Reaching the Peak of Bali - Pura Ulun Danu Bratan

Pura Ulun Danu Bratan - from the moment we are about to reach this very special place, I have already had a good feeling about this place. The word 'beautiful' might not be enough to describe this very one place. I like everything about this place, the old historical calligraphic, the architecture, the trees, the garden, and especially the lake. It was name with 'Danu Bratan' which means Bratan Lake, since this special 'Pura' is located at the Bratan lake, Bedugul, Bali. This is one of a very sacred place in Bali. They are often doing a very sacred ritual to praise the God at this place. That is why, for all tourists visiting this place is reminded to be respectful of the place and wear something more conservative.  A lot of them who are doing this sacred ritual will normally wear a special white traditional clothes of Bali, with additional colourful ribbon on the waist for the female.

 

 

 

The view was breath-taking, 'Pura' at the lake with the mountain on the background of the lake, I was getting a special feeling when I entered this place. I would not mind to revisit this place again sometime. And I hope you would be too!

 

Cheers!

 

High Tea Session at Arteastique Cafe - Cafe Hopping

This weekend, I am having a special high tea session with my ex-colleague. One of a pleasure of living in Singapore is having a huge selection of different cafes to hop to! So I think, why not looking to some unique cafe to have a high tea session.

After browsing through some list of cafes, I finally discover this unique gem at Orchard Road area, located at one of the shopping mall which I had never entered before. Funny tho', after so many times passing by the building, only this time eventually do I enter it. By the way, the shopping mall name is Mandarin Gallery. 

Judging from the cafe's website (http://www.arteastiq.com/) the place looks pretty great, so I decide to try this cafe for the meet up.

This cafe has quite a range selection of different tea. They also have some range of food menu, although not as much as their tea. If you notice the promotion board in front of the cafe, we are actually decided to try that menu, the 'Afternoon Treat Special'. It is meant for 2 people and includes a free selection of tea for each person, with price of 48 SGD instead of 52 SGD by normal price. 

The 'Afternoon Treat Special' consists of crispy wrap with meat (able to select the meat choice preference), smoked salmon, smoked turkey ham, crab meat salad served with volvant, spicy jumbo top shell with chilled mango salad, and cake (choice selection between apple cake or orange cake). For the tea selection, both of us decides to take lychee tea, both hot and cold. 

I especially like the crispy wrap (we choose to have the wrap with smoked chicken breast), the crab meat salad food, the spicy jumbo top shell, and the cake (apple cake selection). Smoke salmon taste pretty great too, though I am not a fan of raw salmon meat, I can still say this salmon taste quite good. As for the smoked turkey ham, I think it tastes pretty usual. 

Both of me and my friend really likes our lychee tea. I choose the hot tea and she chooses the cold tea. The sweetness and the aroma of the lychee blends a splendid taste for the tea. Highly recommended to try for those fruit tea lover out there! The tea comes with cookies for each. For my friend, she got lemon butter cookies, and I got lemon chocolate cookies. The cookies tasted great as well, excellent combination for the tea. Perfect indulgence for a happy afternoon!

P.S, Arteastique actually has a painting studio just beside its cafe, so for those of you who wants to unleash your hidden artist potential, could practice it here!!

Address: 

Arteastiq Boutique Tea House

Mandarin Gallery, #04-14/15

333A Orchard Road, Singapore 238867

Opens: 

11:00 am-10:00 pm Daily

Boutique Tea House reservation: 6235 8370

Art Jamming reservation and enquires: 6235 8705

Website: http://www.arteastiq.com/

Have a great day everyone!

Road Trip at Land of Paradise, Bali

"We can't choose where we come from but we can choose where we go from there." ~unknown

Sunset at Kuta Beach

Who does not love Bali!! If you have never been to, you should!! At least once in your lifetime, then you will understand why I say so. Almost every part of Bali worth to be explored. From East to West, North to South.. You could just go on a road trip for a few days to do this. Well, what I think make Bali much more famous as compared to the other part of Indonesia is that they are really putting effort on the tourism part very well. Well done Pak Governor! Not only that a lot of places worth to be explored here in Bali, but also the locals are still taking care very much on their own cultures which made it very unique. From buildings (Pura), clothes, ceremony, etc, Bali is one whole package!

My mom is from Bali, precisely she was born in Buleleng district at Singaraja city. I used to be here quite often, but it was a long time ago when I was 4 years old which I could not really remember. So, practically this could be considered as my 'first time' stepped on Ball land, 20 years afterwards. My mom said Bali has a lot improvement within the last 20 years, but it was so much crowded than before. However, luckily, heritage culture is still very much the same with before which made it very special.

On top of that, you will see a lot of Caucasian people especially around south area. Almost all tourist are Caucasian people. You can see they ride their own bikes, motorcycles and cars, walking along the road freely. This is a very common view in Bali. Long time ago, my mom said there used to be a lot of nude people on the beaches, however recently it was prohibited by the government.

On my next post I am going to share my road trip for about 4 days 3 night exploring Bali, hopefully it could give some inspiration on your next holiday destination.

During this road trip, we cover quite many places, though not all of it as we only have few days to explore Bali. We went to Pura Taman Ayun, Tanah Lot, Ayodia at Nusa Dua, Pantai Jimbaran (Jimbaran beach), Pura Ulun Danau Bratan, Banjar Tegehe Buddhist Temple, Kintamani, Pantai Kuta (Kuta Beach), Pantai Seminyak (Seminyak Beach), Joger Shop and finally Toll Road (ByPass Road) at Benoa, Nusa Dua. Some other places we had no chance to visit were Pura Besakih (biggest Pura in Bali), Tampak Siring, Pura Uluwatu, Lovina Beach at Singaraja, Dreamland at Kuta, Ubud and many other places worth to explore which made it a reason to come back :). If you have watched the Julia Robert Movie, 'Eat, Pray, Love', there are some scenes they said played in Bali, however somehow I could no find all the beautiful places they said were played in Bali.

I have done many road trip throughout Java island, but I think I like more in Bali. These are my reasons:

- Almost 98% of the roads are properly maintained (much better than roads at Java island).

- Traffics are crowded smoothly, a.k.a even though it is quite crowded sometimes, we encounter almost no jam. (well, we sort of went to Bali after Hari Raya or Muslim Celebration Day, practically there were less tourist during this period)
- Beautiful view along the road as almost each houses or buildings has its own 'Pura' as a worship place.

However, I have some dislikes during our road trip in Bali:

- It has a lot of quite a sharp bend throughout road at mountain area (worse than Java). You could get some 'car sick' if you are not used to the road.

- The roads along mountain area are rather too small to fit 2 cars, especially with a lot of sharp bend, which made it rather not easy to drive along.

See you on my next post!

Painting Workshop @ My Art Space

"Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely"
- Winston Churchill

Recently, I decided to attend a painting workshop during weekends, to improve my ability in art painting.

Who knows one day I could make some great painting worth $$$. :)

 

So, let the picture talk itself..
 

My Art Space Studio and Café

 

The Art Studio (P.S. That is not my drawing)



The Art Studio

 

Work in Progress

 

The Café (I like the decoration with the huge sunflower there. It is located on top of the 'pool park', very cool right!)

 

More pictures to come!!

Location:

My Art Space

Istana Park, 31 Orchard Road, Singapore 238888 

Cheers,

Hunting The Tintin Shop at Singapore

     Hi Readers!

Do you remember Tintin? Or are you one of Tintin's fan? I still remember reading comics of The Adventures of Tintin. I still even have the old collection of its comics, which is inherited from my cousin that time. Some of you might be not so familiar with Tintin, no problem, you can look into here and here. Recently, one of his adventure stories, which is The Secret of The Unicorn, has been made into a movie (you can see the trailer here). It was a very cool movie, and I thought the movie is more adventurous than the same story in its comics. If you would like to get the original collection of Tintin, or may be just want to get a glimpse of Tintin's collection, you can go to this shop, 'The Tintin Shop', located at China Town area, (56 Pagoda Street, Chinatown MRT, Singapore). You could find lots of the original collection of Tintin, from books, clothes, cards, etc. until the miniature of the characters / stuff inside the story. It's like I am going back to my childhood time!

The Craft Complex Kuala Lumpur

Probably, there are not a lot of people familiar with this places, as normally when we would like to visit Kuala Lumpur, we will only visit KLCC or Bukit Bintang, or probably Dataran Merdeka. Hm, that is actually quite true. However, if you have a lot more days to visit Kuala Lumpur, I would recommend you to visit this place. Apart from FREE admission :), this could bring you a new perspective of Kuala Lumpur.

As its name, The Craft Complex provides a lot of things related into it. The idea of this, is that apart from only providing a normal handicraft shop, it also has a craft village, where a visitor could see the makings of Malaysian Handicraft. It even has its own museum, Muzium Kraf , where it shows how the craft in Malaysia is created, from a historical era until a modern era. 

Here are some of my shots :)

Kuala Lumpur City Gallery

Kuala Lumpur City Gallery is another unique kind of tourist attraction in Kuala Lumpur. It is a visitor information, where we could ask a guide about some road, or other tourist attraction place to visit. The uniqueness of this as compared to other visitor information is that they have Kuala Lumpur city landmark model in here. Other than that, visitor could also enjoy some shopping spree at Arch, in which they sell Malaysian classic handicraft (it is a bit pricey though).

It is located at around Daratan Merdeka, and there are a lot of other tourist attraction near to this place. This building is preserved from a historical building (I really like the classiness feeling around here :)). And there are a lot of historical landmark around this area, so once we visit this place, we could just spend the whole day to visit a lot of other places nearby.

This is some of my shots :)

I Heart KL :)

Kuala Lumpur City Gallery