day one: bali bound | belle travels

Hello friends, this post isn’t book related at all but I wanted to document my trip to Bali, Indonesia. This is my first time going overseas without my parents but with my boyfriend so I was incredibly thrilled.

Bali was beautiful. Although I went overseas, I can’t seem to avoid the hot weather but we were fortunate that it didn’t rain throughout the five days we were there. For the first day, we went to three different places: Ulun Danu Beratan Temple, Handara Golf Gate and Wanagiri Hidden Hill.

When we first reached the Ngurah Rai International Airport at Denpasar, it was 9 AM. Once we stepped out of the airport, we were swarmed by taxi drivers asking if we want a ride to our destination. My advice is to ignore them and walk on. The both of us actually hired a private driver to bring us around as the three aforementioned spots are actually 2 hours plus away from the airport. They’re all further north while the airport is south.

Our first stop was Ulun Danu Beratan Temple which is located at the western side of the Beratan Lake in Bedugul (entrance fee: IDR 50,000). This temple, alongside the Uluwatu and Tanah Lot temple, is called a ‘floating’ temple as it’s built on water. The place was beautiful and so scenic. I didn’t had time to visit the other floating temples so I was glad that I saw this one.

I’ve seen so many beautiful photo of the picturesque Handara Golf gate on Instagram and Pinterest that I totally forgot about how popular the place would be which was annoying (donation: around $3). There were so many tourists there trying to get the perfect shot with their drones and fancy cameras that it took forever for us to take a decent one with my iPhone. However, it’s sort of our fault too. We went there during lunch and since it’s near the temple, many people typically do the two stops one after another.

Go early in the morning or during sunset. You’ll probably get prettier photos and lesser crowd!

Isn’t it insane that there’s an entrance fee to a supposedly free gate? It’s an entrance to a golf place. What’s funny was that a few feet after we purchased the physical tickets at the booth, another guy took our tickets and threw it away.. Am I the only one who found it ridiculous? He could’ve clearly seen us buy the ticket at the booth.

The last destination for day one was the Wanagiri Hidden Hill. Without prior research, I didn’t know that there were more than one such spot. The area is actually quite small but it’s packed with mini picture spots like those two above and the one below (and more). Other than this swing, we actually took another swing at a rice terrace but *whispers* this view is much better. The area overlooks the lake and the mountain. It was so beautiful.

Our driver of the day was Ketut. You can check out his Instagram! We paid him IDR 600,000 which was more than if we just stayed around the Ubud area. He sent us to our accommodation which was Bhanuswari Resort and Spa. What we didn’t know was that the resort is actually quite hard to find but thankfully they offered transportation services for their guest so we managed to travel out for dinner and back.

We went to Bebek Bengil which is translated to “dirty duck”. I heard this is quite famous in Bali and is a must try. However, my boyfriend and I have our own opinion. The dirty duck isn’t very nice (and very difficult to eat) but the carbonara was THE BOMB, you NEED to try it if you are in Ubud. IT WAS AMAZING.

Day one of Bali ended early because the next day we were getting picked up at 630am to travel to an island!