Although I'm not really a morning person, I woke up very early next day in Bali for our real first outing. The day started great with breakfast served in room.
While waiting for the 2 guys who are always late.
Sukawati marketplace
The first stop for the day was Sukawati marketplace. We dropped our friends, Yuuki and Mona on the way in Maya Ubud Resort and Balqis and Diyya atFloating Leaf Eco resort, for their design precedent studies. The rest of us headed to the market early morning with our loyal driver Shisaw.
The first stop for the day was Sukawati marketplace. We dropped our friends, Yuuki and Mona on the way in Maya Ubud Resort and Balqis and Diyya atFloating Leaf Eco resort, for their design precedent studies. The rest of us headed to the market early morning with our loyal driver Shisaw.
Although the place looks quite torn down, it is a shoppers heaven! They have some of the nicest collection of local artpieces as well as fabrics and clothes and the price is unimaginably low! You can bargain here like crazy and even if they say no can do and keep muttering 'bankrupt,bankrupt' hearing your bargain price, they do agree to give you the lowest price at the end. The shopkeepers are mostly women and are very well behaved and have the ability to make you feel like on of their own. The market experience was one of the best throughout our whole Bali trip. We went crazy on shopping! especially buying bracelets as they were as cheap as they can get. The lowest we could get was priced only 30 cents Malaysian currency. Trust me!!
I'm sure you can tell about our bracelet craze from this picture :P
Oh and I bought this Chinese fan too! Which was a life saver. You don't have any idea about the crazy heat in Bali. Please carry a portable fan with you when you're there and you can thank me later.
Green Village
After done with shopping to our hearts content we started for 'Green Village' tour. For those of you who don't know, Green Village is a master-planned community of eighteen dramatically unique homes, hand-constructed by the Ibuku team. Each home is custom designed with the inherent strengths and versatility of bamboo. Green Village encompasses all of the architectural innovations, sustainable principles and artisan craftsmanship of the world famous campus.
Upon arriving we were greeted by this lovely lady, who showed us around and gave us a tour of one of the 18 Bamboo houses, The Temple House.
She told us, Each house actually belongs to private owners, who occasionally give them for renting to tourists. They take around 8 months to build, which is quite fast and are wholly made of bamboos.
Flaunting our bunting
The whole Gang.
After the Temple House tour, we were taken to the bamboo factory. Unfortunately taking pictures in the factory was strongly prohibited for privacy issues. There they gave us a detailed tour of how the whole processing of bamboo is done. From the growing of bamboos to shaping them for each functions in the house. It was a pretty educational tour, specially for us future designers.
The next stop was the Green School, which is also a part of the Green village and was the highlight of the tour. It is a private and international per-kindergarten to high school. The students here are mostly international kids but they also take in local kids. It is an amazing project pioneering sustainability with education. Like Green Village, Green school is also 100% made of bamboo and it has an open plan design. which means no walls, no boundaries and their education is not restricted into textbooks only. They learn within nature with practical knowledge and one of the motives of the school is to prepare the children as the future Green Leaders.
You can find more about Green School here: http://www.greenschool.org/
Parents lobby at the entrance. The chairs are made of recycled tires by some of the students and are very comfy.
The main hall and the High school classes above. They are in the center of the school so that the seniors can be in charge and take care of the other things when needed.
If you are interested to go to a visit to Green village, do check their website:
http://greenvillagebali.com/visit/
You can book online and the whole tour for 3.5 hours per person is 35USD.
Bale Udang Mang Eking
It was a long day in Green Village and the tour and all the walking had us all exhausted. Also we did not really got a chance to have lunch. So imagine us all very tired and hungry since the morning breakfast.
We decided to have our lunch/dinner in one of the famous floating restaurants in Ubud: Bale Udang Mang Eking. The only thing was it was quite far from the place we were coming from.
On the way
After having a happy tummy, we headed back to Ubud city. We thought we were done for the day. But our dear lecturers urged us to go experience the traditional dance in one of the temple near our hotel. Although we did not want to go and was exhausted from the day, we did end up going and was glad we did. After all the trip was all about experiencing culture.
Here ends my day 2 journey. I'll be back with more. Stay tuned for more exciting Bali stories.
**All pictures hold the copyright of writer. Please Do Not use without permission.
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