reboarded the raft.

Fun? Of course it was fun! In the beginning we didn’t really get wet because basically the route was very safe, once in a while we need to boom-boom, lean back and maneuvering around the rocks. The raft would move by the rapids and the guide would control the boat, sometimes we moved sideways or backwards. Our guide seemed to be very experienced, he could maneuver the way effectively through the rocks and we always caugt up with the rest (we were the last raft). Many times we would then waited at one spot for other rafts to get going again, we suspected it was maybe because the other guides were not as experienced and he could render hope if needed. I would prefer that our raft kept going, because we lose the momentum everytime we stopped. It could be quite nice to see the beautiful surrounding but imho, rafting should be continuous so we would not lose the momentum, as least I wished we didn’t wait as many times as we did. Another thing, rafting should be wet and we were still fairly dry.

The two wishes were granted. We stopped at one point where we alighted from the raft to the waterfall. There was a nice natural waterfall, where we could ‘shower’ under the very strong pouring water. Being one of the last group proved to be a good way, we got to enjoy the waterfall without a lot of people waiting to take picture. We needed to climb over a bit of rocks before being able to sit or stand under the waterfall. By the time I approached it, it was way way way colder than I imagined, and it was weird to have gallon of water dropping on you while you shivered, but it was certainly fun experience. We posed and enjoyed the water for awhile, before negotiated our way back and put back the life jacket and helmet. Now we were soaking wet, there you have it.

Sometime after the waterfall, the guide decided not to wait too much for other group again (good!). The water flow was great that day, obviously because the day before the activities was cancelled since the weather was too rough. The river was in between hilly cliffs or rice plantation; sometimes we could see villagers doing their daily activities and cattle walked around. The weather was pleasant, we didn’t feel the sun and the sky looked cloudy but we actually got sunburnt. Once in a while the photographer would paddle pass us using one man canoe with all his equipment in the dry backpack, he would then station at good spot to take picture, boarded the canoes again and passed us again. I think he has a very fun job!
At one point our guide instructed all of us to stand up and posed for the picture. We stood up for a while, but it was kind of difficult to balance ourselves, soon we had to sit down again. We also raft through another waterfall, it only lasted a while but it was fun. After almost two hours, we reached the end of the river, when we had to go through the climax of 4 meter drop. Our guide collected the paddle, we had to sit two by two, with our backsides inside the lower parts of the raft. The off we went, reaching the edge of nowhere, eng ing, eng, and GUSRAK, GABRUK.

It’s hard to describe the feeling, especially the second when the raft hanging in the midair and you were looking down to the fall below, the raft freeze for a millisecond, then pointed down, and as fast as lighting, crashed into the drop below with all the contain and passengers going haywire. Me and hubby were sitting at the front, both of us filled the small space, so when the raft fell, we were literally catapulted up in the air, and went back because of gravity. The catch was, falling back down we couldn’t coordinate and share space properly, so when I landed first, he got not enough space to fill. Our hands clung on tightly for dear life, and our feet shot to every direction. I was very sure that we had two pair of feet in front of the lens because once we landed, the water pushed us hard forward to the direction of where the photgrapher stood.

We were all laughing like mad, it was WHOA – WTH – BRUAK – FINISH type of experience. But it was fun!









We came to the end of the river (if my muddy brain is right, I remember it as 12km river), and alighted from the raft. I was glad that everyone looked happy with the rafting, soon after we landed our feet, we had to climb up I think 200 steps to the dining area on the top. We stopped by for photo for awhile. When we reached the top, all of us went for shower. They provided towel, but apparently they only had public shower. The guys disappeared inside the male shower while we were hesitating for a while, then decided to shower fully clothes. Because it was not only public shower, people also just came and go as they please, all the while opening the door and the room would be exposed to outside.

After shower, we went to the dining area and had the buffet lunch. It was a simple buffet but some dishes were quite nice, we waited for our pictures being processes into a dvd, then climbed another steps up to the road where the van was waiting. This time the angmohs requested to sit in front, as one of them felt very nauseous because of the rafting.

I thought I had enough coffee fix this morning, since I’m not really used to drinking coffee I felt like having accelerated heart rate because of the caffeine, anyway, we thought we would have difficulty sleeping tonight. Turned out, we were wrong, we all slept well that afternoon, not night, in the car, on the way back to hotel, immediately after rafting. Try this, rafting cures insomnia. I think so. Same with diving.

When we reached hotel, after the room commotion, we had good shower, relax for a while before gathered again to drive out to nearby Monkey Forest. It was nice cooling afternoon, just upon the entrance we already saw bunch of monkeys roaming around and asking for food. Some locals were selling bananas if you want to feed the monkey, but I guess it’s not a good idea to bring banana into monkey territory. Once a angmoh/bule bought the banana, few steps in, the monkeys were already gathering around her and tried to snatch the fruit and even climbed up on their heads.



I like the monkey forest for the glory of the site, it has huge gigantic tree with hanging curtain, spreading root and mystical feeling of the jungle ruins. The temple is also decorated with my favorite green moss that show the wisdom of the time. Monkeys roam around freely, the local feed them occasionally, they stock cages of sweet potatoes in certain area, they also let the monkey meddling with their daily offering. Balinese diligently put offering few times a day; contain some rice, flower, fruits etc.
We saw the monkeys ransacked those offering, some even put its head inside the basket (damn autofocus not fast enough), we saw them feasting on sweet potatoes or begging for banana. They were literally everywhere, family, children, granpa, grandma, babies. We also witnessed one monkey demonstrate to us that it could open the water tap and drank from it. It got great applause, so the monkey decided to show off, by turning it off and on again. Too bad, the second time it turned the tap on, it was too fast that the monkey jumped because of water sprayed on its face. So it ran a distance away, but bravely faced the audience for some credit of our amused laugh. You see why I love this animal? They are sneaky, smart, naughtly, compassionate and very energetic.





















We could freely take their pictures because they were not afraid of human, of course we didn’t use flash to avoid disturbing them. Since I only had wide angle lens with me, sometimes I had to get very close to capture their expression and distorted face. Apparently they were also curious with us sometimes, one put its paw onto my lens flat and square.

The problem with monkey forest, it’s also a place to feast for mosquito. You can fell blood being sucked out from exposed skin immediately. We put in mosquito repellent, but somehow it’s a bit too late for me.

We walked around, I remember the weather was quite pleasant as it was already the beginning of the evening. We didn’t really explore much I think because it was closing. I can imagine it could be quite a scary experience to spend a night there.
We walked out and had a ice cream break at a shop nearby. There were also some monkeys outside, hanging on the tree, sitting with the balls (literally) on electric wire. I can’t imagine the agony if there was an escape of electric current. But hey, not everything can be learned through soft way.









We started to move to look for food, drove out a bit. I must say Ubud is different with what I imagine it would be. I thought there would be padi field everywhere, with villas far and between, a lot of greenery and open sky. I don’t know whether we were at the wrong side of Ubud, but around the place we stayed it looked like smaller and simpler version of Kuta. There were shops and angmohs everywhere, and where are my padi fields?

We found a small roadside stall selling usual tent food that can be found in Jakarta, friend chicken, catfish, duck etc. I settled with my favorite catfish. We were accompanied by two muscular dogs working on their puppy eyes to beg for food, but they were well behaved and did not disturb us.
It’s funny that when you look at them, they would quickly catch your eyes and try to look as hungry as possible. If you stare at them long enough, they might come nearer, so you can stare at them but give them a bit of glare to stay on their spot while you are eating, but reward them with something afterwards.
If you don’t want to give them anything at all, try to avoid eye contact. He he..

There are few tricks that are mastered by stray cats and dogs when we dine in Indonesia’s roadside stall. Some cats like to live dangerously by jumping on top of the table, then quickly curl their body and close their eyes with the most pitiful expression, so whoever who has their hands up in the air would have their heart melted and just tried to chase them by fanning the air.
These cat’s attack are hardly fruitful, because no one would like their food to have strands of wandering cat furs or sharing their meal with cats. But these cats are street smart and they are betting on something, that you would be freaked out enough to throw some food from your plate far far away so they would leave you.

For dogs, dogs are normally less sneaky, the most they would put their front legs at the edge of the table but street smart dogs observe people and less aggressive.
They can just sit patiently next to you or under your table and try to catch your eyes with that killer pitiful puppy dog eyes. Some go as far as putting their front legs on the lap. So, it’s either you freaked out again and throw your food or your heart melt and they ended up having part of your meal.

Of course the stories are not always happy ending, sometimes they are being abused or being chased with broom. However, somehow I think these animals can recognize which human are ‘safe’ and approachable, they are good in reading whether their fellow hairless mammal are kind hearted enough not to hit them.

The catfish was good, slurp.. we moved a few step away to another stall that sell Madura mutton satay, with fat and liver satay too. We were full but we were greedy, and it was very delicious satay, I still think of it although I’m actually not a fan of mutton. we also ordered I can’t remember what soup. Hubby is more expert at local food because I basically grow up with Chinese food.

We dragged ourselves to the car passing by a chicken satay cart that looked very tempting but we were very full. If I’m not wrong we then drove back to the hotel, hung around for awhile to decide places to go tomorrow then went to sleep so that we could fulfill our sleep deprived first day.


8 January 2011

We woke up around 7+ to go to the nearby market to look for some local food. It’s wet market in the morning, and would turn into tourist souvenir market in the afternoon, I hope my info is right. We roamed around but the only food that they sold is unrecognizable some vegetable mixed with something. We tried to walk around a bit, but couldn’t find anything else, so we walked out from the market to other streets nearby, found a shop with babi guling (roasted pig? Bolster pig? ;p) signage, but to our disappointment, it was not yet open. We ended up having breakfast in the hotel, today we all chose banana pancake and it was quite good.

After packing and shower, we checked out for our next destination. We had to choose between Uluwatu and Tanah Lot’s sunset and we chose Tanah Lot because we were not sure whether we could find the right spot for Uluwatu. Anyway, we decided to stop by Sukawati market along the way, this time we didn’t go inside the building, we walked around the perimeter and road side. Trip to Sukawati was quite fruitful, from all of us, we bought wooden animals, coconut shell piggybanks, wooden food covers, Balinese unique Barong T-shirts in various colors, Salak pondoh, boiled peanut (I never left Sukawati without this) and boiled sweet corns.
We dropped by a food stall and ordered Balinese mixed rice. It was quite expensive and not fantastic, but we were hungry.

Along the way to Uluwatu, we had to fight the urge to fall asleep by attacking our food supply randomly. We finally found the Uluwatu temple, went in but couldn’t really enter the temple because there was a wedding ceremony, we could go another spot but we were kind of rushing since the half of the afternoon was gone. We found the temple on the cliff and took some pictures. Nice scenery, I can imagine how the sunset would like.



Me and hubby wondered about the secret passage to the sandy beach we found nine years ago and almost gave up when we stumbled to it. It’s no longer secret passage. A few small wooden house and simple stone staircase leading to the beach had been developed into some sort of surfing village, it was hardly recognizable until we worked down and found the semi covered beach. While it was almost like private quiet beach in the past, this time there were many people around. Back then we actually ride motorbike in, now they had this gigantic loooong concrete staircase leading to the village. We had to walk up and down and I was a bit worry that we would sore our feet too much because we had a mountain to climb tomorrow.










In Uluwatu area we saw a lot of babi guling calling us, but we had to rush to catch our sunset in Tanah Lot, we thought it would be easy to get it later.

After taking few pictures, we went back to the car and headed to Tanah Lot.
Tanah Lot was further than we thought, and along the way we finally faced what we had been dreading about, the rain.
The sky looked dark, and we were sure that we couldn’t catch the sunset on time, with the addition of the rain there might not be sunset at all. The prediction was correct, it was raining when we reached there, the sky looked gloomy. We had to put in our raincoats to protect ourselves and our backpacks. We went directly to the stretch of restaurant on top, so at least to get away from the crowd and protected from the rain.
We took some fruit juice and tried to get few shots of changing daylights left.







I can’t remember if we checked in first, but I guess we went directly to find dinner. To our surprise, along the way to Kuta and surrounding there was no babi guling, we hardly see any, and the ones that we found were closed. We finally got to one with babi guling and delightfully put in some order. They said it was available, but when the dish came out, they said they ran out of the particular one that we wanted and only gave us three small tiny puny pieces after we confronted them. Hmpppph!!!!

Anyway, we felt quite beat and sometime there was a traffic jam in Kuta area, it was also a challenge to locate the hotel. We stayed at this hotel sometime ago, and remember that it was almost hidden from the main road, except from a narrow passageway, and this was the other challenge. How to bring the car in from such a narrow alley?

Hubby took over the car, it was really a crazy effort to bring the car in, there were barely 10 cm on each side of the car, mirror had to be folded and four of us literally held our breath. One mistake, one, could stretch the car beyond what we could afford. Finally, everything went fine.

We checked in and called the Putu, who arranged for our Mount Batur trekking to confirm everything. He would pick us up at 12.30 midnight, it was already around 9 when we reached the hotel. Imagine the face of the receptionist when we order ‘morning call’ for 12 midnight.
After cleaned up, we decided than we could make use of two hours sleep. It’s weird to sleep at ten and woke up at twelve, because normally our sleeping time was beyond twelve, but we were tired and gave it a try. We knocked off, and at twelve, the alarm rang. We dragged ourselves up and prepared to go.

Putu was ready and we started the 21/2 hours (I think!) drive to Pura Jati at Toya Bungkah, Kintamani as the starting point to climb Mount Batur. The high is around 1450 meter, from there there was a short climb to summit 1717 meter (5633 feet). Eventhough it's a short climb and probably considered as one of the easy mountain, all mountain has to be respected. Just end of March at the same year, a Swedish national fell to his death at the crater of Mount Batur. Mount Batur is also an active volcano and just recently been upgraded to status 'Waspada' on November 2010, second highest dangerous level for its tectonic activity.

9 January 2011

We waited there for awhile, made payment and off we went with the local guide. I think the time was around 3 something.
The morning was quite cold at the beginning, but as we walked, we started to perspire.
For the first half an hour, we were walking through flat terrain; it was pitch dark in the night so we had to make use of our torch to shine the step.

In the beginning, we were joined by a guy who made a living by selling drinks in the summit. So this guy normally would go up with a group of people, then tried to sell us some drinks on top of the mountain. Mount Batur is actually quite commercialized, touristy type of trekking. It has a hut near the summit that sells instant noodle, hot ginger tea and coffee, although still much less commercialized and accessible as Bromo. Maybe you wouldn’t find the peace, the obstacles and the feelings of scaling like mountain tops, but in Batur we can get this very local kampong feel when everyone gather around the hut, eating food cooked by charcoal clay stove, it sort of reminds me of university time, when we could go out to remote area doing research and exploration, while we always count on the nature of the hospitality of villagers to help us. It is wonderful what those villagers would do to welcome you, they let you stay, sometime insisting on us taking up their master bedroom, they don’t mind strangers in dirty clothes etc. Okay, maybe it’s a bit different comparison because Mount Batur has been introduced to commercialism, but the kampong touch is still around.

After the flats, we started to walk up. The terrain is the best combination that we could hope for a mountain. It’s rocky earth, there are rocks everywhere to help you get a grip and hold your step, makes it not slippery and most of the rocks are mostly solid on their places when we put our foot. The path was not too steep so we didn’t need a lot of rest. Sometimes we stopped along the slope, and it was always my favorite moments when I did night trekking. To see the dark sky, the flickering lights from far far away and terrain surround you as your eyes got customized to the darkness. Everything is quiet, everything is dark, cool wind and the chill will hold your body, and you can only hear your own and your companion’s breath. There was one more thing that could make it more perfect, a sip of hot water from the flask that we didn’t have. Anyway, the ambience was kind of spoilt a bit by the talkative drink seller guy talking to the guide, our guide himself is a very quiet guy. But still, It was still great to have the peaceful of the night.
We were the first group to go up,

While trekking, it’s better not to rest too long because we would start to shiver and the momentum would be lost, so we started walk again.

The wind was quite chilling that morning, it's just comfortable to cover the head with buff. We reached the resting area, near the summit around 4.50 am. I am very proud with my kakis, although hiking is not their cup of tea, they didn't complain, kept very high spirit and even enjoying the experience as the journey goes by and we started to see the gorgeous scenery upon the daylight. It can be said that we covered the journey up in decent time.

By the time we reach the top, we could sit next to the railing and look at the valley, village and lake below. We could also see Mount Abang prominently, Mount Agung behind Mount Abang, and so called Rinjani, should the weather had been very very clear. It would be a very precious experience if I could take Rinjani picture from here, since I had taken Mount Agung picture from Rinjani.

The surrounding was still very dark, we had coca cola.. there were few things that go very well on the mountain; coca cola, hot soup, roasted cashew nut, indomie, ginger tea. The coca cola tasted a bit rusty and maybe this time, it didn't feel that great. However, the indomie and ginger tea, whoaaaaa.... slurppppp slurppppppppppp...somehow, when it's cooked with charcoal, it really tasted better. We happily order indomie and ginger tea while waiting for the sunrise. There were times when the fog totally cover the whole surrounding and there were rain rushing down. It seemed like we wouldn't have clear sunrise. When the orange blush started peeping, we took the position, in front of the railing, there was a 1.5 meter width earth ledge that we could stand and take picture. At least there were no plethora of human like Bromo, in fact this is what I thought how Bromo going to be. There were around 30-40 people, but there were plenty of places for everyone.We could either scattered near the railing or just sitting somewhere along the crater. Mount Batur is shaped like Batman, so from below we could see there was a small flat area in the middle and then two ear protruding out. This base where the hut and main sunrise point is located at the flat area. From that area we could walk up again further to the real summit. Why not nearer to the summit, soon we would find out.

Eventhough the sunrise was not clear as the sky was cloudy, the sunrise was still mystically beautiful. It’s dark, it’s misty, it’s not orange, and in matters of minutes the sun was already in intense silvery suit.








We took our time taking picture and then hubby asked me a question. He asked whether I wanted to go up the summit. It's a miracle! Not only he asked, he actually really wanted to go. I asked the guide how the terrain was, he said some part is the rocky-sandy terrain.

Rocky-sandy terrain, imho, it's one of the scariest terrain, and commonly found near the summit of volcanic mountain, terrible combination.
It's very tiring and dangerous terrain because it's damn tiring to climb on that terrain. As nearing summit is normally steep/very steep, this terrain only provide around 30% grip, as you walk three steps, you might slide down two step. If climbing up is killing, imagine going down, where you can see the valley down there.
So I explained to him and he was okay with it. Anyway, the guide told us it would only be around half an hour trekking.

We left our bag behind, bringing only my camera. Before started, we went for toilet break.
There was no toilet around, but there was part of some broken wall behind the hut. From there we could see (and be seen) but it’s quite secluded.
We needed to descend down a bit before starting to climb up. The beginning of the terrain was mild, just like the previous, then we entered the rocky sand part. It was quite tiring, but quite short. Along the way we could see nice scenery and surrounding, and it was nice as there was nobody around.







Upon reaching the top, we could feel the strong wind. There was another tiny hut and few climbers. The summit itself is maybe only around 3 X 6 meter irregular shape, which was already quite a luxury for a summit. There was two benches there. We could see the other Batman ear from far.
The wind was flapping very strongly that we couldn’t stand up straight. I wanted to go to the edge to take picture, but it was quite scary as the wind was a bit too strong for me, so I just went to the edge where we were coming from, at least if I fall, I’m still there.

We sat there for a while to enjoy the surrounding. The breathtaking scenery with the broken sky, when the silvery sun peeping out. How I love the 360 degree view like this. We started to go down. Going down is not my cup of tea in anything, but after Rinjani, I kind of conquer my fear, at least I could slide down a bit faster and not afraid of falling like I used to. I fell two times in the rocky sand, but managed to lift my camera up my head. We took it slow, enjoying the view. There was a guide ran down passing us very very fast, after hesitating for a while, two angmohs followed him. Note, running down is very fun, I tried that in rainforest terrain, where there are trees and land on your right and left. But here, it could be just a thin line between an accident and a thrill. It doesn’t worth the risk, unless you are very very experience and know the mountain like the back of your palm, it’s not courage, it’s stupidity. Even break an ankle doesn’t worth the fun, imagine what you can’t do with a broken ankle. If it’s worse enough, you can even forget climbing another mountain.

So we steady steady and three quarter near the hut, the guide asked me whether I wanted to try to go to the hot spring and cave. It was only nearby but need to climb down some steep steps. Hubby didn’t want to go, he got stomach ache, so he waited for us where the guide brought me down. There was some misty fog coming from the crack of the mountain wall, and quite gigantic cave below, although it smelled a bit like piss. Anyway, I didn’t explore much because there was a group of people there near the edge and I didn’t really want to go further into the slippery cave.

When we reached the hut, our companions were inside the hut, looking very cosy. Most of the climbers had either left or just gone up to the summit. We bought another bottle of water and started to go down. The wind was cooling but soon we would sweat again.

What was not visible during our climb up, now was displayed nicely to pamper our eyes. We walk through beautiful fields, overlooking the calm Batur lake below, Mount Abang, Trunyan village, gorgeous plantation, pine forest, small padi plantation, volcanic walkway. It was a very pleasant visual track, and I was very happy to see all my kakis enjoyed themselves as well. We took pictures, posed, while slowing went down the track. Some climbers caught with us very fast by running, we caught other group resting enjoying their time too. What’s the rush.. it’s not everyday destination!














Three quarter of the journey, we stumble upon temple in the middle of open field. The temple overlooks the surrounding, local would come here to pray during certain occasion. Only vehicle catered for the ceremonial purposes are allowed to go up.



We walked by groups of what looked like broken ruins or half-built concrete structures, I asked the guide what are those after we reached the car, he said it’s structure built for ceremony preparation. During certain day when the local wanted to go up to pray, they would start the preparation there.





In the parking area, according to Putu, is in area named Toya Bungkah. (I forgot to ask what was the name of the place, so I actually sent a sms to him few days ago).
We went to attack the breakfast we left on the car like coyotes; breads, boiled eggs, bananas. Putu, who was waiting for us since 3 am, said it was very cold there that he had to jog around the carpark. Mahaha.. After fulfilling our unusual morning hunger, we happened to see a gorgeous Golden Retriever. Putu told me that I could pet the dog, he helped to ask permission from the owner, who was friendly and let four of us pet and took picture with the dog. My favorite dog, named Miki, was quite an old dog, she was very patient, friendly, calm and cool.

After playing with the dog, Putu sent us to a so-called well known restaurant on the cliff overlooking gorgeous surrounding scenery. He brought us around for ride first, we saw a lot of wild dogs. According to him, villagers there let their dogs run wild, even mate in the wild, only keep certain dog at home. We saw the nice lake, the silvery water and row of boats, and saw Trunyan village from far. Putu told us a bit of story about the interesting Trunyan village, where the local put pass-away families and friend under the tree. There are special species of trees that only grow in Trunyan, that gives it special and unique character, so even though there are bodies, there are no smell. The place is sacred, and one of the prove of how unique and special Bali is.

I was not very hungry when we reached the restaurant, the food was fine, it was buffet style, we got to eat by sitting on the high bale-bale (pavilion) barefooted while looking at gorgeous scenery. We spent sometimes there before Putu brought us back to Kuta.







I am very grateful with the weather, we had the whole clear morning so we didn’t need to track in the rain, It’s a bless considering how unpredictable the weather nowadays and the recent rainy season in Bali. So yes, I am sooooo grateful.

When we were back to the hotel, cleaned up, and three of them went for massage. I took my own sweet time to relax in the hotel, not wanting to sleep but I think I dozed off for a while. We had connecting room here so it was easy for us to communicate to each other.

We liked Oasis back then because it was strategic, the rooms are big, there are private terrace, and they have long swimming pool, it is also considered one of the newer hotel, back then. But this time, it was kind of run down. For our room, it was fine, but it was not the case for the other room, their aircon was not working well, and there was a leak from their basin.

We went out to look for dinner, and here, I actually forgot what did we eat. We went to bakery, brough some dried stuff to bring home, we ate Yogya’s unique some rice, sorry I forgot what the name was, we bought pisang goreng, onde-onde and putu, also martabak back to the hotel, but I can’t remember what the main dinner was. Maybe I mixed up something, I don’t know..

Anyway, after roaming for a while, we parked somewhere, then walked along the food street. We decided to go back hotel, relax while eating all the food, then called it a night.
For this trip, our pattern was,
1st night : sleep deprived; midnight drive and lost.
2nd night: sleep a lot
3rd night: sleep deprived, hiking.
4th night: sleep a lot

Hahaha.. at least it’s still a balance, unlike my other type of trip; diving (sleep a lot), free n easy ulu place trip with my office kaki (sleep deprived because of reunion of scrabble maniacs).


10th January 2011

We had breakfast at the hotel, it was quite disappointing because there was not many choices of food. Our diving contact who helped us to arrange for the hotel came down to collect payment, and we gathered as many info about other diving destination and experience. I have to say I kind of envy her work, diving around remote places of Indonesia and being paid for it, although she is more like administrative organizer and doesn’t really enjoy diving that much.

Around midday, we had packed and drove out of hotel. Each of us had additional box from the thing we bought from Sukawati and also dumped in our dirty clothes. It’s not everyday that I have the luxury of baggage, it’s either we have too much baggage for diving equipment, or travel without check-in luggage. So this time I have space for shopping and I actually had the mood for shopping, can you imagine???

We had lunch at Kebon Kacang nasi uduk (branch from Jakarta) and headed to Hero supermarket that happen to be along the way.

If you want to see four people gone wild, buying every stuff they fancy, it’s us. After we made sure that the supermarket would provide boxes for us for check-in, we went crazy, brought Indomie, coffee, our favorite peanuts, dried beverages etc etc. Our friends happen to like Indonesian product also so it was a match made in Singapore. We only stop because we almost ran out of cash. What was left from four of us was just enough to cover our airport tax and around 70,000 rupiah? (around 10 dollar) for food in airport.

Each of us ended up with another big box and the staff was kind to help of pack and sealed for us. Well, not enough, we bought our own duct tape and repack ourselves in the back of the car for better organization. The weather was crazily hot like what Bali always have that day.

We reached airport around 3+, our flight is 5 or 6 in the afternoon, we needed to return the car and grabbed something to it.

With that limited money, we chose very carefully, had some drink, and finally decided to bought a bit of snack from McDonald. Upon paying time, hubby found out he has 100,000 rupiah in the wallet. Aiyoh… we beat him up (figure of speech only lahhh) then bought two set of proper meal and some addition to be eaten in the plane, since we were still quite full.

After check-in (it was 29++ kilos for all! Fully using our 30kg allowance), went through immigration, walked around the airport and again, surprisingly, it was early call to board the plane again. We boarded the bus to bring us to the plane, since they didn’t use air bridge, upon approaching the place, we had to detour back to the terminal because there was a technical problem with the plane. We were then stranded on the floor for more than half an hour, if I remember correctly, before we finally boarded the plane.

It was a full flight, we saw nice sunset on the airport and up in the air. There, the holiday is finished. It’s new year..!
Adios Bali. Until next time.