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Introducing the Bali Mandara Toll Bridge

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This morning I went to Nusa Dua from Denpasar.  I drive via the toll bridge. That will save me about 45 minutes. Instead of going for one hour drive, I could cut it into 10 minutes. If you are in Bali, you may want to use this toll bridge to save time whenever you go on tour provided that your hotel is located in Nusa Dua or Jimbaran.  If you stay in Kuta, Legian or Seminyak, there is no need to use this toll it does not connect to that places. Going on the toll, you can see quite beatiful scenery of the Benoa harbor and the mangroves along the toll. In certain area of the sea, you can see fisherman boats, and people going fishing on small boats. Maybe there is no time to capture that with your camera, because you can not stop. But this scenery is great alternative to the traffic jam you may encounter when you drive through the normal route. Besides Nusa Dua, one end of the toll bridge is the Ngurah Rai statue which is close the airport. This means if  you're just arri

Be Hive for Sale in Local Market

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Do you know that Balinese eat cooked bee hives? Have you this in your country? Cooked bee hives can be very tasty that many Balinese like eating them. In one occasion on a tour, I have a chance to take my clients to a local market in Denpasar in Kreneng village. It is a quite interesting market, because you can learn more about how the Balinese live. In the market, you will see people selling daily needs, such as fish, meat, vegetables, fruit and cakes. Going further into the market you will find different things, perhaps, than what you can get in your market at home. In a Bali market, you can find many  people who sell many different things. For example, one most interesting is people selling bee hives. Be hives are sold in the fish or vegetable section.  When I asked the seller, how much it was a kilogram of bee hive (at the time of I wrote this post), she said, “it’s eighty thousand rupiah or about USD 8”. So, how do Balinese you eat bee hives? No, the Balinese don’t eat the

Stopping For Monkeys

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If you like monkeys,  it's great news.  There are   plenty of them in Bali.  Some of them are luckier than other because they live in tourist area that they are well fed by locals. Some may need to steal glasses,  hair clips,  or sandals before they can eat their lunch.  Most of them live in the wild and occasionally can be spotted as we drive through forestry area. One of the place you can stop is an area near Lake Buyan. This is the street that leads to North Bali. On the way to your tour, especially touring to Singaraja, you can stop at this place. You don't have to go touring just for stopping here. If your hotel in Lovina, for instance, you can stop here during your ride to your hotel. Usually there is a lady who sell banana or peanuts that you can feed this long tailed macaques. But she will not be available all the time selling banana. If she is there, it is  a good idea to buy banana from her to feed the monkey. You can just take photos, if you are a photographer

Taking Photos of The Balinese Ladies

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Consider it's  a treat when you can take photos of the Balinese ladies going to the temple carrying offering on their head. Not every day you can witness such scene.  It only happen during major temple festival. A temple festival take place every 210 days.  A festival in one temple does not necessarily mean a festival in other temple.That means during your visit to Bali, you probably find some ladies bringing their offering to the temple. There are many temples in Bali, and one or two temple have their festival times. You may see these ladies. You can ask politely to take photo with them. Usually they do not mind when tourist take their photos. One thing to remember is that the offering can be very heavy. So, they would not like to stand still for long time or it is going to be hard for them to pose other than what you can see: one hand holding the offering. If you think, you would like to try to carry the offering, let me tell you, it's not a good idea. Because it is h