Potato Queen travel and lifestyle: Bali: Day 4

Rise and shine peeps!

Another full day in Bali and it's a beach day coz most hotspots we visited are by the sea especially Nusa Dua area. Just for recap, yesterday was a cultural day touring mostly temples.

Beautiful private beach with bouncers that will halau you.

A usual we woke up at 7am and had breakfast at 7:50am. This is the traditional breakfast of Indonesia we call it nasi lemak back in Malaysia.

Notice today the kuih are different.

What I had on Day 4.

We had a lot of spare time so we hanged around till 8:40am. This is the pool view in the morning.

Today we are gonna use this sick highway. Excuse my hipster language, for you old school sick means cool.

Bali Mandara Toll Road or Nusa Dua-Ngurah Rai-Benoa Toll Road is a toll bridge stretching across the Gulf of Benoa 12.7 km in length. The USD220 million highway connects Denpasar, South Kuta, Badung, Nusa Dua and Ngurah Rai International Airport.

The Mandara toll road so keat. Normal bridges are like one straight or curvy line but this has traffic lights in the middle, multiple directions and levels.

We started our journey at 9:20am and arrived Nusa Dua at 10:30am. There is a security check when you drive through the gate. You will see that Nusa Dua is quite an atas area donning the beautifully crafted landscape and sidewalks.

Look how clean this place is. Very different from Kuta and the rest of the regions.

Like I've mentioned, you are expected to see statues everywhere in Bali. I would like to know what figurine is this.

Welcome to Nusa Dua...

There's a gorgeous beach beside the stone sign. You should go and have a look but the beach that has deck chairs seem to be private ad belonged to resort.

Yippee! The weather was very hot actually. We were sweating like mad.

Spot your country! Penanaman pohon oleh delegasi WTO di Pulau Nusa Dua literally means tree plantation by WTO delegations at Nusa Dua island. Oh, I didn't know Nusa Dua is an island for I thought it's a connected land. Felt so lucky being a Malaysian and to be able to understand 90% of their language.

Welcome to waterblow!

Serene looking path o the way to water blow.

Hubby looking so lansi.

Be sure to adhere to the caution.

Whoosh! You have to wait about 2 minutes for each blow but they are quite frequent. Just most of the splash are not strong.

If you don't see strong splash don't get too disappointed. You gotta have patience.

We spent like an hour here till 11:45am to get good shots.

At 12:15pm we arrived at Ayana Resort and Spa. There will be a security check to validate that you are a guest before you come in.

To get to their private beach, you can check their buggy schedule outside the entrance. We took the 12:25pm ride. First stop will be pick up and drop off at the spa then the villas and finally Kubu beach.

Here's the entrance to Kubu beach. There will be a bouncer to check your room number and they will call the lobby to double confirm. So be sure you are a customer of Ayana.

Magnificent view!

It was a long way down. We only spent like 10 minutes here.

Our guide Agus took us to another beach similar to Kubu. If not mistaken this is called Pantai Tegal Wangi.

Whoa would you look at the crystal clear water. Though heavily populated, Bali still preserves their beautiful blue sea. I can't find any spot in Penang that has ocean this clear.

Titanic lol...

While waitng for hubby to be done with his photography.

We arrived at Waroeng Kampoeng at 2pm for a late lunch. We are totally off schedule today.

Digging the kampung ambiance here.

Whenever we enter a restaurant, our tour guide will always let us choose a dish per person with rice and drinks. This time there's an extra 1 more. I love this private tour so much coz food provided by othe tours especially the Europe one sux to the max! Please look for Agus Bali when you are planning for a trip here. I guarantee you will definitely love it. Hubby received good testimonials from friends whom he recommended.

If you are visiting Bali on your own you should come to Waroeng Kampoeng for yummy and cheap food but very slow serving time. Took almost half an hour to serve drinks.

We left the warung around 3pm and it only took like 5 minutes to reach our next stop.

Sophisticated decoration on the way to GWK. Initially Agus planned a massage session at a spa for us but I requested a change coz I dislike getting all oiled up for a massage and masseur pressing and hitting my back.

Garuda Wisnu Kencana (GWK) is a large cultural park covering about 60 hectare in the Badung region. The park boasts one of the largest artistic masterpiece ever created in Indonesia's art history. The foundation initiated the idea of the project back in 1992 with the vision of becoming the landmark of Bali’s world known tourist destination. One of the founders of GWK Foundation began to realize his big idea by developing the existing limestone hill through a combined land art approach with a modern architectural landscape.

Tickets for foreigners like us are IDR100,000 per pax. Opening hours from 8am to 10pm daily.

As a 21^stcentury alternative of an artificial tourism infrastructure, GWK Cultural Park is currently developing into a cultural park that covers cultural exhibitions, events and amusement attractions as well as becoming the information and communication forum for local, national, regional and even international cultures. You can see the dark teal section written lotus pond. I'm curious to why is there a segway in a massive lotus pond?

Here are some of the attractions and activities you can find in GWK.

Follow the story of the Garuda.

There are various supporting infrastructures in the park such as the the Wisnu Plaza, Street Theatre, Lotus Pond, Amphitheatre, Street Theatre, Indraloka Garden, Tirta Agung, the GWK signature restaurants such as Jendela Bali and The Beranda.

We went into the amphitheater later on

Sekar jagat dance is a welcoming dance specially performed for guests to wish them prosperity and welfare.

Sekar means flower and Jagat means world. So, Sekar Jagat means beautiful flowers adorn the world giving beautiful colors in the world. Usually consisting five dancers in a group but it can be performed by three dancers as long as uneven number.

This dance is about 6 minutes long but I only recorded a few seconds to give you the idea.

Cendrawasih dance resembles the motion of a beautiful lively cendrawasih bird. I think it's called bird of paradise in English.

Cendrawasih dance has meaning that we have to preserve and protect scarce fauna in order not to be extinct, and its population remain maintain. This dance also describes liveliness of cendrawasih bird eager to play, chasing, in its community.

This dance was first performed in the 1920s and present day performances and present day performances were choreographed in 1988.

Topeng monyer dance tells a funny story whereby the dance will mimic the character of each mask worn.

Topeng means mask while monyer means monkey. Very cheeky monkey indeed.

This performance is a one man show.

There were a few more dances but we got so sleepy and almost dozed off so we had to leave the amphitheater to freshen up. While we were in the washroom, we missed the kecak parade.

We then headed to the dragon embroidered steps.

You will come across this pond after you climb up the stairs.

A photo with one of the dancers.

This is quite a controversial 23-metre (75.5 ft) statue of Vishnu that has the religious authorities on the island complaining its massive size might disrupt the spiritual balance of the island and its commercial nature was inappropriate.

To design sculpture, GWK Foundation appointed Indonesia’s finest modern sculptors to lead this mega-structure project. After the initial groundbreaking on 8 June 1997, the cultural park began its public exposure in 2000 by exposing and exhibiting some parts of the Garuda Wisnu statue and running several trials for some of the supporting facilities.

This statue is right in front of the huge lotus pond which is not in sight coz they drained all of the water and turned it into a festival site. If you refer to the map a few pictures above, you will see there's a segway icon in the pond site. Yeah there were segways for rent and also a convoy gathering that day.