Info Indonesia

Home of rich and exciting cultur ritual, entrenched in ancient rites and Hindus beliefs. Every day an eye opener in bali, and even during a short stay chances are you will be lucky enough to witness a magnificent religious ceremony or festival, perhaps right near where you are staying.

Bali is a dozen flavours of paradise, and tastes different to everyone. Tan-hungry bodies beautiful come for its sun, sand and surf, fashionistas flock to the seminyak night scene, and urban escapists head here for stress easing jungle tranquillity. Known as the island of the gods, a gem located in the archipelago of indonesia, south east asia. Bali is becoming once again a favorite travel and wedding destination as adventure is to be met around every corner, bargains are to be made at every counter and culture to experience at every moment.

Bali is a natural high travelife   unique destination features, travel news, city guides, hotel and golf course review, networking and travel tips, one of 17,500 islands in the indonesian archipelago, yet even among its colorful neighbours and mdash and even after decades of tourism development and mdash it stands alone in its lushness and incomparable beauty. Long, sugary beaches lead inland to hillsides terraced with jewel green rice paddies, forests dotted with ancient temples abound.
Truly magical destination for a holiday or wedding, nowhere more so than the area of ubud. Here, the inherent artistic and theatrical character of the people and their daily life is set in an unspoiled scenic wonderland. The sheer romance of this area and it’s inhabitants has powerfull attracted the world’s art community for the past century, with many leading artists, painters, performers and literary figures taking up residence.

Sitting in a torrent of activity where the Pacific pours into the Indian Ocean, Komodo Island is home to a multitude of marine life. Simon Rogerson dips his fins in two worlds.

Amazing things happen when two oceans meet. At Komodo National Park in Indonesia – a relatively small stretch of sea around the famous ‘dragon island’ – cool upwellings from the Pacific are forced into relatively shallow water and then flood into the Indian Ocean. The area which sees this massive movement of water is marked by a few volcanic islands which conspire to create some of the most powerful and unpredictable currents on the planet.

It’s a remarkable place – a hothouse for evolution and home to an incredible array of marine life. Of the 500 or so coral species found in the Indo-Pacific, Komodo has 260. It harbours more than 1,000 species of fish and 70 species of sponge. Acre for acre, it is one of the most diverse coral reef environments in the world.

My journey began on the 42m Kararu, a traditional rigged sailing vessel which serves as an extremely spacious liveaboard. It operates from Bali, 160 miles to the west, but the journey to and from Komodo is punctuated by dive sites which are fascinating in their own right, and serve as a build-up to the world-class diving at Komodo and its neighbouring island, Rinca. My host was the boat’s co-owner, Tony Rhodes, a Brit with an easy manner and a knack for spotting near-microscopic animals.

On an early dive at a site called Mentjang Wall, we were finning along in mid-water when Tony suddenly swooped down to the reef. I followed, squinting at the scrappy patch of coral to which he was pointing. At first nothing, then I could make out a tiny brownish nudibranch (of the Flabellinidae family). He had seen it from 10m away! Suspicious, I wondered if he had sneakily placed it there when I wasn’t looking, possibly inspired by Donald Pleasence’s similar trick in The Great Escape.

As I was to discover, his spotting skills were quite genuine. While there are plenty of sizeable creatures to marvel at in Indonesia, the area does tend to attract divers with a penchant for the diminutive. These are rich seas, and there is a perpetual battle for space on the reefs. After just a few days, your eyes become familiar with the environment, so that semi-camouflaged critters begin to reveal themselves. Professional dive guides become finely attuned to this sort of diving.

Komodo National Park comprises the seas around the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Padar, and some smaller islands. It’s a two-wetsuit trip: on the northern side of the islands, the water is warm, and most people dive comfortably with the thinnest of skins. Cool, nutrient-rich upwellings prevail on the southern side, where 5mm suits, hoods and gloves are the order of the day.

These islands act like a dam, holding back the warmer Pacific waters, which are then forced through various straits, creating a pressure void along the park’s southern side. This allows cold water from the Sumba Sea to rise up, effectively replacing the water removed by the currents at the surface. With the cold water comes a bloom in phytoplankton, forming the basis of Komodo’s super-charged food chain. It is a very, very special place indeed.

The results of these crazy upwellings are best experienced at Horseshoe Bay on Rinca’s southern side. These are the most crowded reefs I have ever seen, but the payoff is low visibility caused by all those nutrients suspended in the water. Horseshoe Bay’s famous site is a pinnacle known as Cannibal Rock (named after a monstrous Komodo dragon seen eating one of its own kind nearby), where dense swathes of black, yellow and red crinoids jostle for space.

It’s a great place to test buoyancy skills, because crinoids stick to neoprene like glue; any contact whatsoever and you’ve got yourself a hitchhiker. Once, after taking head-on photographs of an implacable lizardfish, I looked down to find I had picked up two featherstars complete with clingfish and crinoid shrimps – a whole ecosystem! I guiltily set them back on the reef.

Just outside Horseshoe Bay is a fascinating site known as the Great Yellow Wall of Texas, renowned for its soft corals. Visibility here was reminiscent of British shore-diving standards, and the coral polyps were all retracted, so I hardly saw the reef in all its glory. Still, I could appreciate the sheer intensity of the place. Nestling among the crinoid forest were some fascinating animals, including brightly coloured sea apples, a spectacular member of the sea slug family. Tiny hawkfish nestled between the fronds of soft corals, while gobies darted around their tiny territories.

Night dives were even more atmospheric. The currents sweeping over Cannibal Rock were too much to cope with after dark, so we searched for night creatures in the shallows. At first glance, the sandy expanses were devoid of life, but a closer inspection revealed a wealth of nocturnal drama. Octopus each the size of a child’s fist moved over the sand, extending their tentacles into tiny holes as they hunted for suitably small prey. Every now and then, they would retract their foraging limbs in pain, having received a nip from some hidden sand-dweller.

Inshore sites often serve as nurseries. I saw lots of tiny fish, including juvenile oriental sweetlips (flapping wildly like some out-of-control bumblebee) and a rockmover wrasse complete with protruding unicorn’s horn. Photographers found the night dives to be the most productive of all, and some would sacrifice an afternoon dive to be alert for the evening.

The best night dive took place beyond Horseshoe Bay on a sandy slope near Banta Island. The site has a particularly cheesy name – ‘It’s a Small World’ – which nevertheless hints at the macro wonders which have made it their home. I dropped in and descended 10m to what looked to be a lunar landscape, devoid of life. The gritty sand billowed briefly into the water column as I landed on the sea bed and looked down to see a skeletal face leering back with utter contempt.

It was a stargazer, a voracious lunge-predator whose stealth is rivalled only by its monumental ugliness. It buries itself in sand right up to its eyes, then waits for a suitable morsel to happen along. Ambush predators don’t like being seen, and this one looked up at me with undisguised disgust as I gently fanned the sand away from its fearsome features. Eventually, the indignity of being exposed in this way proved too much; it launched itself off the sand and sped off into the darkness.

I enjoy watching other divers at night. Despite the best intentions of the buddy system, there is something about the combination of shallow, current-free sites and diving by torchlight which internalizes the diving experience. Divers retreat into themselves, their attention focused chiefly on the thin column illuminated by their lights. I hovered behind a professional videographer, Roger Munns of Scubazoo (the film-making outfit based in Southeast Asia) fame, who had found a handsome red frogfish – okay, ‘handsome’ isn’t a word often associated with frogfish, but we’re talking ‘eye of the beholder’ here, okay?

As he trained his video lights on the frogfish, the brightness attracted a small food chain. Driven by some inexplicable urge, tiny worms massed around the lights in writhing density. They in turn attracted the attention of some cardinalfish, which foolishly took the frogfish to be a lump of coral. They were soon disabused of this notion as the predator extended its jaws and sucked a hapless cardinalfish into its maw.

This super-gulp is too fast to see. Later, watching Roger’s footage on an iBook laptop, we studied the lunge frame by frame. You see the frogfish give a dainty little leap, and there is a slight blur around its mouth as it takes the fish, but the movement itself is too fast even for a professional-quality video recording in slow motion mode. Viewed at normal speed, the frogfish twitches slightly and the cardinalfish simply disappears.

In addition to illustrating the efficiency of the frogfish’s feeding mechanism, this episode revealed to me the depth of the cardinalfish’s stupidity. The ‘not exactly quick on the uptake’ survivors kept returning to the lights, and the frogfish enjoyed a further six courses while the cardinalfish doubtless wondered where all their companions had gone. By the time I had sidled in to photograph the frogfish, it was noticeably bulkier and appeared to have a case of the hiccups.

Providing a contrast to Komodo’s macro dives is a great manta site off the island of Langkoi, a busy little channel where the graceful rays can be seen feeding on plankton-loaded water. Langkoi’s mantas are among the biggest I have ever seen, some even approaching the legendary 6m mark.

It was a pleasure to dispense with the hood and gloves when our boat Kararu returned to the balmy sites of the north. Here, I was presented with dizzyingly clear water and some classically beautiful reefs. There were plenty of reef fish, but I saw little in the blue, despite the preternatural clarity of the water. Occasionally, schools of barracuda, jacks or bannerfish would appear, but there were no sharks or tuna. This is the case across much of these islands, where shark-finning has decimated reef shark populations over the past decade. Illegal shark fishing and even dynamite bombing still takes place in Komodo National Park, despite its protected status.

Still, conservation efforts at Komodo – reinforced by the presence of tourism – have succeeded in preserving vast tracts of reef. These reefs have an additional importance which transcends the pleasure they give divers. The coral here is especially resilient to the effects of coral bleaching caused by factors such as global warming and El Niño. This is due to the upwelling effect of cooling water from the depths of the Sumba Sea.

Marine biologists believe that as coral reef systems continue to be lost, it is places such as Komodo that will replenish and re-colonize devastated habitats elsewhere in Indonesia and the wider Indo-Pacific. The same currents which make life so difficult (if entertaining) for divers, carry coral larvae beyond the national park to places where reef space is available. In this sense, Komodo is a mother among coral reefs, and one we should all cherish.

• Simon Rogerson dived with Kararu Dive Voyages. Charters are available for trips of different duration, but the standard Komodo tour takes 11 days. Trips to the remote reefs of Alor and Rajah Empat are also available. For further information, contact UK agents Divequest on 01254 826322 or check out Kararu’s website, http://www.kararu.com.

The world’s easiest wreck dive?
No diver should visit Bali without diving the wreck of the Liberty, a First World War-era cargo ship which lies off the beach at the village of Tulamben on the nortwest coast. The Liberty grounded itself on this beach after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942, and stayed there until 1963 when the Agung volcano exploded, pushing her into the water and splitting the hull in two.

Today, the wreckage sits on black volcanic sand at a diver-friendly 27m, providing a home for a prodigious amount of marine life. It pained me not to include the Liberty in DIVE’s recent rundown of the world’s best wrecks, but the truth is that this is a wreck dive for divers who don’t like wrecks.

The structure of the wreck is undeniably impressive, but the resident marine life steals the show. There is a school of jacks which regularly form the classic spiral shoaling formation, and tame reef fish abound (they’ve been fed, and approach divers with feverish enthusiasm).

The wreck is coated in coral, and sought-after macro subjects such as the pygmy seahorse can be reliably found. It has to be one of the world’s best shore dives, but what makes it so ludicrously easy is the presence of a local co-operative which charges a small amount for access to the shore, then carries your BC and cylinder to the entry point.

What makes all this slightly shameful is the fact that the co-operative is made up of local women, most of whom are slightly built and less than five feet tall! They can carry two sets of kit at a time for the ten-minute walk over the pebble beach! On their heads!

I couldn’t bring myself to let them carry my gear, but my guide warned me that it would be seen as unforgivably patronizing not to let them do their job. So, I hobbled over the beach behind my petite kit-bearer praying to the Balinese gods that no one would recognize me.

Want diving, cruising and liveaboard in komodo?

Bali is one of thousand islands in Indonesia South East Asia. Bali is so popular with Bali bombing tragedies that happened on 2002 still interesting to visit. The Bali bombing tragedies make many international facilities, like Hotel, Air Port, big café and night club is keeping with detector. The improvement of Information Communication technology like internet connection, make Bali Island more popular than before. The world wide tourists that come there depend of the season. Europe and American tourist always come on June until July, but Asian tourist interested in coming on August. The domestic tourist more interested in coming on September until December, because the month is full holiday for students so that the parent will follow the situation.

Nyepi is religion day that Bali Island closed to people out side. No light, car passing or store opened. The Balinese will stay at home, no eating, and light. The Ngurah Ray Air Port as International Air port is closed, no departure and arriving passengers.

The Bali bombing by terrorist make bad image and deep impressed to people world wide so that the people decide to build Bali bombing monument at Kute. Australian and American come there to pry for the victims.

Many reasons why people world wide interested in coming to Bali Island,

1.Pure culture.

Bali people follow strong Hinduism. They devote their life to the Hindu religion. You will see many puras when going around there. The Balinese tradition life from birth until death, followed by ceremony. You can see Galungan, Kuningan, Nyepi, ngaben and others ceremony at Bali.

The artist from Bali creates many dances because of soul of art. The statue was created there reflect of Hinduism. You can see the Kecak and Barongsai dance performance from small village until five stars Hotel.

It is not astonished, Balinese never interfered by others culture, although people world wide come there never stopped.

2.Friendly people

Balinese is popular with smiling face. They are always friendly to others and welcome to new comers. You will feel like at your home.

3.Excellent craft

Balinese tend to be artist. They like to paint, carving and make others beautiful craft. You can visit Antonio Blanco Museum, the painter that married to Balinese woman, Sukowati Art market center. You are always followed by craft seller whenever you go. They always beg you to buy the crafts.

4.Beautiful places to visit.

You never have time to rest when you are at Bali. There many interesting places, you should visit. The scenery is so natural, let’s see Nusa dua beach that have International cruise ship, bedugul, Tanpak siring that have president palace. Kute and legian beach with international facilities or Tanah lot, is beach especially for praying.

5.Save to stay

The regency of Bali and Indonesian police try to improve the security Bali after Bali bombing tragedies. Star hotel and café with international reputation with detector facilities.

Lombok is less developed than Bali is has a bigger volcano better beaches and more varied landscapes and is an island in the West Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia. Tourism is still low key, and many visitors are independent travellers drawn by the islands intoxicating diving and snorkelling, surf and hiking spots.

Bemos mini buses run on routes all over the island, or you can charter your own. You can get around the whole island and to most of the remote locations if you have your own transport. A motorcycle is the cheapest and most versatile option, though a rental car with good ground clearance. Out rigger boats called prahu are used for short trips to snorkelling areas.

Lombok has lots of good beaches, few of which have been remotely developed. The only beach that has grown into a tourist destination is Senggigi. This quiet and gently sloping cove is the major destination, but is still a lazy and tranquil spot compared to those on Bali.

Shopping is pretty miserable in Lombok The Art Market in the centre of Senggigi is a good place to pick up clothing and nik naks, but prices start at silly levels and are a huge effort to bring down. Bartering is essential.

The island of Lombok is home to a diverse mix of cultures. There are several unique sacred buildings and other important cultural sites throughout Lombok. These include the Pura Meru, which is one of the largest Balinese temples on the island. It was first constructed in the early 18th century to house three courtyards of small Meru shrines, including those for Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma. Near the Pura Meru is the town of Surandi, which is also home to another sacred Hindu temple. Across from the Pura Meru is the former Balinese royal palace of Taman Mayura, which is similar to the palace in Klungkung in Bali.

In the town of Narmada is the Pura Lingsar, which also dates to the first decades of the 18th century. This temple was built with by the Sasak and Balinese Muslims as a symbol of the unity of the two peoples. Nearby is the Narmada Taman, which is one of the islands most famous temple palace complexes. Built in 1727, this combines the architecture of the Muslim, Hindu and Sasak cultures. The Museum Negeri Nusa Tenggara Barat, or Museum of West Nusa Tenggara, features numerous exhibits of the culture of the island including ancient artefacts and decorative arts.