Bali - Day 2

We rented a car with a driver for Rp250000 to bring us around on Day 2..it was the best deal we could get by far...so the driver brought us to a painting centre in Ubud..Ubud is famous for its arts and crafts..many famous Balinese painters came from Ubud...we saw many lovely paintings there and it took me a great deal of sheer willpower to stop me from buying all the paintings i liked there..hehe, well, actually the price kind of help too...paintings are not cheap...;P

I saw a painting with purple tone that i liked a lot, which i bought eventually for Rp 700000 (initial price was quoted at Rp1 million)...but there was another painting which literally took my breath away when my eyes fell on it...it was a painting of 'rapture'...and i thought to myself, i don't care how big or expensive this painting is but i'm going to buy it...then i saw the sign..not for sale..dang!! anyway, the guide told us that we weren't supposed to take pictures of the paintings inside the art centre...but hehe, i just couldn't help myself...so i snapped pics of a few paintings i liked while the guide was away...i do hope they didn't have CCTV...so i asked the guide why wasn't the 'rapture' painting for sale..and he said that it was because the painter is deceased...i wonder if that was his last painting..rapture..hehe..

After that, we headed further north to Kintamani where Mount Batur and Lake Batur were located.. we enjoyed our buffet lunch at a restaurant with a great view of Mount Batur...the weather at Kintamani was much cooler which was a much welcomed change...we didn't manage to go anywhere near Mount Batur due to time limitation...perhaps the next trip i can trek up Mount Batur...

Stuffed from lunch, we headed back down to Ubud where we stopped by at a souvenir shop which sells hiked-up price goods...i didn't get anything but the Japanese tourists there were definitely going hook-line-sinker for the stuffs...then we went to the Ubud market where things were a lot cheaper..i bought a cute little dress for my niece, Rainbow for Rp50000...i bought a bag for my aunty which only cost Rp30000...these were prices after slashing the initial price by half...i guess it helped that we spoke Malay...but we got ripped off by the T-shirt vendors there..i bought a T-shirt for my brother for Rp50000 when others were selling T-shirts for Rp15000 per piece...sigh...anyway, while we were waiting for our driver, we saw these 2 ladies who were balancing a whole basketful of fruits walking by...good practice for posture and poise...if i ever tried, we'll be getting pulp fruits for dessert..

After shopping, we drove back to town for dinner...where we had Babi Guling...the shop we went was by the road side and we didn't see any babi which was 'sedang diguling'...apparently they've cut up the pig...well, so much for photo opportunity...so anyway, Babi Guling turned out to be something like 'chu chap'...you get roasted pork, fried pig skin, pig liver rolled into sausages (yucks!) and various other internal organs...so i guess there'll be no more Babi Guling for me when i'm in Bali next time..
So after a long day of travelling, we went back to our hotel and rested...i continued reading "Twilight" as the story unfolded and the plot became more and more interesting...