Bali Tour Guide

Flowers are really something that we can not live without in Bali. One main reason is offerings with flowers. Have you seen the offerings made by coconut leaves and flowers? We also create decorate our homes with flowers on special occasion. Have a look at a Balinese house when there is a wedding or tooth filling ceremony. They use lots of flowers to decorate their house. Balinese dancers also use flowers to beautify them selves. They use frangipani, hibiscus , and cempaka .   When you visit a Balinese Hindu temple, you will also see the flowers also grown in the garden areas. Take a look at this picture of flowers plant the Ulun Danu Temple near Lake Bratan.’ Flowers are also grown in the house yard in Balinese compound. One main reason is to prepare for offerings, so the family do not need to buy flowers for their offering especially in the big festival days. For those who have no flowers at home, they can still easily buy them in the local Bali markets. Flowers are als...

Sooner or later you will spot this; a cigaratte on an offering while staying in Bali. When you ask the local why they put cigarette on the offering, you wil probably don't get straight forward explanation. Instead, you will get a blank stare as the local say," it is for good luck", "it's our tradition" or "it's been done that way since our great grand parents lived". Ok, now what's the answer to your question? Before we embraced Hinduism about 4000 years ago or so, we already had belief. It's called animism and dynamism. It is a believe to spirit, natural forces and anchestors. So, my history teacher taught me. As we became Hindu, the local beliefs are still retained. What you see now in Bali is a combination of ancient Hinduism (called Tantrayana) and the local belief. So, yea, we pay respect to good spirits, and to our anchestor until to day. We made them shrines in our family temple, in big trees around village temp...

If you go to tourists place such as Tanah Lot you will notice that there are many little cafes adn restaurant which offer coconut milk or water or milk?? Far from it , it is not the milk, it is just the water of coconut. Fresh coconut, usually the green coconut, are available almost in every corner at Tanah Lot Temple. why green? I think it is the taste is better than the yellow or orange coconut or red coconut, but it is also bigger in size. The coconuts are placed out side the cafe or restaurant where you can see. It is still fresh. Go order one coconut, and the seller will take a machete and make a hole in the coconut shell. Once yhey finish, they put a straw in the holes. There you can suck the coconut water from Here is another variation. Put some ice and so it taste better and cooler. Some people, especially the Balinese, put sugar on it. (Wonder why? well, to taste sweeter). But people can have something else on it, they can put some arak (palm wine) and it become very alcoholic...

Rare may it seem, but you can get the luwak coffee here in Bali. Okay, now what is luwak coffee? Luwak is a kind of nocturnal animal which resembles a cat and consumes fruits like papaya, or banana. But wait, it also eats coffee beans. This coffee beans travel to the animal eschopagus, and passing through intestines, bowels, and finally comes out as droppings. Here is the strange thing. The coffee beans is still in perfect condition (intact) when it comes out as dropping. The coffee farmer eagerly wake up at down to hunt for this droppings in the forest or gardens. Feeling ecstatic, they will dry the droppings, and extract the coffee beans. They know this is the most wonderful coffee in the world, and most expensive too. What? No, you are kidding. That's the respond I got from Charlene ( an Australian tourists). So, I took her and two other tourists Mike (from California) and Joan (from England) to Seribatu village where they can see the animal called the civet. When we arrived the...

The problem of goodness versus evil is never really finish in this world. Many stories, legends, even the Hollywood movies set this theme as their focus in their stories. In Bali there are also many stories about good and bad. Barong story which is presented in the Barong Dance performed daily in Batu Bulan village is no different. It tells the story is about fight between good and bad, only this time the good does not win... Barong is a an animal which looks like a lion. Since no one has seen it in reality, it is safe to assume that Barong is a mythical character just like the leprechaun. Where do you see the original Barong? If you tour around with your tour guide or driver, you might have a chance to see a religious procession. You will probably the local Balinese who dances Barong dance on the prossesion. The function of Barong is believed to expel the evil spirit away, or neutralize negative energy (if this make more sense to you) so it will not interfere the temple festival. Ther...

This is a photo of a Dwarapala statue. "Dwarapala" is derived from Sanskrit language meaning "door guardian". As it name suggests, you will find a lot of this kind of statues in front of temple gates in Bali. Besides temple, you can find this in all traditional building such as the village hall, puri (palace) and houses. At a quick glance, it may look scary, but they are the good characters (or the good guys). Being a visitor, sometimes you don't know which is good guy and which is bad guy because it looks similar. On the big holiday, those statues are wrapped in yellow and white fabric or black and white checkered cloth. The main purpose of this wrapping is to show respect to the spirits that guard the temple. You can see also there are offerings presented for the spirits made of coconut leaves and varieties of flowers. So, next time you are in Bali, remember this is the good guy... Technorati : Bali Temple

Bali has changed a lot since tourist booming in 1970-ies. Many hotels, restaurant, and villas are built to accomodate the incoming visitors. Many local leave their villages, and their farm lands to go to get better promising job in tourist area. Some are successful in changing their life to a better standard, others are still trying to survive. Apart from that, many visitors who visited Bali before, let say, twenty or thirty years ago, will commented that Bali has a experienced a lot of change. There were fewer cars in the streets, less buildings, but more rice fields. Last time you still could see farmers walked on the main road when going to the rice fields. You can still do it now, but you have to go to the villages, not in big city like Denpasar or Sanur. Is Bali more beautiful thirty years ago? Probably yes. There were still originality, not very much tourists influence you would see. It's really funny the way they advertise Lombok in the media to visitors, Visit Lombok: It...

Yesterday I went tour to Kintamani to see the volcano with eleven Indian tourists. They are very nice and they talk English with Indian accent. Apparently, they are in Bali at the moment for a PATA conference (Pacific Asia Travel Association Mart) on 25 to 28 September at Westin Hotel Nusa Dua. (Later I knew that they were the Minister of Tourism of Andra Pradesh India and other directors and staffs of tourism department of Andra Pradesh). Most of them are Hindu, so we can discuss about the Balinese Hindu and the Indian Hindu. Although this is not an in-depth discussion but it does gives me an interesting view. "Do you have caste system in Bali?" one of them asked me. I explained briefly about the four castes we have in Bali, the Brahmana, Ksatria, Weisya, and Sudra. They ask me again, to confirm, if we only have those four castes. I said yes. "So, you don't have sub caste, for example, that inside Brahmana caste there is not any sub caste?" When I replied that...

Beside lawar , the most popular food among the Balinese is roasted pig or suckling pig. During the special occasion like wedding, local birthdays, three months old ceremony for new born and other various celebrations the suckling pig always present. It is a special treat, favorite for most Balinese. You too can try the spicy suckling pig in Bali, the only question is where is the best place to eat suckling pig. One of the best and popular place is a local food stall in Ubud centre. Ubud centre is a very busy cross road where the local art market (known as Ubud Market)and the Puri Saren (Ubud Palace) is situated.The suckling pig food stall is just in a little corner next the the Ubud village hall opposite of Puri Saren. Every local, passer by, police, and almost every body knows where the food stall is.You can't miss it. The name of the food stall, as you see on the photo, (forgive my bad quality of camera phone, it's a Sony Ericsson k700i) is called Bu Oka. Well, it is belong ...

A Hindu Bali temple festival takes place every 210 days or six months(which is a year according to the Bali lunar calendar). In this special day, the local villagers prepare themselves to pray at the temple. The children are very excited and wear their best clothes to go to the temple. The ceremony at the temple usually started from early morning and finish late at night. The people will come more in the afternoon or early evening. The ladies brings offering on their heads; the offering is made of cakes, fruit, and coconut leafs. The men bring incense and flowers as these will be needed when praying. A temple festival is also the precious moment where people gather in the temple yard. So, a temple is not merely a place for praying, but it has turned to be a social place where friends and relatives meet each other. They talk about everything in the outer yard of the temple. This is also where they can watch dances performed by the local girls. At the temple festival you can see dances p...

Do you know Bali well enough that you've tried this food before? The food that I am talking about here is called lawar. It is made of mixture of spices and sliced and minced pork. But there is another special ingredient that is going to blow your mind; it is raw pig blood. Lawar is a special food for Balinese. People make lawar on special occasion like holy day or temple festival. (There is a Holy Day coming next week called Galungan, I will write about it in a few days). It can also be found at wedding feast, or tooth filling ceremony. You can buy lawar at food stall all over Bali, especially those selling suckling pig. Is it really raw blood? Before we go on to that discussion, let see what are the ingredients needed to make lawar. First, we need a complete combination of spices (called Basa genep ). The Basa Genep consists of onion, garlic, pepper, turmeric, chili, salt, ketumbar (I'll have to check the English translation later), fried onion, shrimp paste, and ginge...