Day 2

We met our friendly, informative, chatty and punctual driver, Dewa Marco (picture is taken at Lake Batur) in the at 09:00 hrs sharp. Our first stop of the day is the town of Ubub. We visited the market which sells mostly local artifacts/produce, clothings and apparels. Always bargain when you are in such areas. The peddlers will always offer you a rather high price (which they expects you to haggle, of which if you don't, they will be laughing their way to the banks). They are used to bargaining so don't be shy (50% or more cut can be expected). Some common coaxes used by the peddlers includes "Good luck, come buy", "Morning price for good luck, come buy", etc. You can see the glow in their place when a deal is struck, and they will use their first day cash to bath their products for more good luck in business. Right across the market, you can find the famous "Bu Oka Babi Guling" (Suckling Pig). You need to sit inside the cooling hut and the waitress will attend to you. If you don't state the portion which you want, they'd assume you want the extra biggest portion and that will set you back IDR$20,000. The skin is crispy and the meat and its garnishing, well, you'd either love it or hate it. Heard from my partner that this place is recommended in a lot of forums / travel guides. No wonder I see international folks lunching in here as well. After tasting their local savory, we decide to give a more up class restaurant around the vicinity a chance with our stomach as well. We arrived at Bebek Bengil restaurant (aka Dirty Duck Restaurant. Funny name right? But the food is definitely tastier than it sounds) and ordered their famous Crispy Duck (seen on the left picture). Noticed the difference in presentation between the 2 makan venues? Settings of the restaurant is spacious and airy and is surprisingly cool, even under a sunny day.

Our next stop from here is Kintamani. Along the way, we stopped by Tegallalang to snap photos of a small scaled terraced rice plantation. At Kintamani, we get to view the infamous dormant volcano, Mt Batur and a breadth-taking view of Lake Batur. As the weather is slightly overcast by the time we arrive, pictures taken here doesn't do justice to the otherwise picturesque scenery.
We moved on next to visit a must visit place of interest, the Luhur Uluwatu temple (translates to the divine far away rock, or something like that as explained by Marco ), located at the south western part of Bali. The temple is built on a cliff and visitors are required to wear the provided sarongs as a show of respect to the temple. There is also a Kecak dance (Archipelago, Balinese style) performed here at around 18:30hrs for IDR$50,000, which we have unfortunately missed. Monkeys is also one of the "key" features to see at this temple as they roam about freely, terrorizing tourists by snatching away glasses, hairclips, handphones, etc. Remember, you have been warned. To end our day, we had dinner at this restaurant near Kuta area, called Made's Warung. It is rather famous and is packed with dinner crowd by the time we arrived at around 18:30 hrs. We decide to take a much needed stroll back to our hotel after our hearty dinner. Small shops littered along this busy Kuta street and we popped in occasionally to broswe/shop. We ended our day with a nice 1 hour foot / shoulder massage at a shop near our hotel which costs IDR$60,000. This night both of us slept like a log.