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!

A Thousand Steps in Batu Caves, Malaysia

Hi Readers,

Would you accept the challenge to step a thousand staircase in Batu Caves?

Batu Caves is one of the famous tourist destination at Kuala Lumpur area. The limestone forming Batu Caves is said to be around 400 million years old (source: Wikipedia). It was once being promoted as a place of worship by an Indian Trader, K. Thamboosamy Pillai. Since then, it has been used as a place for some of Indian tradition such as Thaipusam, until now it is been formed as a sacred Hindu temple. I planned my trip to visit there with my father and my 2 sisters. So excited to visit another historical site!

On our way to Batu Caves, I could see a huge statue from far along the road. Behind the statue there is a hill with the cave inside, in which they later called as Batu Caves. The taxi driver told us that there are two entrances, main and side entrance. We entered from a side entrance. On the entrance, we also saw another big statue, not as big as the main one though, but enough for us to see that they like to build a huge statue. All of the huge statue there was carved by the local. Only the statue located inside the cave was brought straight from India, of course it is not as huge or as big as the one carved by the local.

Batu Caves
See how high it is??

Kuala Lumpur Landmark

Hi Readers!

As I am moving around KL city, I am snapping some photos for places that I have visited. Just sharing with you, may be it can bring an inspiration for you guys when you decide to visit Kuala Lumpur.. :)

1. Bukit Bintang and Bukit Bintang Walk

Yes, this place is very famous as an 'Orchard Road' of Kuala Lumpur. It is a heaven for shopping lovers. Getting here is very easy. You could take the Monorail and stop at Bukit Bintang Station. Once you go out from the Monorail Station, you could choose to go directly towards Bukit Bintang Walk, or choose to go to Sungei Wang. Sungei Wang is also a heaven for shopping lovers. There is a lot of choices especially for clothes, gadget and food with such an affordable price.

If we choose to go directly towards Bukit Bintang Walk, we could see a giant shop for H&M, for those H&M lovers, you will fall in love at a first sight! After pass by H&M shop, we could continue our walk across Bukit Bintang Walk. A lot of Bar, shop food, anything. And before we eventually reach Pavilion Shopping Mall, there is a lot other shopping mall along Bukit Bintang Walk. So, really it is a heaven for shopping lovers..!

Bukit Bintang Walk

At Bukit Bintang, there is a lot of choice of shopping class. They have any type of class here. From affordable price, such as at Sungei Wang Plaza and a bit more high class at Pavilion, until the price that you couldn't have imagine of buying it, which is at Starhill, unless you wouldn't mind doing that :)

Fountain in front of Pavilion

Muzium Negara Kuala Lumpur (National Museum Malaysia)

Hi Readers! 

Back again to Malaysia, and now I would like to share with you one great place in Malaysia that should not be missed when you are here. It is a National Museum of Malaysia or in a local word Muzium Negara Kuala Lumpur. For some of you, it may sounds a bit boring. But its really not bad after all. This museum is really something in Malaysia, out of what it is expected from a typical normal boring museum. What can I say is that they (government in Malaysia) really taking care of this Museum, and putting some of the good stuff in here.

Entrance Gate

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

Get to Know Singapore's Central Fire Station

Developed from 1800s till modern day, the Civil Defence Heritage Gallery traces fire fighting and civil defence development in Singapore ever since. This gallery is located in the Central Fire Station, which made visitors able to fully experience and understand this integral part of Singapore's History. Being the oldest existing fire station in Singapore, Central Fire Station never lost its spirit since then.. 

One Day at Singapore Philatelic Museum