The hotel provided free continental breakfast, which comes with either coffee or tea. It was a wrong move to call for the coffee, as it seems like unfiltered coffee. Every morning, the Balinese women will do the simplest offerings before starting the day. These offerings are called canang, which consist of tiny banana-leaf trays, pinned together and filled rice and 6-7 different types of symbolic flowers with incense. The different colours of flowers represents different Hindu god. When the offering is place down, she will sprinkle a few drops of holy water over the canang and fans the incense smoke heavenwards so that the appropriate god will come down and enjoy it.
The streets of Kuta isn’t very wide and the back lanes are extremely narrow. Surprisingly cars are able to maneuver on this 2 way back lane. Even in back lanes, there are small temples. Each Balinese house compound is built within a confining wall with unique architecture for some.
Yes, the beach of Kuta – nice and clean but is often packed with tourist and annoying saleswomen. Needless to say, the wave attracts a lot of surfers. Even our McDoc wants to surf.
About 18km northwest of Denpasar, the small village of Mengwi has a history as a powerful kingdom. Pura Taman Ayun is the state temple of the former kingdom of Mengwi. This temple has inner courtyard, middle courtyard and outer courtyard. The inner courtyard is inaccessible to public except for festival time, therefore, there is a pavement on both sides with low walls for tourist to see the shrines and bale within. Basically, whatever size, status or function of a temple will have similar layout (3 courtyard).
The north and east sides of the compound are lined with a multi-tiered meru (multi-tiered Hindu shrine with odd roofs). The most important of these are the three that honour Bali’s holiest mountains as they occupy positions on Bali in relation to Mengwi. The eleven-roofed structure represents Gunung Batukau, the nine-roofed structure represents Gunung Batur and beside Batur is eleven-roofed Gunung Agung.
Next stop was Alas Kedaton Monkey Forest. The temple within this compound is known as pura dalem (temple of the dead). Feeding the monkeys is option. There’s nothing much to see besides looking at monkeys lazing and playing around.
Please do not get a guide, as they will pester you into visiting their souvenir shop where they won’t easily let you off. But then again, you have no choice because the whole lots of them are sitting there waiting for their prey.
Stop of the day is Tanah Lot. Along the road leading to Pura Tanah Lot, a lot of stalls can be seen selling all sorts of stuffs. Prices here aint that cheap. Tourist area, what do you expect =P
The Pura Tanah Lot does deserve to be named as one of Bali’s top sight. Pura Tanah Lot is also one of Bali’s holiest places; closely related with several others along the coast such as Pura Rambut Siwi and Pura Luhur Uluwatu. The sunset view is beautiful and attracts a lot of tourist. But the view will depend on the weather though. The Pura Tanah Lot is inaccessible by public as only devotees are allowed to climb the temple stairway carved out of the rock face. When the waters are low, we can take a sip of the holy water that rises beneath the temple rock. There is a priest that will give prayers to those that had wash with the holy water. Donation seems like mandatory though.
Dinner time again! This time it was in Seminyak. One of the old and famous warong called Warong Made. It’s so famous that you will need to book a table a day in advance first. Warong Made has been there for years and has 2 branches in Bali itself. Environment is quite cozy and the customers there are mostly mat sallehs. Price here is quite reasonable and the portion is quite big. And they even have satay babi and babi guling in their menu. I wonder how their babi guling looks like. Babi guling will need to be ordered 1 day in advance. So, too bad. There was even belly dancing performance on stage during the dinner, which lasted for…lets see…5 minutes.
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