Monument Marvel & Temple Sunsets

Our first full day in Nusa Dua was shaping up to be a big one. Our friend Murdika picked us up around 10am and we were ready to seize the day. Unfortunately it was slow going in the all too familiar heavy traffic around Bali. We finally got to our first stop - the Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park (GWK). The park has been built on the site of an old limestone quarry that overlooks the lower half of the Bali coastline. It's a great place to put Indonesia's tallest statue (and the 4th tallest in the world at the time of typing this journal entry). After grabbing our tickets we boarded the shuttle to the park entrance. We managed to catch the 2nd half of a Balinese cultural dance - with its amazing percussion sounds and colourful dancers and actors. After the show we walked into different sections of the park - each containing their own unique decorations and themes. We slowly made our way up the hill to the huge Garuda and Wisnu statue. We had booked a guided tour and promptly went to the meeting area. Before going up in the elevator with our tour group, we were asked to shrink wrap our shoes. Yes..there was a machine in which when you place your foot in it, your shoes are plastic coated. And ultra slippery too.
Then it was off to the 9th floor to learn all about the history of the statue...as well as the story of Garuda and how he came to serve Wisnu. I just remember there was lots of intrigue and plotting and best of all, lots of dragons. We went back to the elevator to head up to the 23rd floor. It is about 2/3 the way up the statue. From this level, you could see the surrounding countryside for miles. Part of the floor was glass so we were able to stand on it to see deep down inside the structure, although Michelle decided that it was too scary to do that. In the future there will be access to the very top however it is considered a sacred site and so off limits to tourists. There were still more things to see on our way back to the entrance. Lunchtime had come and gone and our next stop was a nice restaurant just outside of Uluwatu. We had a great Indonesian feed and even got to see a lady get scared on a big swing over a cliff top. Back in the van and we were off to Uluwatu Temple to watch the famous sunset and the Kecak fire dance. Murdika had warned us about the monkeys and how they steal things. Well they were definitely in fine form. We witnessed a lot of people losing glasses, water bottles and caps. On a couple of rare occasions, the Monkey police were able to get the goods back - namely by climbing on the roof and wrestling the things off them.
We walked around the temple and the coastline while waiting for the sun to set. The sunset was spoilt by some low cloud but still pretty to see. Then came the long wait for the 1st Kecak show to finish and the inevitable pushing of the crowd to get into the ampitheatre. The show itself is unusual in that it does not have any musicians - it uses only the 50 or so men who pretty much chant the entire time. It was hard to follow the story however there was plenty of colour and movement. Right at the end of the show, 2 people were (seemingly) randomly pulled out of the audience to perform however it turns out that the man was proposing to his partner. What a lovely gesture. It was then time to head back to Nusa Dua. Even though it was after 8:30pm, the traffic was still painfully slow in places along the way. We all slept well that night.Læs mere