Wow, it’s been more than three weeks since the first part on my Bali trip last month was published!

But anyway, I guess it’s good to refresh my memory on Bali too! So, here we go, part 2!

After the relatively uneventful first day (really, because it was only dinner and sleep!), we started off our second day with a really ‘special’ traditional performance called the ‘barong and keris dance’.

Why I call it ‘special’, I’ll explain later.

Basically, this dance revolves around a mythical story with, you know, kings and gods and demons and their conflicts and stuff.

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There was also a ‘talking monkey’ which did not contribute much to the storyline (to me) but was one of the major characters that had appeared since the beginning of the show.

The funny thing is this:

In the end, in a seriously desperate attempt on humor (I think), they staged a scene where, for no good reason, the monkey lied down on the floor and a group of actors surrounded the poor animal and started hitting its penis!

… And they (the actors) were laughing loudly as they hit the shaft of the penis repeatedly (the ‘penis’ was created using the tail of the monkey being erected upwards from between its legs), making it swing elastically in all directions on top of where the private part of the lying monkey should have been… in front of a huge crowd of multinational audience!

I think for the rest of my life I’ll be able to remember clearly – amidst the stunned crowd, there was a shocked, seemingly Australian, young mother who was sitting behind me with her three small kids, gasping loudly in horror and covering her mouth as all three of her kids cried out in disgust before the so-unconventional scene in front of them.

Here’s a close up shot of the monkey’s dick swinging:

You can actually see the blur caused by the swinging…

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After the very unusual traditional performance, we next became victims of a special ‘scheme’ arranged (I believe) by the local tour guide and a local-products store to earn the millions and millions of Rupiah that we had brought to spend there!

The tour guide had told us that instead of bringing us to multiple shops to buy and shop for different local Balinese stuff as we had requested, he knew ‘this place’ that had ‘everything under one roof’ and that we didn’t need to waste time looking around!

Somehow, I could not shake the feeling that this was all commission-motivated.

We were brought to this warehouse-like store selling all types of local souvenirs and stuff, and our tour guide couldn’t stop telling us how he had got for us this special ‘just-for-our-group’ 50% discount and why we should buy stuff there etc etc…

Anyway, we did buy some stuff, and were next brought on a three-hour journey to Mt. Batur, which was an active volcano that had erupted multiple times in the last centrury, thus leaving a layer of black, dried lava on some parts of the island.

Of course, we only went around the mountain, not up the mountain itself; but the sight seen from where we were was really beautiful!

A very interesting thing took place at this restaurant where we had our lunch!

The interior of the place where we had lunch was a rather classy buffet restaurant with air-conditioning and everything, but outside the restaurant was a monstrous horde of local sellers, each holding a variety of items ranging from key chains to paintings to chess sets to Harley-Davidson motorcycle miniature models, all trying (very, very desperately) to sell to you!

The way they tried to sell to tourists was as though their next meal depended on the sale. It was as though, if you didn’t buy it, they wouldn’t have money even for dinner!

It was that crazy!

They persuaded and talked and kept pestering you wherever you walked to, and sometimes, begged you to buy their stuff…

… Literally – “Tolong… tolonglah beli… Berapa awak mau bayar…? Tolonglah…”

More interestingly, after you’ve gone into the restaurant and sat down comfortably (we sat at a window-side table), there was a number of these sellers stalking blatantly outside the window, each trying frantically to get your attention whenever you turned your head to their direction!

And if they somehow managed to get your attention, your lunch is half-ruined – these people would actually start an attempt to negotiate prices with you in sign language and refuse to leave for a very, very long time!

The prices that these sellers offer you can be marked-up anywhere from 200% to 1000% or way above.

After the lunch, we journeyed downhill and stopped by a plantation area where we were offered free, freshly-brewed coffee made from freshly-roasted coffee beans!

There was also the legendary Kopi Luwak for sale. A small packet of this most expensive coffee in the world, which makes around 2-3 cups, was sold for Rp120,000 (around RM40)!

If you’re wondering what’s the big deal about this Kopi Luwak, lemme tell ya – it is made from coffee beans harvested from the feces, that is to say – shit, of the Paradoxus Hermaphroditus – an animal that looks like a mongoose.

Apparently, this Luwak only eats the finest coffee berries it could find and after passing through its stomach, the undigested beans (taken from its pile of shit) has superb aroma and taste and is unparalleled by any other coffee bean in the world.

Some of us bought this shit.

Next, we were brought to a temple – forgot the name – and it was the first of the FIVE friggin’ temples that we were supposed to visit in this tour.

Needless to say, the temple trip was fairly uneventful, if not downright boring; but the ancient design and architecture of the place was really unique and would be rather interesting to people in the structural design field.

Here, I also realized that the Balinese Gods were totally fearsome and err… I guess very protective, because if I myself were a demon trying to harm the Balinese people, I would first have my shit scared out by the sight of any one of their Gods!

At night, we had dinner at a fine restaurant in a hotel.

The only thing weird about this hotel-prepared dinner was that we were served a dish of fancily decorated, but unmistakably identifiable… chicken rice.

And we were served only plain water, any other drinks ordered would be charged separately.

Ah… Forgot to mention – the money that we paid to the travel agency had all our meals included. So naturally, it would have been foolish to have expected lobsters and oysters…

After the dinner, we did some shopping, and had our first ever foot massage in Bali!

Most of us had female locals doing the foot massages for us, except for a few unlucky souls, like our good friend Sadra (the guy behind) was unfortunate enough to have a guy whom his colleagues claim is a pondan, touching and rubbing his hairy legs with massage oil… all he likes.

A 45-minute foot massage here cost us only Rp50,000 (around RM16)!

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Note: Haha, I didn’t expect this entry to be this long… Seems like we’ll need a part 3…

This weekend, MMU is host to one of the coolest events ever held in this city.

And this time it’s not some boring cultural or academic event. It’s an event with a magnitude that has never been seen before in this country.

The dream event of all gamers.

Ladies and gentlemen, but gamers in particular, behold – Cyberfusion 2009!

The event is set to break the Guiness World Record for the single longest LAN Party in the world!

The previous record was held by Nvision, a 2008 LAN Party held in San Jose, California, sponsored by graphics cards industrial giant Nvidia.

This year, the record-breaking attempt is, unsurprisingly, sponsored by none other than AMD, parent company of ATI Technologies, and generally seen as a vicious counter-attack by Nvidia’s ‘most-hated’ nemesis in the GPU industry!

With almost 500 computers in a gaming event set to run for 38 hours non-stop, this is an event that’s totally against the disciplinary and academic culture of a university, but who cares!

This is an event that pwns evry n00b hard lol gg.

It’s a friggin’ cyber cafe of monstrous proportions!

Sadly, I did not participate in it, because I didn’t think I would be able to take out the time for it…

You have no idea, participating in an event such as this drains every single ounce of energy from you after it’s over!

You would need, at least, an extra 12 hours just for sleeping – and still feel utterly exhausted after that!

Alvin had gone to the event on the first day, and told me that it was really exciting!

On the second day, to make it a bit more special, we visited the event at 12 midnight on the second day, exactly 24 hours into the event, to see what was really going on after all the initial hype died down!

(For a brief coverage of the first day’s excitement, Alvin has got an entry on it here.)

After gaming non-stop for 24 hours, some gamers simply couldn’t tahan anymore and were taking quick, stealthy naps.

Some were taking refreshing naps openly:

And some curi-curi tidur:

Anyway, besides their own computers, there were also many gadgets and stuff that the gamers brought themselves!

Steering wheels for racing games:

‘Instruments’ for music games :

And control pads… played on a very nice sarung too! I guess at LAN Parties its all about comfort!

And speaking of comfort, since we were there at midnight, we had the entire viewing gallery to ourselves, comfortably watching and taking photos from above!

Haha!

Cyberfusion will officially end tomorrow at 2PM, breaking the world record by two hours. I know two hours ain’t a lot, but hey, it’s still a world record!

Yes, I know what I’ve said before about setting stupid world records but this is simply such an awesome event that I have nothing bad to say about!

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Bali Trip part 2 coming up in the next entry!

P.S. Got new poll on the left sidebar! Go vote! =)

I just came back from paradise.

It is really incomprehensible why someone would have the lunatic idea to bomb such an incredible place as this.

Yet someone did! In 2002 and again in 2005! (Click to read Wikipedia article)

Calculating the time interval between the two bombings, it was really a little scary to go to Bali this year, 2009, as it seemed that the next bombing was already ‘due’.

LOL!

Forgetting terrorism, the Tourism Club (yeah, i know the names sound similar) had a wonderful trip to Bali a couple of weeks ago!

This time, except for a few veterans like CK, Pegan and myself, the entire committee was formed by new, energetic members eager to bring Tourism Club’s second ever international trip to its very best!

It was the first Tourism Club trip that I had brought Shuyi with me, and also the first that Abang Ray, the super-cool university officer designated to ‘watch over’ all our trips,  brought someone else too!

For this trip, we boarded Air Asia. Instead of our regular Malaysian pronunciation of ‘Air Ay-sher’, the Indonesians call it ‘Air Aa-sya’.

It was the first time that I had boarded Air Asia, which was lauded as the premier low cost carrier in the region.

Compared to other airlines, they weren’t too bad, except for a smaller and less attractive terminal, free-seating, no free drinks or meals, had to walk right down to the cement ground to board the plane, and their boarding pass looked like the receipt I usually get from the petrol station.

But who cares if their boarding passes sucked, Air Asia is generally much cheaper, which saves up your money for you to spend during the vacation itself!

And fearing the cramped middle seats, some of us paid an extra RM50 for Express Boarding, which allowed us to get on the plane first, and secured the top seats in the very first row in our tickets!

So front that can see flight attendant putting on make-up somemore!  

One important good thing to note about Air Asia is that their flight attendants’ uniform beats Malaysia Airlines’ uniform kao kao, anytime.

I totally like everything from their red suits and white blouses, to their design and color combination. (Red and white is my favorite color combination!)

And yes, I sure like their cute red skirts too, as a protest to some politician who said that Air Asia’s uniform was an embarrassment to women because it (literally) showed too much ass.

Read the news article here.

Cheers to the Air Asia stewardesses! You ladies were so warm and friendly!

After a few hours, we landed in Bali and were greeted by our tour guide and some Balinese people, busy ‘decorating’ us with flowers…

… on our necks, and later during dinner, the ears!

So typically island-ish! Very nice leh!

I had thought that all these ‘flower chains‘ and stuff were only found in places like Hawaii or… I dunno, maybe some Caribbean island place…

but we got ‘em in Bali!

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After a brief rest in the hotel, we had our first dinner in Bali, which was served on the beach itself – during sunset.

The scene was so beautiful and to have dinner in such a nice atmosphere makes even the lousiest food the finest cuisine in the world.

We had a grilled seafood plate with rice. Apparently the grilled stuff here on Jimbaran Bay was very famous.

One thing to be noted, except for a selected few brands of bottled water, most drinking water in Bali had an inseparable weird taste in them, and drinking boiled tap water (the worst) can seriously cause nausea to me.

I think the weird taste may be due to the possibility of Bali reprocessing its fresh water, either from used water or sea water, as they do in Redang Island.

Anyway, after the dinner, dancers started appearing on the numerous stages along the beach and started performing interesting traditional Balinese dances that regretfully, looked pretty more like demon-summoning to me.

All the pictures that my camera took were absolutely frightening:

Close up:

I dunno why the eyes have turned white in this picture. I swear I did not edit this photo besides cropping it.

And here’s another demon from hell:

Haha, that’s just badly taken image of this… thing:

Which also seems to be some kind of ugly demon in the Balinese folk legend.

Haha, scary stuff away, they were actually very great dancers!

Got the opportunity to take photos with them!

If you’re wondering why everyone in Bali is doing this hand gesture – that’s because more than 90% of the Balinese people are Hindus, and that’s also why the rest of our trip was slotted with so many visits to different temples!

After the wonderful dinner on the beach, we headed off shopping at Kuta Square, where all the biggest international brands like D&G, Versace, Ripcurl and Roxy were gathered!

Not to mention familiar places for snacks like Starbucks, Haagen-Dazs and McDonald’s were all in the square!

Oh, by the way, a cup of McFlurry in Bali cost 5,500 Rupiahs, which was only slightly over RM1.50!! OMG!

And, as every traveler to  Indonesia would surely remark – with less than RM1,000, we could instantly become not just millionaires, but multi-millionaires in Bali!

Oh, I so lurve the feeling!

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(Except the feeling that they look like ‘hell money’ with so many zeroes on one paper…)

Like this one:

LOL!

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The shops around Kuta closed at around 11PM, and we got back to the hotel and rested early, because we had to wake up early the next day!

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Note: This is only part 1 of the Bali blog entry… The full story is too long hehe… Part 2 coming soon!