Friday, December 31, 2010

The Holy Spring temple and the Cliff temple, Bali, Indonesia

Day 3 in Bali was reserves for visiting the must-see sites in Bali. We were still yet to see the Holy Spring temple ( Tirta Empul) and the Cliff temple ( In Uluwatu).

As we spoke to the driver, he told us that the places we wanted to visit were at opposite ends of the island and that would hence have a long travel time. He renegotiated the price to 350000 ( around 35 USD).

The holy spring temple was nice and resembled one of our Indian temples with holy water. The difference here was that you are allowed to dive into the water. And it was super clean! Other than the spring, the temple once again resembled the other temples.

On the other hand, the Cliff Temple was fabulous. As in mind- blowing. The temple is at the edge of a cliff with a view dripping down into the ocean at about 100 feet. Really amazing. Watch te pics. Really awesome.

They also had a Fire and Dance show showing a few scenes from the Ramayana. This was much better than the Barong dance that we saw earlier. Costs around USD 7 per person of I remember right. A little overpriced I thought. However, the temple is a MUST SEE destination. Don't miss it for anything. Be careful of the monkeys though. So many of them arous and they're out to grab your stuff. So secure everything.

We got caught in a lot of traffic heading to the temple and back. Each journey took us close to 2 hours. We were so tired by the time we got back!

The shops around the temples sell some amazing souvenirs. Bargain heavily to get a good deal.

We leave tomorrow for Jakarta to get to Bandung. I really don't have any regrets for leaving Bali. I think it is highly over rated and filled with too many tourists. However, it's worth traveling to Bali during the off peak season to immerse in the culture filled with Hinduism and Buddhism. And for people traveling to Bali for the beaches, I would advise you to think again. You may as well make a trip to the Philippines for that - Boracay or Palawan. For starters, most Filipinos speak English and they're also a polite bunch.

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