Bali 2013 - Day 2

"Cycling tour is a must try" went the comment from my friends when they knew I was heading to Bali. So I implanted this idea into the trip and I'm glad both my travel companions loved it too. 

Prebooked the cycling tour together with the Mt Batur Sunrise trek through this Bali Eco Cylcing website. By booking two tours, we managed to get the tours at a discounted price of 750,000 IRD. The standalone price for the cycling trip is 360,000 IRD and that for Mt Batur is 450,000 IRD. 

As I had mentioned earlier that we stayed at Seminyak, we needed to be ready by 7am for the pick up. Luckily for us, breakfast at Sense Hotel starts as early at 6am. After picking up the rest of the tour mates, the first pitstop was not to the Penelokan (Kintamani) for breakfast. Yes, this tour includes breakfast. The first stop was a view of the rice paddy. "This is a Kodak photoshoot spot" went the tour guide. Oh well, the view was great and it felt so green and relaxing to be immersed in the surrounding. 

Rice Paddy View

Afterwhich, we headed to Kintamani for breakfast. Ok well, forget about the breakfast. It was not very great but the place does really portray one of the stunning views in Bali for me - Mt Batur, an active volcano, and its cater lake. Nice weather to accompany the view was the best 'postcard' we can ever get. 

Mt Batur and its Cater Lake

Next up, we were brought to a fruit and coffee plantation whereby the tour guide introduced the plants to us. Okay, this was not really my cup of tea but it was still nice to know some of the plants. We were also allowed to try some of the coffee varieties, ranging from hazelnut to caramel. However, we got to share the coffee cups with our tour mates. Thus, if you are not comfortable with it, I guess you might want to give it a miss or to order a cup of coffee on your own expenses. One of the tour mates ordered the Coffee Luwak, the unusually produced and most expensive coffee in the world. We managed to watch how this coffee is being brewed. 

Coffee related

After the "coffee break", we are finally off to our cycling tour. We were brought to collect our bicycles. One of my friends was not confident in cycling on her own and we were so glad that they offered a tandem bike. The tour guide offered to ride the tandem bike with her. A very good service from them. 

The first stop is to the including a visit to a Balinese home. The tour guide told us the structure of the house and also some of the Balinese culture they have. An interesting insight is how we can gauge the wealthiness of the family by looking at their house compound. He also mentioned how the government conducted their census. The number of people staying in the house to the family nuclei are clearly stated in front of the house.  

Cycling through the village did attract the attention of the locals and the children were extremely excited. We stopped by the rice paddy and was given the chance to walk through the field. Unfortunately, it was not the harvesting period. We also stopped by an enormous Banyan tree for some photo-taking. Basically, it is so enormous that I felt a bit being compressed by it. 

Oh, just to mention that Balinese were celebrating Galungan and they actually hang this Celebration decoration known as penjor (bamboo poles weighed down by offerings suspended at the end) in front of their house as well as along the street. Interesting to know this as we were quite curious about the decoration when we first saw it on our first day. 

Scenes through cycling

This tour includes lunch as well. A nice ambiance restaurant to have a balinese buffet lunch. The satay was great but it was not free flow. If not, I would have grab a few more sticks. Yummy.

After the whole trip, we reached back our hotel at around 4pm. We decided to head to Seminyak Beach to take a look and we managed to catch the beautiful sunset.

Sunset

Dinner was back at near Seminyak square, but we decided to head to small eatery. It was not crowded at all and we actually hesitated before walking in. The rest of the cafes/restaurants along the stretch are not selling local food. I'm glad we went in. We ordered a couple of dishes to share and the food was quite nice.

First of all is the pineapple rice. It was a little oily but the taste was great. The second dish was the chicken satay rice with kangkong. The satay sauce was quite different from that we tasted in Singapore. It was not very 'peanut'and gave a sweeter taste. The blanched kangkong with the chili was a great one. Without the chili, it was just normal though it was fresh. But once you mixed it with the chili, it was real spicy. Trust me, if you do not take spicy food, do not order this dish. Last but not least on the table was the gado-gado. Totally different from what we get in Singapore. It consists of more leafy vegetables. I liked! Avocado shake was the drink to end off the dinner. Thick and nice.

Balinese Food

Before heading back to hotel, we bought a 10,000 IRD gelato as desserts. Cheap and yummy to end off the day!