Bali trip day 3 was a sad morning because… we have to leave Tegal Sari but we had grown so attached to the soft mattress, clean room, the balcony and even the lounge chair! Edi,our tour guide for our 2 days tour, was already at the lobby waiting by 9am, to take us to Tirta Empul, Uluwatu, Sukawati and our new hotel – 100 Sunset Hotel.
Our very first stop was Tegalalang, the rice terrace.
Second stop at Tirta Empul, a temple with a holy spring flowing into the bath pool. We regretted not buying a sarung, or we could have dip ourselves into the cold refreshing water, believed to bring good luck. Sukarno’s ‘palace’ was just beside Tirta Empul.
When leaving, it was compulsory to pass by the stalls selling all kinds of souvenir. The peddlers’ persistence scared us – CS was dragged by a lady to her stall! After we ‘ran’ away I just realized they were shouting, “RM1 for each piece!” That’s really, really cheap but we’re too afraid to turn back.
Highlight of the day was of course the Kintamani, an uphill village where we could see the volcano and a huge lake. Since we’re in a sedan car instead of 4 wheelers or MPV, we drove straight pass the entrance without having to pay an entrance. Yes.. you’ll pay a lot of entrance fee everywhere you go in Bali! The scenery was breathtaking and it get cooler as we went further.
We’ve heard a lot on unnecessary buffets but Edi assured us the buffet he’s bringing us to, is cheaper than other ala carte menu. Our buffet at Grand Puncak Sari was 70,000 Rph per person with an average fare of Indonesian/Balinese food. There’s a certain dish identical to our ‘otak-otak’ (spicy fish cake) but served on a bamboo stick like satay which I love.
The popiah required all the energy to chew it.. almost like chewing a rubber piece.
View from the restaurant. Of course.. I used the zoom function on my camera. Very soon after we sat down, it started getting foggy and it’s more and more difficult to take pictures.
Upon leaving, it started raining cats and dogs and Edi expressed his worries on our sunset dinner at Jimbaran. He brought me (CS disinterested in this case) to House of Painters that claims to seel only original acrylic paintings. I found the prices were way above our budget mostly ranging from 800,000 Rph to millions. My favourite one was a 1.8 million Rph painting depicting a group of villager performing rituals by the seaside. I wanted to leave but the seller was quite persistent, so I offered only 350,000 for another 1.2 million painting, hoping he would give up. Darn! He actually agreed to it! Hence, I have no choice but to pay 350,000 for the painting. 🙁
It was still raining when we left House of Painters and at the time we reached Sukawati market, there were again, less tourists and we again, stood out like sore thumbs.
Once there, I regretted having bought the earlier painting, because there were so much paintings to choose, from as low as 50,000 Rph (though Edi said they were not original acrylic paintings, which I can’t differentiate)! Look around the stalls and you can see that although they were mass produced, same painting actually differs from each other, depending on the imitator’s skill.
The rain finally stopped and we made our way to Uluwatu. Edi took us to the furthest right side of Uluwatu that promises unobstructed view for the sunset, but if we took a few more steps, we could have say bye-bye. Wow, the monkeys were so well fed here but apparently they were trained by some locals to steal things from tourists.
View from the cliff where we sat.
Last, we checked into 100 Sunset, our second hotel for our Bali trip. Good news… we were upgraded from a standard room to a suite. Our suite was tastefully decorated, huge and came with a king size bed, sofa, coffee table, dining table, kitchen cabinet, kitchen sink, minibar, a big LCD TV and a DVD cum MP3 player. The other side of the room was all glasses with 2 glass doors to our balcony. It’s too bad that they only provide one small unit of air-con in the room, insufficient to cool the whole room.
Guess what? We even have our own water dispenser!
The 20,000Rph ‘seafood’ fried rice in Stop Makan Yuuk with no seafood.
Unlike explained in tripadvisor.com, it wasn’t really ideally located as we hoped for. 100 Sunset was at a busy main road (Sunset Road) with hardly any shopping spots or eateries around. Walking along Sunset Road wasn’t easy. There’s barely any ‘roadside’ for us to walk and we got very irritated as all the taxis kept honking and asking us to use their service. The restaurant opposite Sunset100 doesn’t seem to come cheap nor reasonable. The other nearest eateries was the Stop Makan Yuuk warung which was about 5 minutes walk away with terrible food.
