EAT , PRAY, LOVE in Bali – Part 2 (Go Nature)

Today is definitely the day where we will explore the other side of Bali with our dedicated tour guide, Agung. As mentioned earlier, we only booked him for a day. He even surprised on our requisition but we did this for some reasons.  The night before, we went through the list given by the tour guide and made some changes as per their original plan. We woke up early in the morning where we really looking forward to start the journey today. Adrenaline rush! It’s gonna be a long day today.

Our pick up came somewhere around 8.30am and to start our adventure, we stop over at one of the Bali Batik Factory on our way to Batu Bulan Village. As this is not something new to us, we just browsed through the place and we ended up in the MPV after 15 minutes there. It was a really quick tour for us.

Our next destination was one of the tour highlight where we then headed to one of the famous art village in Bali, Batu Bulan to watch the earliest live performance of Bali Barong and Keris dance. Eventhough it’s still early, the place was full house in less than 15 minutes. This place is often the starting point for many Bali Tours Package to middle or even east part of Bali where it is strategically located. Traffic was quite busy heading to the village as this is the same routes to Kintamani and Ubud. Tourists who are heading to Ubud and Kintamani will make a stop to this village to watch the art performances and sculpture specially created by local artists.

The dance theatre. We were given a leaflet on the plot of the Barong and Keris dance. If you were wondering, what is ‘Barong’ is all about, ‘Barong’ dance is actually another story telling dance narrating the fight between the good and evil spirit. The main character would be ‘Barong’ which represent the good spirit and ‘Rangda’ represent the evil one. It cost us IDR 100K per person for the ticket fees.

The musician

The tour of the day continues to the mountain village of Kintamani. Our mission is to see the panoramic view of Mount Batur and Lake Batur (the biggest lake in the island). Jumping out from the vehicle, we could feel the refreshing cool weather there. We were told that Mount Batur is still an active volcano till today and eruption happened several times. The biggest eruption was way back in 1926 which destroyed the whole Batur Village. You can observed that there are a lots of restaurant which was built overlooking the Mount Batur and Lake Batur and most of it is offering a buffet package. We have to skip that as we read a lots of review saying that it doesn’t worth the money paying such amount when all the food are tasteless.

We then went straight to the Wedang Sari Agrowisata to see how does ‘POOP Coffee’ were made. Luwak Coffee is one of the most expensive coffee bean in the world even it when through the most bizarre process ever. We were told that the asian palm civet (musang) will only eat the best coffee berries and right after they poop, it will be collected, clean and process. Eventhough FF is a coffee lover, it’s a big NO for him as he don’t even dare to try this.

The coffee berries The ‘CLEAN’ and ‘DRIED’ Luwak coffee bean Roasted coffee beam At the end of the tour, we were given a chance to sample their coffee and tea that the plantation had produced from chocolate coffee, vanilla coffee, Bali coffee, lemon tea, Roselle tea and etc. except Luwak Coffee as we made an earlier declined on that.

With a 15 to 20 minutes drive passing through the village, we then reached our next destination on list which is Tegalllalang Rice Terraces. It is extremely amazing since it was specially built on the cliff bank with a view of a beautiful valley. We were so impressed on the drainage and irrigation system that has been implemented by them too. Agung asked whether we wanted to explore the valley but in one condition as we need to do a little bit of trekking downhill (approximately 400 meter down). We think twice before we decided to do so. Challenge accepted!

The view from the bottom of the valley. We could see a clear stream as well.

We finally reached our last destination of the day which is Tanah Lot Temple to experience their most spectacular sunset ever in Bali. Tanah Lot is located at the village of Beraban, on the coast of West Bali. We reached just in time. One thing that we knew is that we overslept all along the way. Super tiring! Tanah Lot is one of the most popular tourist spot and a cultural icon for photography. Not to forget its unique rock formation too!

The view

The Holy Snake area

Chasing the sunset

And here come the sunset

We will continue our journey on Part 3 soon.

Simply us,
Zara AB & FF
The Province of Chroma