April 12th, 2025

We got up and off the ship by 8am and Kadek was waiting for us. We had asked to go see a temple about 2 hours north of where we were but Kadek informed us that Saturday was the new moon festival and the temple would be very crowded and he was worried about traffic and getting us back before the ship left. We also threw a wrench into our plans when we asked to run a small errand before we got started (more on that on a later post).

Kadek recommended a village called Penglipuran. The village is famous as a tourist destination in Bali because the villagers still preserve their traditional culture in their daily lives. The village is very clean and there is a long walkway that goes through the village and you are invited to walk in on anyone’s property to see the traditional way the Balinese live. The whole area had lots of flowers and great courtyards with chickens and caged birds and lots of colorful landscaping.

This is taken from the top where there is a temple and you walk down the walkway and can turn off into any of the yards and wander. Also everyone had some sort of store in their residence for your usual tourist souvenirs.

Most of the kitchens were outside and in 1 instance a sink and shower were outside. Since the houses are all traditional there is no air conditioning and we never heard or saw a TV while we were walking around. The people who live in the village get money off of the small entry fee and selling souvenirs but also they had lots of agriculture behind the village.

We took a walk through the bamboo forest and it was cooler and they also have a Bamboo Cafe.

We walked around for an hour and then Kadek picked us up.

We passed several village where they were getting ready for the full moon celebration.

A truck filled with villagers going to the temple on the left and on the right they were delivering an offering made up of flowers and lots of weaving grass. Our driver, Kadek, told us that at an early age both the men & women are taught how to weave offerings to the temples.

The men dressed up and bringing large wooden offerings and the women had their offering balanced on their heads.

Since it was getting close to lunchtime Kadek suggested we head up to the mountain region and see the volcano and have lunch at a place with great views of the volcano.

Kathy at our lunch spot withe great view of Mount Batur. The restaurant offered a buffet lunch which was 7.50 each and had a wide variety of dishes. The negative of the buffet was the flies and you had to keep waving your hands to keep them away.

This was the foundation for the restaurant overlook.

They had great viewing platforms over looking Lake Batur but no way was I stepping out there.

Kadek drove us down a steep road with several hairpin curves to get to the edge of the lake. The water was very rough with lots of whitecaps. They also had fish farms on the lake. We thought it was unusual because there were no boats or swimming in the lake. Kadek did say they fished in the lake but the water is very cold so no swimming. The government was working on a ferry terminal to get people from one side of the lake to the other.

The distance we traveled. The volcano area is where the blue dot is and the red square on the bottom right near Denser is where the boat was docked.

We headed back since we had a 2 hour drive back to the boat and we knew traffic was going to be bad. We made it back to the boat with plenty of time to spare. We had asked Kadek what the cost would be for the 2 days and he quoted us 800,000 IDR for the first day and 1,000,000 IDR for the second day. He also paid for all our admission fees and everywhere you go you had to give a little something to park your car. Kadek also had a cooler in the car where he had several Bintang beers (for Kathy), water and juice and soda. He also had some local snacks for us, peanuts and banana chips. The price he quoted us was 108 dollars total. You gotta love Bali. Since the price was ridiculously low we gave a generous tip.

The boat sailed a little before 5pm.

Regent Seven Seas was docked infant of us and you can see another volcano off to the right. Mount Agung.

We had a decent sunset and you can see how smooth the water was.

A nice view of Mount Agung at dusk.

We have one sea day prior to airing in Jakarta on Monday.