Trip to Bali, Indonesia ( February 2008)

Air Asia Flight landed safely on Bali Island, Indonesia just about 1:30PM local time. From the airport, we could sense that the island is well presented compared to when we first landed in Bandung, late last year. The airport,known as Bali Airport or Denpasar Airport, is well presented and tons of foreigners, mostly tourists qued for the immigration checks.

We took a taxi heading to Kuta (pronunced Kute by locals) town towards the hotel on Legian Beach. We stayed at Alam Kul Kul Botique Resort, later that we were told the hotel is very popular with visitors from Malaysia, mostly Malays. Unfortunately, I do not think that we would visit the hotel again for our next trip. I felt that the room and especially the bath room are not up to the standard for the price they offer. Yet, it was our first trip there, we thought that it would be part of our learning curve for Bali, the island most people on Earth talk about.

The island to me is very congested with people. Almost in every square foot of the the available space is being utilised, especially the land beside every narrow island road. This is the island not easily forgotten by a muslim, as their typical food is of "babi guling" displayed every where in any of the local restaurants.

Yet, we wonder why there are many Australians and those from western countries really like Bali. From out observations, we believe that they like the island because of the spiritual and rituals practiced by the obedient Hindus there, who make up about 90% plus of the island population.


We learnt also that every hindu believer there should have one prayer structure and in many houses there, there is one area about 10ft by 10 ft, is built with personalised temple filled with prayer structure for every one of the family members. This is unique to Bali. Balinese are very religious as what it seems; however, I could not differentiate very well between the religious rituals and traditional practices. I probably think that they both are quite mixed though and people are very superticious (part of Hindu's strong beliefs}

Secondly, Bali has beutiful beaches, with waves over a meter high suitable for surfing. Even motorcycles are equiped with the carrier to carry surfing board.




With kasta life style, most Bali's men stay home while the women work. You can observe this phenomenon in the morning; the men will send their wives on motorcycles to work and they will go home and take care of the house.

We visited a few places, including the Tanahlot Temple, the temple separated from the main island and forms an island during high tide. Almost every section of the island is built with Pura (temple).

We also went to Masjid Besar Al Hidayah on a highland of Bedugul, and performed our Friday prayer there. The weather was cool and from the mosque, we can see the lake Tamblingan.

If you like arts, Bali is the place for them. We visited a few galleries and bought a few paintings just for memory.

On the last day, we visited the mountain area, Mount Agung.



We were recommended to buy some salak Bali. At night, we went to Jambaran Beach to have some ikan bakar. We requested a few songs while having our dinner.