Thursday, April 9, 2009

Bali, GWK (Garuda Wisnu Kencana)

Fine, I would blog on my trip to GWK Culture Park, as a kick start blog for my Bali trip.

We visited GWK on our 2nd day in Bali (1st day used up traveling from KL to Bali). After water sport activities at Nusa Dua Beach, my father in law felt hungry and can’t wait to have lunch. Our tour guide, Jone then recommends us to have buffet lunch at GWK, since it will be our next stop to visit.

After 10 minutes ride, we reach the entrance of GWK Culture Park. We are impressed by the surrounding limestone rock hill, which looks like abandoned construction. Jone explained to us it was built by a king secretively, yet aborted after his death and no one actually know what he actually wanted to build for.



Since my father in law is urging for lunch, Jone lead us to the restaurant before site seeing. However, the restaurant is so nice and beautiful, force us stopped by few times to take photo.












However, there’s disappointment awaiting us. The waiter told us that no buffer lunch for that day!!! Ok, fine, then we can go for ala-carte. It is quite a tough job to order food there, my father in law want only rice with dish, and I have to make decision for them since the menu is in English. I then order a few dishes, which I think should be fine to eat with rice.

Overall the food there is okay. The fried chicken is quite nice, and the rice taste extra good maybe because it was wrapped by banana leave. And one more special dish is Gado-gado, it is something like salad, with eggs, vege, tofu and crispy keropok.

I do a search on it and there’s definition for it from Wikipedia:

“Gado-gado is a traditional dish in Indonesian cuisine, and comprises a vegetable salad served with a peanut sauce dressing. “



After lunch, we went site-seeing around GWK. GWK is the short name of “Garuda Wisnu Kencana” . Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue was designed and built by Nyoman Nuarta, one of Indonesia’s foremost modern sculptors.

On the way we met a tall Barong. I say "Hi" to him but he didn’t reply me and keep chasing after me, scary…



We first visited The statue of Wisnu, which picturing Lord Wisnu, the Hindu God who is the protector (part of the Hindu trinity Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer). The 20 meter tall copper statue of the Lord Wisnu has been placed on the highest hill of Ungasan where visitors can enjoy sunset or sunrise over the magnificent view of Kuta, Benoa and Sanur.





Right behind the Plaza Wisnu is the Plaza Garuda where the 18 meters tall statue of Garuda. The mythical bird (Half man half bird) Garuda is the ride of Lord Wisnu.

GWK is also conceived to be a cultural center. There is an art museum with free admission and kecak dance is performed on Tuesdays and Thursdays admission $5. We didn’t stay for the kecak dance because we are going to visit Uluwatu Cliff and Jimbaran beach in the evening.

2 comments:

Shelyn said...

What were you pointing at wor? The Barong looks really scary.

Anne Saw said...

I want to check whether he can see me or not..haha

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