spent our chinese new year holiday in bali, bandung and jakarta for 6 days. here’s a quick recap.

Friday, 23 Jan 2009
left home really early we still got to pay midnight surcharge for the cab we took to airport. changi was super crowded, queues were formed at the check-in counters, immigration counters, as well as boarding gates. the flight was delayed for a little while since quite a number of passengers were stuck in the queue and unable to board the plane on time. finally the plane took off at about 8am.
we brought all our bags to the cabin and therefore we could get out quickly and hopped on to the shuttle bus to the domestic terminal. it was not as bad as I imagined, the shuttle bus was frequent enough, it’s free and in decent condition. the domestic flight that we took was delayed for half an hour. before the plane took off, as usual there was announcement, safety instructions, and the concluding remark was, “let’s pray together so that we can safely reach our destination”. we were like.. what?!
finally arrived, safely, at ngurah rai international airport at 2pm. took cab to our hotel, checked in, and immediately went out to settle down our grumbling stomach. had sop buntut, nasi empal and es campur at discovery shopping mall nearby. we spent the afternoon to stroll along kuta beach. kuta beach was nowhere near an ideal place to be, it’s crowded with tourists, dirty with all sorts of rubbish scattered all over, and locals trying to sell their goods or services. not that I was surprised, but it’s definitely worse than a few years ago when I last visited kuta.
we went for a quick swim at the hotel’s pool. refreshed, we then went out for dinner at poppies restaurant. the place was really nice with garden setting. thankfully it’s not full despite being so well-known. according to the waitress who served us, the business was slowing down recently. we had java ice tea, chicken supreme and balinese nasi campur. I enjoyed the balinese nasi campur, despite being spicy, it was tasty – consisted of steamed rice, serundeng, otah on lemongrass stick, beef rendang, sayur nangka, braised egg, sayur labu, ayam suwir and perkedel jagung. walked back to hotel afterwards.

my mood for shopping was gone together with the searing heat. even night time, if I stopped at a souvenir stall, I would practically start melting.. not to mention the touting and the real need to bargain as the opening prices offered were always bloody expensive.
Saturday, 24 Jan 2009
visited tanah lot. it’s still the same.. and it’s really, really hot. we did one round of sightseeing and hurriedly went back to car for some aircon. we spent longer time in the car travelling from hotel to tanah lot than the visit itself.

anyway.. we had lunch at bebek bengil (translated as dirty duck), ubud. but since both of us do not really fancy duck, we ordered chicken instead, haha.. with calamari and drinks. and we ate our babi guling bu oka at bebek bengil’s restaurant too. this was my friend’s idea – since we wanted to try both babi guling and bebek bengil in ubud, and bebek bengil’s restaurant was far nicer than babi guling’s. the food at bebek bengil was just so-so, I wasn't that impressed. babi guling bu oka was nice, but it’s oily.
in the evening we attended our friends’ wedding at tirtha uluwatu. the place was really nice with both traditional and modern touch. stairs, chapel and several huts connected by shallow pools and walkways. upon arrival we were ushered to the waiting room area, then to the small chapel for the short ceremony which took 30 mins to finish. the chapel and the ceremony were not meant for a particular religion, even the reading was generic enough. the back of the altar was covered with glass window and door, with the blue sky view. too bad it was a cloudy evening, otherwise the sunset view would be spectacular. the place was set right in front of a beautiful, clean and empty beach whose name is unknown to me.

once the ceremony was over, the guests were lined up to shower the bride and groom with flower petals. after phototaking session, we were ushered to the cocktail area, and then to the dining area. it was a 3 course dinner – salmon skewers for appetizer, beef steak or fish for main course, and coconut pudding for dessert.

Sunday, 25 Jan 2009
today’s agenda: parasailing at tanjong benoa, waterbom park and sunday mass. parasailing was quite scary at the beginning during take off time. but once we were up in the air, it was great – the view was breathtaking! the boat drove us for one round before we needed to get back down.

we had fun time at waterbom park. it was essentially a water theme park. it had several slides with various twists and turns. but before we could slide down we had to climb up the stairs first, which was quite tiring. most of the slides ended up at pools. most of them required us to wear the tubes. there were 2 types of tubes, single and double. the double tubes were very popular we practically had to stop and ask people before they even managed to return the tubes to the storage.
the slide that we took most often was called macaroni. but the scariest one was boomerang – it felt like riding roller coaster plus the water splash. fun!

sunday mass was at st. francis xavier church which was located near our hotel.

Monday, 26 Jan 2009 – Wednesday, 28 Jan 2009
Arrived in jakarta at 3.30pm and visited bandung the next day. We ate a lot – the usual food like nasi liwet ikan asin, tempe mendoan, teh botol sosro, and also ketoprak, bakwan malang, bubur ayam menteng. slurrppp..