Bali ~ Land of Sun and Sea ~

Since my life has been monotonous of late, I'm posting about my grad trips instead. Went to 2 very different kinds of trips, one is for total relaxation, and the other for SHOPPING! Should have been the other way round, actually, it's kinda stupid to tire oneself out from a holiday. But the Bali trip (relaxing one) was decided on a whim, and was decided way before the Hong Kong shopping trip.

So we went to Kuta, the touristy beach area of Bali. When I said touristy, I mean really. The place was swamped with tourists! Including us of cos. We decided to go to Bali all because of deal.com.sg, when I chanced upon a great voucher (50%!! off 3D2N stay + 1 night free stay + 2-way air tickets  = S$299 only!), and so off we went!

 

On the plane to Kuta! ^ ^

The airline we took was Garuda, so it's a pretty good deal I feel, since it's not a budget airline. Was able to watch movies in it! XD

 

View from Garuda - Sparkling waters

  We stayed in Harris Hotel, that was part of the voucher deal. The hotel had orange and smiley face as its theme, which was rather tacky, but the room was spacious ( a whole lot bigger than the Hong Kong hotel room I stayed in: will blog more about it later). The bed wasn't exactly spotless, but I'm not a very particular person, so I was fine with laying my body down on the not-so-clean bedsheet, but my dear friend Elaine was none too pleased at the spots she constantly discovered.

 

Our room

Hotel room view

Kuta is a place for surfers, but we couldn't surf, nor had we any inclination to learn. So we ended up cam-whoring on the beach. Not the brightest idea since it was scorching. The sun rays penetrated deep into our skin, and even though we had sunscreens on we felt exposed.

Flinging my arms out in joy

Hand play.

   

We were fortunate to have witnessed a sea ritual! Blessed we are!

 

Offerings by the sea.

We didn't stay long at the beach as it was simply too hot for us. In the end, we spent our time exploring the rest of Kuta and haggling with the shop owners.

My favourite shop in Kuta, because of its lovely name and interesting stuff it sold.

Ice-creams are cheap in Bali!

She was amazed by Spongebob ice-cream cover, but not terribly impressed by the real ice-cream.

This is the view of the sea during sunset. We chanced upon it when we came out from the back of Discovery Shopping Mall. It was simply breath-taking. No matter from which angle. I snapped at least a hundred shots of the golden dusk I believe.

Picturesque evening <3

 



Besides exploring Kuta (or more precisely, shopping), we took the opportunity to venture inland and went on a one day tour at Ubud, known as the cultural centre of Bali. Ubud in my personal opinion, was way nicer than Kuta. I would have loved to stay there instead. There were quaint little boutiques along the streets that kind of reminded me of England, less the cobbled streets. On the whole, Ubud looked a lot more class, while Kuta looked kinda crass. Maybe I'm a tad harsh, but Ubud was a lovely town. There were very few tourists, and no street hawkers going after ignorant tourists. It was so tranquil. We watched the Barong Dance, visited the Monkey Forest, Tegalalang rice field, Tegenungan waterfall and also Kintamani.

Passed by one of the main temples and our guide kindly showed us around though it wasn't in our itinenary. We had to wrap sarong around our legs as it is a holy ground!

Posing with one of the Barong dancers.

Monkey Forest

A gush of flowing pearls among the emeralds - Small waterfall in Monkey Forest.



Tegalalang Rice Terrace Field.

Tegenungan Waterfall and lush greenery behind us.

Magnificence of Kintamani.

We ended our one day tour in a local spa. The spa wasn't bad, but it wasn't that marvellous. I always feel very molested when strangers massage me. I would very much prefer to sit on a massage chair. But we bathed in rose petals! Pretty. I had fun playing with the petals, haha.

On a side note:



There are horse carriages in Kuta! The guy in it was posing for my camera!