Where about in Bali?

I am not trying to educate people with the history of Bali, or it’s geography. What I am trying to do here is to give you a brief introduction to the areas in Bali that could give you ideas of whereabouts and what to expect in each areas.

Physically, Bali is divided in half, east to west, by a volcanic mountain chain, and north to south by deep river gorges. Black volcanic sand is the norm, but white sandy beaches periodically dot the coast, with some of the most spectacular either on the Bukit (mount) or hidden in the east. The island is dominated by two active volcanoes, Gunung Agung (Mount Agung), the apex of Balinese religious and cultural belief, and Gunung Batur (Mount Batur), with its twin calderas and shimmering lake. The northwest is given over mainly to national park, the central mountains to coffee and crops, and the remote east with its pebble beaches and crystal clear seas, to diving and snorkeling.

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South Bali — The triangular wedge of tropical lowlands south of Ubud to the Bukit Peninsula is the most developed area of Bali. The tourist hub of Seminyak-Legian-Kuta is next door to the Ngurah Rai International airport and provides a convenient first stop and a good base for day trips.  Kuta is perhaps the most developed, with the cheapest digs on the island. The tourist influx means this is the place to go for nightlife, which attracts the younger, backpacking crowd, but you’ll find much better fine-dining options in Seminyak.  Unfortunately, Kuta Beach has a very strong current, which makes swimming difficult and dangerous, but it’s a surfer’s paradise with rip curls and challenging waves. Seminyak is certainly Bali’s chicest “village,” home to the majority of the island’s expats and upscale accommodation.

 Denpasar is Bali’s capital, with a population of over a half-million. Though most visitors completely bypass the city for more idyllic surrounds, it is home to the Bali Museum, one of the island’s best for a general overview of Balinese history and culture.

Located on the east side of the island,  Sanur, is another of the island’s original beach resort areas. However, unlike Seminyak, Kuta and Legian, Sanur managed to maintain it’s level of tranquility which is nearly impossible to find in the  other busy tourist areas. Surfing, windsurfing, scuba diving, and snorkeling are the main attractions here. Just off shore are the islands of Penida, Lembongan, and Ceningan, which provide some of Bali’s finest scuba diving and are an easy boat ride from the mainland. The beach is fringed by a reef meaning the shore is safe for kids’ swimming, and a boardwalk along the beach makes pram pushing a pleasant rather than a frought experience.

 Nusa Dua is government-sponsored and was deliberately developed as a high-end wealth traveller’s ghetto; it sits above the eastern cliffs. The beach is publicly accessible and often you may eat a meal at a resort and use their pool and other facilities — check ahead of time. Further on around the southern peninsula of Bali which is also publicly accessible are some of the most stunning spots on the island: Padang Padang, Balangan and Nyang Nyang are all breathtaking with a few warungs to keep you fed and watered, but do not expect the same like in Kuta or Seminyak. However, if you want to, in Nyang Nyang you can  bring-your-own picnic affair with somewhat tricky access.

Ubud — Simply put, Ubud’s raison d’être is to be Balinese. The island’s rich culture — with traditions, artistry, and spirituality that encompasses seemingly every aspect of daily life — thrives here in a multitude of temples, museums, art galleries, and artisan villages. Money and development in Ubud is funneled toward preserving traditions and encouraging cultural innovations; international chain companies are kept at bay. Ubud is a destination where it is possible to chance upon local people participating in ceremonies right on the main road and more frequently in many of the back streets surrounding the town itself. These ceremonies are the real deal and not put on for tourists, although local people are usually comfortable for tourist to look on.You cannot visit Bali without seeing Ubud.

Bali as I know it

Even though I am Indonesian, I must admit that I haven’t explored Indonesia as much as I’ve explored the rest of the world. Indonesia is big and for somebody who likes to travel, I have only explored Indonesia within very limited places, namely, the province of South Sumatra, passing by province of Lampung and most parts of Java, Madura and the island of Bali.

Red areas where I have visited

The Indonesian map here shows where I’ve been. Statistically, Indonesia consists of 17,508 islands, I have only been to 6 islands: which is only 0.034% of the total Indonesian Archipelago. However, as Indonesia consists of 33 provinces, I have been to 10 of these, which is 30.0%.   Not too bad, but there is a lot more of Indonesia still to visit, and if one asked me about Bali, well I only know Bali as good as any other tourist.

Now that I live as an expat outside Indonesia, I don’t know what to recommend to friends who want to visit Bali, not to mention Indonesia. However, I think it’s not a bad idea if I refresh my memory about facts we should know about Bali prior visiting Bali:

• The island is approximately 153 km (95 miles) wide and spans approximately 112 km (69 miles) north to south; its land area is 5,632 km²,  which is only a tiny bit of Indonesia, but compares to the country of Bahrain which is 750 km² with no water source at all or Singapore of only 710 km². I would also compare it to Malta, with land area of 316 km^2.  Or comparison to Qatar, which is 11,437 km², Bali is half the size of Qatar.

• But unlike Qatar, it has mountains like The Mount Agung, which reaches as high as 3,142 m(the highest in Bali), known as the “mother mountain” which is an active volcano.   Mountain ranges from centre to the eastern side of Bali, with Mount Agung the easternmost peak. Bali’s volcanic nature has contributed to its exceptional fertility and its tall mountain ranges provide the high rainfall that supports the highly productive agriculture sector. South of the mountains is a broad, steadily descending area where most of Bali’s large rice crop is grown. The northern side of the mountains slopes more steeply to the sea and is the main coffee producing area of the island, along with rice, vegetables and cattle. The longest river, Ayung River, flows approximately 75 km.

• The largest city is the provincial capital, Denpasar, near the southern coast. Its population is around 491,500(2002). Bali’s second-largest city is the old colonial capital, Singaraja, which is located on the north coast and is home to around 100,000 people. Other important cities include the beach resort, Kuta, which is practically part of Denpasar’s urban area; and Ubud, which is north of Denpasar, and is known as the island’s cultural centre.

• Population recorded as 3,891,000 in the 2010 census,the island is home to most of Indonesia’s small Hindu minority. In the 2000 census about 92.29% of Bali’s population adhered to Balinese Hinduism while most of the remainder follow Islam. It is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music.   Bali, a tourist haven for decades, has seen a further surge in tourist numbers in recent years.

Image via Wikipedia

2011 Qatar National Day

About two years ago, I posted my photo essay about how Qatar celebrate their National Day: Qatar National Day. This year, I did not go the that parade, an National Parade, I thought that was enough, but I want to see something else.

Yes, Qatar government still held that parade in the morning, but in the afternoon they were having fireworks by the Corniche. Last year I watched it with some friends as through a balcony of a restaurant that has a very nice location to see the fireworks, This year I decided to skip all that fancy dinner and just go down there, where the action happen, and these are the picture of what I’ve seen at the Corniche of Doha:

Started off by spraing ‘foam spray’ from the car to the “less fortunate” people at the sidewalk of the street

The ‘Nationalist’ showing off by standing on top of moving car

This time ‘sitting’ on cars with a sword

Worshiping the Emir of Qatar….

“Qatar” car on parade

Cars showing the Emir’s picture… presumable the driver can still see thru the window, but how about other driver… to see whether there is a driver driving this car?

Doha, a moments before the fireworks

Fireworks celebrating the National Day….

Laser works after the fireworks

High Tea at Sydney Opera House

Tea

In modern day life, drinking tea is not as popular as drinking coffee. The YUPPies (Young Urban Professionals) are having “coffee breaks” during office hours instead of “Tea Time”.   However, having  afternoon tea is still popular among older people, they call it High Tea.

The question now is, what is ‘High Tea?’ in my view, it’s a colonial thing, when the British Empire occupied India and Sri Lanka, where tea plantations are part of the people’s life.   However, the British were so fascinated with these drinks that they made it a sort of a ritual, drinking tea in the afternoon, with ‘scones, butter and cream.’

As the colonial days are over, High Tea however, is still in fashion, especially for special occasions or for tourism or commercial reasons,  such as ‘Lighting Up the Christmas Tree’ in Ritz Carlton Hotel – Doha, where they add Carol Singers to the High Tea, or like at the Sidney Opera House, the title of the occasion is ‘High Tea at the Opera, where they add Pink Champagne with the tea ritual and being serenaded by an opera singer plus piano player playing classical music.

Flowing Pink Champagne as a starter

Tea and Pink Champagne

High Tea Menu

The Sydney Opera House organizes their High Tea in the Guillaume Restaurant at Bennelong at 2 o’clock every Wednesday.   As this is very popular to the tourist, we needed to book our table a month in advance, and then arrive on time.

The small bites as per the menu...

Extra bites, this time the sweets

The Opera Entertainment.... after the tea

With a good acoustics in the building, anyone can talk and sing without a sound system and everybody can hear it.   That’s how this opera singer managed to sing to 75 people without a microphone….

Nama Belakang

Untuk kebanyakan orang Indonesia, terutama orang Jawa, kalimat “apalah arti sebuah nama?” benar-benar berlaku seperti itu. Di Indonesia pada umumnya: tidak penting nama seseorang itu salah ejaannya, atau apakah dia memiliki satu nama saja atau tiga nama misalnya; nama belakangpun atau nama keluarga, tidak begitu penting, kecuali untuk beberapa suku, misalnya Batak, Menado, Maluku; suku yang lain menganggapnya tidak penting dan malah mungkin tidak perlu, Nurul menganggapnya begitu

Nama ini menjadi identitas diri yang kemudian dipakai di segala macam institusi dimana kita ingin bergabung dan terdaftar; dari mulai sesederhana seperti KTP, Passport, Bank Account, sampai dengan Facebook.

Indonesia adalah satu-satunya negara yang tidak mengenal konsep nama belakang. Diluar Indonesia, nama itu menjadi penting; dari mulai ejaan nama, sampai dengan nama belakang dan bahkan kadang-kadang ‘Middle Name’. Lalu bagaimana apabila kita ingin bepergian ke luar negeri? Pengalaman saya sebagian expat, banyak negara-negara tujuan mempertanyakan nama belakang ini. Akibatnya ada surat khusus yang harus di keluarkan olaeh pemerintah indonesia. Pertanyaannya sekarang nama belakang apa yang mau dipakai? Nama ayah? (yang kadang cuma satu nama saja), atau nama keluarga?

Seorang teman expat Indonesia terpaksa menunda keberangkatannya untuk bekerja di luar negeri melullu karena kasus namanya di passport cuma satu. Begitu juga seorang teman expat yang lain, visa istrinya untuk berkunjung ke Qatar sempat tidak bisa di proses karena namanya cuma satu.

Sialnya imigrasi di Indonesia sudah terbiasa dengan kasus ini, yang kemudian menambahkan nama belakang sesukanya, apakah itu pengulangan nama orang tersebut, atau nama panggilan salah satu orang tuanya.

Pada jaman pemerintahan Presiden Sukarno, beliau mengharuskan seseorang memiliki nama belakang dan itu di cerminkan dengan memberi nama anak-anaknya, misalnya: Megawati Sukarnoputra. Sayangnya kebijaksanaan ini tidak dilanjutkan oleh Presiden penerusnya – mungkin karena Suharto cuma punya satu nama saja. Sialnya lagi tidak ada aturan baku dari pemerintah Indonesia dalam hal nama belakang ini, padahal dengan adanya nama belakang ini memudahkan Pemerintah dalam menelusuri identitas, dan keturunan seseorang; muda Saka melakukan sensus dan masih banyak keuntungan lainnya. Wikipedia Indonesia menjelaskan sistem penamaan nama belakang yang umum dipakai di Indonesia

Gadget Packing

For normal people and normal times, packing for travelling is already an art by itself, but how about packing for a gadget freak like me? Well, I am not really a gadget freak , but yes, I am a bit mad about it, and I always want all the “necessary” gadgets to go with me whenever I go; and that drives my husband crazy.

iPhone: it’s good because it has a lot of applications that are handy for travelling. It’s MAP application is very useful for finding addresses and helpful as well when you need to find a place while you are walking.  The question now is what to go with that:

1. Charger and its synch cable
2. Earphone whenever I want to listen to iTunes services

iPad: do I need this? The question that I still can’t answer. Yes iPad is cute and trendy, but the question is whether iPad is a working device. That is what I need to find out, there are a lot of reviews about how good an iPad is, but I think I still need to prove it as I like to use it as a working device. Currently my thoughts are that it is only a fancy kindle, where you can browse.  With 3G ability, it becomes a big mobile phone; however, without a sim card, it looses it’s independent accessibility and becomes an invalid computer.

The beauty of iPad is that there are no other extra accessories to go with it, everything else is similar to iPhone:

1. Charger and its synch cable
2. Earphone when ever I want to listen to iTunes services

However, I read a good article on iPad for traveler that says that it could function better by using this camera connection kit like this. I think i am going to try it on my next trip.

Laptop: I am still confused what is the ideal notebook to carry with me: a netbook, or a notebook. What I hate from netbook is because it’s very small, and unfortunately the one I’ve bought has no cd/dvd driver, which could be essential if I needed to store things on CD or the other way around. I do have an external DVD/CD writer, but that means it’s an extra gadget to carry.

Other things that go with it are:

1. Mouse – I hate using the built in track pad, I need a mouse to operate a computer properly
2. Charger – comes with 2 cable, one is the adapter and the other one is the cable that connect the adapter with the power supply.

In my case, even though I can still utilize my old netbook, which only being used several times. I decided to start saving and buy myself a nice Mac Book. The reason behind it was only for synchronization purposes as it is easier to sync between the same devises ( I have iMac at home).

Sat Nav.  System:  we need this when we hire a car in a foreign places; normally we use when we are visiting UK and Australia, as Sat-Nav is optional when we hire a car. However, mobile sat-nav, depends on it’s map application built in the gadget. Thus I need to ensure that I’ve downloaded the updated map of the place we are going to visit. The things to remember before we go on Road Trip Holiday.

Things to go with this gadget:

1. Car charger
2. Plastic clip on to stick the Sat-Nav Device with the car’s windshield.
3. The pouch

Camera: this is a big issue, I cannot leave without it. Yes, taking your camera is essential while you are traveling; however, on the market, there are many types of cameras one can choose. Unfortunately I choose the complicated one. Well, I am not yet a professional photographer; but as I said earlier, I am a gadget person, I like all types of gadgets, including cameras and accessories. Worse of all, this is also the biggest gadget of all the toys I have to carry daily.

This is the list of additional accessories other than the camera:

1. Some extra lenses to go with the camera body:
2. Battery charger and it’s cable connection to power for downloading and storing all pictures into computer
3. Cable to connect to the computer
4. Wallets of filters – landscape photographer use a lot of filters, and my interest on photography is more on landscape photography.
5. Ring adapters to hold the gelatin filters to different sizes of camera lenses
6. Tripod, the biggest equipment I have to carry as I would never know if there’s an interesting object to take along the way. I carry this just to “be prepared”.
7. Flash gun. Normally I don’t shoot with flash gun, but again, this is being prepared.
8. Extra battery, just in case the main battery is dead and there’s no way I can recharge it quickly.
9. Last but not least, GPS widget. A widget that connect with my camera, and gives information to it’s EXIF metadata of the location the photograph taken. For some this is not important, it is for me, as sometimes I forget where the heck I took that picture, but with this widget, I can identify the location I took the picture during the post production process or 2 years later.

Wait, I have NOT finished! I have a second camera…. This time it’s only point to shoot and use as a back up. I don’t like this camera so much as I can’nt control the camera as easy as my DSLR camera, but this camera is handy, that means any problem, it always shoots a good picture. However, this camera also comes with it’s accessories:

1. Battery charger and cable of course
2. Cable to connect to the computer – but if there are cameras that use the same cable to sync with computer as well as charging.

GPS Tracking Logger: This is something I always wanted to have, just to track back where I have been on my trip. I still need to do some research on how it works and how should I use it.   One thing I know is that I need to track down where I’ve been on the map. I hope this is something that I could do with.

Do you think there are other things that I need to take for my travellong ‘visiting family’ in Sydney????