Tepi Sawah Villa by night

02. September 2008 by CY · Comments Off · Categories: All Posts, Traveling · Tags: , ,

If Tepi Sawah Villa is charming by day, it’s absolutely stunning at night. The compound is pretty compact, and every inch of the villa is lovingly landscaped in the Balinese garden style with use of water, ponds, flowers, status and candles. While Ling was ordering dinner last night, I went about taking pictures of the villa. All these were taken at about 9 to 10 pm.

The rest of the pictures of the villa taken including the day shots so far are right here.:)

That’s all the time I’ve got for an entry; we’re off on Day 4 shortly for places all over the island.:)

Tanah Lot Sunset

01. September 2008 by CY · 1 comment · Categories: All Posts, Aquarium, Traveling · Tags: , , ,

The highlight of the first day with Dewa Marco, a driver I’ve decided to coin as “The Best Driver in Bali”, was our sunset visit to Tanah Lot. This temple sits on a rock formation and is set some distance from the shoreline, and is only accessible in low tides. At high tides and sunset, the temple offers stunning views that one can find pictures of with some Googling.

As for the both of us, we decided to do a slightly off beaten route by heading to the shoreline on the other side of Tanah Lot, and I finally got to use my newly acquired B+W neutral density filter. Here’s a small selection of the sunset shots, taken using stacked ND + CPL filters, with exposure times of about 20 to 25. For the second shot in this post, Ling had to remain absolutely still for 6 seconds; I got another shot of her in the same backdrop where I opened the shutter for 30 seconds… but she moved LOL :).

The Place

01. September 2008 by CY · Comments Off · Categories: All Posts, Traveling · Tags: , ,

The flight was pretty pleasant and smooth, and we arrived at Tepi Sawah Villa at 5 pm on Saturday afternoon after weaving in and out of Bali traffic for nearly an hour. Our suite, Pedang Villa, pales a little in comparison to our Ayara Hilltops resort stay at Phuket, but I’m still pretty happy with it.

The view wise though is a little more of a mixed bag. We’d been hoping for the suite to have a view of the padi fields, but the one that was reserved for us got the pool side view instead. On the up side, I get pretty stable Internet access, which means daily uploading of photograhs on Flickr. Ling’s gonna try to see if we can move to a different suite over the next day or so though.

The villa grounds are incredibly beautiful all round. Here’s a quick picture of the pool, taken at about 7:30 am on Sunday morning.:)

Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag

30. August 2008 by CY · 2 comments · Categories: All Posts, At Home, Traveling · Tags: ,

I started creating the Excel spreadsheet for my packing list to Bali several months ago. Yep, it’s still that Excel spreadsheet fetish I’ve got. Funnily, that fetish has rubbed off on Ling too. These days whenever she makes an overseas trip, she’ll prepare similar lists too. OK; so it may not be uncommon for travelers to pack according to a checklist. But mine goes one geek level up; I even have columns indicating quantity, item weight, quantity weight, and weight totals against baggage allowance. Beat that! :)

One of the harder things about packing this year though is which lenses and camera equipment to bring. While we’ve engaged a local driver to show us around for three of the six days we’ll be there and the amount of equipment that can go into the boot shouldn’t be an issue, there’s still the problem of how many lenses I can physically cram into the Tamrac Adventure 7 backpack itself.  I could just bring everyone of the seven lenses I’ve got stuffed in the other Tamrac shoulder bag, but my shoulders would likely kill me for that.

So, after loads of stuffing lenses, filters and accessories to and fro the backpack and dry cabinet, here’s what I’ve finally decided on:

  1. D300
  2. 18-55mm VR
  3. Sigma 10-20mm UWA
  4. Sigma 150mm macro
  5. SB600 Speedlight +Demb Jumbo Flip-it bounce card
  6. Wireless / remote trigger
  7. 190CXPRO3 + ballhead
  8. 52mm + 77mm graduated neutral density, neutral density and circular polarizer filters

The recently acquired Sigma 24-60mm lens still has a backfocus issue which I’ll have to sort out after we’re back. I don’t think I’ll be doing portrait shots, so no 50mm. Now, the 55-200mm I was sorely tempted to bring since I’m thinking of checking out the Bali Bird Park too. But no space.:(

In any case, the both of us are headed off to the airport and Bali in an hour’s time, so this will be the last post for the next couple of days until I can find an Internet connection somewhere on the island. Till then.:)

Driving and diving

04. July 2008 by CY · 2 comments · Categories: All Posts, Traveling · Tags:

After working out the travel and accommodation details, the third step of the process involves figuring out what to do. Usually Ling’s the person who plans the itinerary on our vacations including our most recent trip to Phuket, but I figured I’d give it a shot this time round.

Planning an itinerary is really a lot easier these days than before. The huge gamut of user-reviews and services operator web sites can easily overwhelm one’s senses, and it’s all helped by good search engines that specialize in the different information type one prefers to use e.g. user reviews, images, blogs.

Either way, my start point’s typically the same: TripAdvisor, from which I usually branch off to operator web sites where I get all the advertizing / marketing blibs, and http://images.google.com where I can get beyond the garden variety type of photos.

Bali isn’t called the Last Paradise on Island for nothing. OK, so maybe a lot of other places on Earth claim part of that title too, though maybe less on whether it’s the ‘Last’ place. That Bali is several times larger than Singapore means there’s a good balance: the place is big enough to offer a variety of attractions both man-made/run and natural, and it’s still small enough to allow for reasonable travel by car.

What doesn’t help though is that all the places’ names are in Bahasa Indonesia, and after a while, they all start to sound about the same. So it’s a bit of an effort putting together all the place possibilities onto my usual spreadsheets, and match them to their relative proximities to cut down on traveling time. There’s a bunch of places I’m very keen on seeing for certain, e.g. Pura Luhur Uluwatu during sunset (pictured from http://www.scenicworld.de/ in the entry here), the Jatiluweh rice paddy fields, Batur volcano and Lake Batur and Ulun Danu Temple.

There’re also day trip operators abound, for instance Bali Discovery Tours and Bali Adventure Tours, both of which are professionally run and are recommended online and in print. We intend to go white water rafting for certain or introductory diving (big maybe). Prices aren’t low though, and day trips are all SGD100 to at least 200 for the both of us. So, I’ve decided to go with private and solo operators, and they’re really native Bali or Indonesian drivers who operate their business literally out of their own cars. Basically, you work with the driver a customized itinerary and throw out the places you’re not interested in. Now that’s a great bonus compared to the larger operations, since in the latter’s case itineraries are fixed.

A list of recommended drivers shows up on TripAdvisor here, and some of them are so popular they get booked 6 months in advance. Their rates are, remarkably, all about the same range at 400,000 to 500,000 rupiah or SGD59-74 per day. Even their web and blog sites are all about the same orientation. They sell themselves, include patron testimonials, specify tour packages they’re offering, and present photos of happy groups they’ve taken. So, trying to distinguish one driver from the next hasn’t been easy at all, but they really seem all ok.

In any case, I’m about done firming up our arrangements with one such driver to bring us around for 3 days, and he looks like a reasonably solid and trustworthy fellow. We’ll know soon enough in eventuality.:)

Beach, night spots or rice fields

03. July 2008 by CY · 2 comments · Categories: All Posts, Entertainment, Recipes, Traveling · Tags:

Here’s a continuing post from the last entry on flying to Bali.:)

Ling was musing out loud yesterday evening while on our way home why is it that Asians are happy with 3D2N stays when the Europeans come to Asia and think nothing of spending a fortnight here.

The way I look at it, it’s everything to do with travel proximity and the experience differential. I don’t think Asians would want to do 3D 2N night stays if they were flying to say London but I can’t imagine a Parisian wanting to do a fortnight stay in London either.

In any case, as soon as we got the flight dates that SQ had remaining, we next determined where to stay in Bali itself. Bali is several times larger than Singapore and there’re specific areas of stay depending on one’s persuasion. There’s the wild and noisy Kuta, the beach front Sanur, the expensive Nusa Dua etc.

Kuta was right out at the onset as neither of us are big on night life or like what Wikitravel calls, the “drunken bikini scene”. Nusa Dua was next on the top of the list as the hotels and resorts there are more luxurious and area more peaceful less crowded, but the preferred choice of resort was fully booked. Sanur was next but I experienced the same problem with preferred accommodation availability.

That was about the time when I toggled into sour-grapes mode and all but said to myself “screw the tourisy beaches let’s go for something else”. After all, can the Bali beaches be any better than Rawa’s? I decided on the island’s cultural centre in Ubud. Most of the accommodation available in Ubud aren’t hotels or resorts, but privately-owned and run small villas spread over a huge price range.

And boy, it was so not easy getting accommodation there, given that many of these villas are perhaps a dozen units big whoops ‘small’. My first choice Tegal Sari was fully booked. As I traversed down the recommended list of Ubud stays from TripAdvisor and queries repeatedly showed that each stay was fully booked, I started getting worried. So, at the point when I *did* find an available place at Tepi Sawah Villas (pictures here from the villa’s web site), I was especially relieved. The ranking wasn’t, thankfully, that far down the list too at #8 of 86 recommended Ubud stays.

The price for a 5 night stay there worked out to SGD577 for the Padang Tegal Villa. Not too bad; certainly cheaper than the Ayara Hilltops suite we stayed at and similarly sized at 81 square metres, if less opulent from the photos. Ling though is at least thrilled of the upcoming stay as it overlooks rice fields, a request she had while I was browsing through Ubud stays.

So that’s that. Next blog entry about scouting for our driver in Bali.:)

"I don't wanna die on an Indonesian airplane…!"

02. July 2008 by CY · 5 comments · Categories: All Posts, Traveling · Tags: ,

Or so Ling went the other week.

OK, what’s this about? We started making plans for our second short vacation while at Ayara Hilltops, and narrowed the list of possible places down to a select few. It was going to be Hokkaido (blame our friend Ann for that :P), Langkawi, Bali, or Redang / Perhentian Islands.

The period of travel would had been about during the week long School Holiday break in September, and that posed problems immediately. Specifically, Hokkaido would had been really difficult, since most packages there span at least 7 days. It’d be silly to fly all the way there for a 4 day stay. The beaches at Redang / Perhentian Islands are amazing and reportedly on par with Mauritius, but I (just me) was really preferring not to go to a coastal area again, not when the memories of our Rawa trip is still fresh in my mind.

It was a toss-up between Langkawi and Bali. Langkawi packages weren’t cheap relative to their offerings, but Bali on the other hand was crazily difficult to book. I called the several travel agencies, all of whom dutifully reported that SQ flights were full, and helpfully suggested we fly Garuda Indonesia there.

Personally, I’m OK with Garuda. Really. That incident last year when one of their planes crashed on landing killing 21 poor souls was tragic. Or that the European Union still bans the airline from flying to Europe. Or that there’re people who specifically request to sit near the Emergency Exits whenever on a Garuda flight.

But statistically, flying is still the safest way to get around—so goes the line in Superman Returns and the original movie—and I believe in those stats. It helped too that during last Friday evening’s bible study, our friend Ann remarked that they flew to Bali on Garuda too, and she didn’t bat an eyelid saying that.

But Ling just could not be appeased, and the look of paranoia was quite evident.:) I was between a mix of bemusement and exasperation, but there’s no easy changing that woman’s mind, even after I produced evidence—thank ye Google—that Garuda’s taken big steps to improve in their safety standards.

So it was back to the drawing board, and as luck would have it, I managed to find seats by calling Singapore Air directly for what they said were “higher economy” fares. So it’s off to Bali for a 6 day stay during the School Holiday break in September. Next entry, maybe tomorrow, I’ll blog about our accommodation.:)

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