Top 5 reasons to visit Bali

By Prachi Kadam | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

Fashion designer Mandira Wirk shares why her beach-side experience to this island destination made for a memorable time. No boredom: I was in Bali for a couple of days and I could definitely see why people sometimes just don’t leave it. It is the type of place where you can honestly spend weeks and still have things to do and never be bored. Surf, surf, surf: One of the first things I did when I got there was to scout around looking for a surf school. I was able to stand up after only a few tries and today I started catching some bigger waves and maneuvering a bit more. Shopping: Besides the water fun, I did many fun things like shopping at flea markets. Bali has an awesome variety to offer. Silver jewellery, sarongs and other such things are value buys. Food: Munching on some mouth-watering delicacies was also a major indulgence for me and I had a great time doing so here. Meeting folks: The nightlife here is rocking. It is as anybody would want — wild and filled with fun and frolic. I was just sitting on the beach, and some teenagers just came up to me and started taking so many pictures! There was a rotation going on of people and cameras, it was hilarious!



Gamelan Cudamani Live @ USSB

Gamelan Cudamani 

UCSB World Music Series - UCSB Gamelan Ensemble
This ensemble will perform traditional Gamelan music of Central and Western Java.


The Gamelan, the principal orchestral ensemble of Indonesia, is comprised chiefly of metallic percussion instruments. This ensemble, directed by Donn Howell, will perform traditional music of Central and Western Java.

We will be there- please let us know if you will as well.  Questions?  Just email us- m@balifornian.com

Hear what the new Lonely Planet has to say about Bali

Travel > International Trips  This is an edited extract from 'Bali Encounter', by Ryan Ver Berkmoes, at al. Lonely Planet 2010.

Bali - High

The culture, scenery and people make it so much more than just a typical tropical island destination

Bali packs a lot into a little island. A single day can bring more sights, adventures and discoveries than a week's worth of travel elsewhere.

A religious procession brings the tourist-thronged streets of Seminyak to a stop, a dancer displays trance-like artistry at an Ubud cultural pavilion, a diver is transfixed by an untouched reef, a surfer finds the perfect break, a walker rubs her eyes trying to cope with the lush green beauty of the surrounding rice paddies, a jaded tourist is charmed by an unexpected act of kindness by a local _ all of these things are part of a typical day in Bali. This is a destination that rises far above a typical tropical island destination by virtue of its culture, scenery and people.

Where else will you find intricate little offerings to the gods placed in serene little niches at world-class resorts? Or see a dance show with movements and music performed by a village dance troupe that has been perfecting their act for generations? And amid myriad palms and other lush growth, where else can you find sinuous ribbons of rice growing on green terraces wrapping around the hills?

REGIONS

Who knew you could fit so much into such a small place? Bali has an amazing diversity of regions crowded across the island, like so many offerings at a temple festival. Bali is insanely convenient for visitors. Tired of one area? Something completely different is close by, often just a short walk away on the beach. Kuta is the original tourist hub. Its very name causes some to shudder with delight and others to shudder with horror. Yet a quick stroll along the iconic beach and you're in Seminyak, which couldn't be any more different thanks to its posh hotels and dozens of designer shops. Its greatest similarities to Kuta are two _ it has that beach and people either love or hate it.

BALI ENCOUNTER: Available from all good bookshops for 450 baht.

South of the airport, the Bukit Peninsula is the barren alternative to that Balinese vision of endless green rice fields. Again, there's a sharp divide in just one little peninsula. In the west are the legendary surf breaks around Ulu Watu. Funky guesthouses cling to the cliffs while surfers enjoy epic rides below. Go east to Nusa Dua and Tanjung Benoa and you find tiny waves lapping at reef-protected beaches, fronted by a string of huge hotels, while package tourists zip past in banana boats.

Across the channel and up the coast, Sanur serenely steers the middle ground, offering a little bit of everything. The bustling capital Denpasar offers entry into the best food and shopping experiences. Move up the hillside and you discover the heart of Balinese culture in Ubud. The magical notes of gamelans echo through the quiet streets at night, while those seeking something special browse around art galleries by day. Head east and you can almost lose yourself in sinuous roads wandering through lush valleys, palm-topped hills and an often wild and untamed coast.

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Within a drive of an hour or two you can enjoy several Balis. Choose your favourites, but enjoy several.

This is an edited extract from 'Bali Encounter', by Ryan Ver Berkmoes, at al. Lonely Planet 2010.



Bali: Bringing Hope to Animals

From http://www.ifaw.org

Please contact us or them to help Bali's dogs

Though Bali is revered as an idyllic tourist destination, a lack of accessible and affordable veterinary care has resulted in dogs frequently suffering from untreated wounds and illness. And when rabies was confirmed in November 2008, the government began randomly killing thousands of dogs in a misguided attempt to prevent the spread of disease. With no animal welfare laws and almost no money for vaccines, there was little the Balinese people could do to save their animals, but now there is hope.

Dogs have always been a part of the Balinese community and play an important role in their unique culture. While most dogs on Bali are owned, they’re free to wander the streets and as a result, are often mistaken as strays. Visitors to the island may see dogs suffering from a variety of skin diseases, untreated wounds, and injuries from accidents. Locals do their very best to responsibly care for animals but faced with poverty and a deplorable lack of affordable veterinary care, many dogs are left to suffer.

How IFAW Makes a Difference

Since 2002, IFAW has supported a local project in Bali, saving the lives and easing the suffering of thousands of animals.

IFAW is now working with Indonesian Animal Welfare (InAW), which sends a mobile clinic and team of veterinarians out to the villages and beaches of Bali. These weekly mobile veterinary clinics provide education and sterilization services to help prevent unwanted puppies from being born. They also help maintain healthy dogs in target communities by regularly vaccinating against disease, providing deworming and parasite control, and assisting animals in distress – such as those who are starving or injured by cars.

With the support of IFAW, hundreds of Balinese dogs are being transformed from parasite-riddled, hungry and hairless creatures to healthy, happy animals with owners who have a better understanding of how to meet their needs. In addition, IFAW continues to encourage the adoption of strong animal welfare legislation, to protect all the island’s animals from suffering and abuse.

Eradicating Rabies from Bali

Though Bali was considered rabies-free until the outbreak in 2008, the disease quickly spread as a result of the island’s large population of unvaccinated roaming dogs. Humans can contract rabies from a bite by an infected dog and infection is nearly 100% fatal if not treated immediately, making the disease merciless for people and dogs alike.

Even though the only recognized strategy for the elimination of rabies is a comprehensive vaccination program coupled with public education, the Balinese government persisted with their inhumane and ineffective strategy of killing by poisoning thousands of dogs with strychnine. Not only did dogs die terrible deaths due to poison, but the rabies epidemic grew faster.

That is why IFAW is supporting an initiative led by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), working with the Bali Animal Welfare Association (BAWA) and using the expertise of IFAW’s Bali-based InAW team to eradicate rabies from the island of Bali. Now, thousands of dogs may be spared death from poisoning as a result of a revolutionary island-wide vaccination program. The ultimate success of this project will serve as a model for other countries battling rabies in their communities, spreading a seed to change cruel animal management practices and serving as evidence that the humane solution is also the right one.

Key Facts:

In the past year, IFAW’s support has allowed 902 dogs to be spayed or neutered,826 dogs to be treated for skin parasites, and 504 dogs to receive deworming treatment. More than 100 dogs have had life-saving treatment to heal their wounds.
Post-exposure vaccines for humans bitten by rabid animals in Bali are expensive and difficult to come by. Post-exposure treatment can cost up to $1,000 USD, depending on body weight. Average per capita income in Bali is $2,271 USD.
Approximately 400,000 dogs live on the island of Bali, and in vaccinating the 70% necessary to achieve disease eradication, teams will treat more than 280,000 individual animals.
The projected cost of the island-wide vaccination project is nearly $715,000, which means each dog will cost approximately $4.85 to treat.

We need your help to stop Bali's deadly rabies outbreak.

For just $53.00 you can help save 25 dogs, and help protect and care for so many animals that are crying for help.

Please make your $53.00 life-saving donation today.

https://www.ifaw.org/ifaw_united_states/donate_now/bali_dogs.php?msource=DR101002008#x

Bali: Paradise Regained

REPORTAGE | Travel  By Chris Sullivan  Tags: holidays

Horrific as it was, the terrorist attack in Bali stemmed a surge of tourism restoring its rightful tag as a more blissful blissful getaway.

“Although I hate to say it, the bomb in some ways did a lot of good for Bali,” says clothing designer and Bali resident Nick Morley, my unofficial guide. “What it did was put a lot of brawling, beer-drinking piss heads off coming here.”

Take the fashionable beachside restaurant/bar Ku De Ta, situated in the popular Seminyak. Here you can laze on a lounger and watch the sunset over the ocean while sipping a chocolate Martini. Down the road at Wasabi – a sleek, state of the art sushi bar-you’ll taste a Japanese meal as good as anywhere– while at Made’s Warung you’ll sample the finest Indonesian meal on God’s earth for just £3. This is precisely the beauty of Seminyak – where the cheap and traditional and the expensively chic are back-to-back.

Kuta, with its Holiday Inn, Hard Rock Café and McDonalds, is just a short hop from Seminyak, but it couldn’t be more different. It’s one of those sad developments that has attracted big bucks and lost its soul, drawing drunken Aussies, forlorn prostitutes and even a gang of transvestites known as the ‘sucky sucky girls.’

Kuta’s only plus is its surf, which, for the novice, is perfect. Having never surfed before, and with the help of the local teacher at the Hard Rock Surf School, I was up on the board after only one day, “hanging two and a half” replete with cut knees, bruised elbows and about half the ocean inside me. Spurred on by such success I decided that my next mission was to learn to scuba at the dive capital of Amed in East Bali. The five-hour taxi journey from Seminyak will set you back the equivalent of £50, but it beats the hell out of the ten-hour mini bus. On the way, stop for lunch at the beautiful coastal town of Candi Dasa and swim in the monumental Tirtagangga Water Palace, constructed by one of Bali’s last kings, Anak Agung Anglurah Ketut in 1947 – probably the world’s most extravagant swimming pool.

At Amed we stayed at the Coral View Hotel, which, at $50 for a double private bungalow, was little short of heaven. My proviso was that we could walk out onto the beach in less than a minute – here we could do it in about 15 seconds.

From Amed, snorkelling in Jemeluk provided not only the best array of fish I have ever encountered with mask only, but also – due to my lack of t-shirt – delivered a crackling lobster-red back that any roast suckling pig worth his salt would have been proud of. After suffering the inevitable jibes for at least 48 long hours, I was ready to scuba and settled for Eco Dive, who offered a day of training in the morning and a guaranteed dive in the afternoon for the meagre sum of $75.

“Although I hate to say it, the bomb did a lot of good for Bali. It put a lot of brawling, beer-drinking piss heads off coming here.”

After going through the necessary rigmarole of learning what everything strapped about your person actually does, we hit the shallows for a few practise runs. Cue claustrophobia, breathing difficulties and the sneaking suspicion that carrying loads of heavy stuff on your back isn’t the best method of floating. But, blind panic over, I finally arrived at The Liberty, an abandoned WWII American shipwreck that, at just 50 metres offshore and 50 feet deep, is yet another perfect environment for the petrified neophyte.

The best site on dry land is inarguably the sunrise from the Gunung Agung mountain (considered by the Balinese to be the ‘navel of the world’) – one has simply to drive to Pura Pasar Agung, locate a guide and then climb the perilous mountain for three hours to arrive at the summit by 6am. After roaring up the hill like the Sherpa Tensing twins we were rewarded by a sunrise so glorious it almost made me take up religion.

After my six-hour walk, I felt a slice of Rn’R was needed, so we made our way to the Panchoren Retreat in Ubud, the central Balinese city renowned as a centre for the arts but resembling little more than a shopping centre. But, first appearances aside, numerous exquisite restaurants, performances of traditional Balinese theatre, Gamelan and puppetry reveal themselves.

The Panchoren itself is a stunningly beautiful settlement, comprised of a number of exquisitely designed individual bungalows constructed almost entirely from bamboo. Its Irish owner and designer Linda Garland offers the finest respite money can buy. “Just about everyone who’s anyone that comes to Bali stays there,” says Morley. “ Even though she’s got the helipad to whisk the rich and famous in and out without being seen, I met Bono when he stayed there, Jagger spent his honeymoon there – you name them, they’ve been.”

When it eventually became time to leave the A-list dream life behind, we returned thoroughly rested and once again returned to South Bali, taking in en route the traditional Kecak Fire Dance, the magisterial floating palace of Tanah Lot, eating freshly caught seafood by candlelight at Jambaran and staying out far too late at the Double Six Beach Club in Seminyak. But nothing impresses more about the island than the Balinese themselves, whose quiet, gentle dignity is a lesson to those who spend just a few days in their company – and the reason why Bali’s reputation can only continue to thrive.