Beautiful Bedugul Bali

We did a short day trip yesterday, Feb 19, 2015.  It's public holiday here. We spent the day by doing a tour to one of bali's tourism icons, Bedugul & Tanah lot temple. I actually already visited the places about 3 times. But some of my friends never did. So we decided to go then.

Our first visit to the ancient Mengwi's kingdom palace, Taman Ayun. Located in Mengwi village, about 18km north side of Denpasar town. Historically, The function of Taman Ayun Temple is a place to pray the god in their manifestation. My friend took a picture at one spot in the area as below:

Taman Ayun Temple (photo by Adrian)

FYI, The current entrance fee for this tourist object is: IDR 10.000 (Domestic) & IDR 15.000 (International).

After that, Our tour continued to the highland of Bedugul, it's approximately takes around 1,5 Hours from Mengwi by car. Don't be surprised as en routing to this place, you will be welcomed by the cloudy, damp and possibly rains. This is an area of great natural beauty however.

The focus point of the area are the crater lakes of Bratan (Beratan) & The Ulun danu temple. This temple is probably the most photographed temple on the island after Tanah Lot and It's certainly one of the iconic images of Bali. The temple sits on the western shore of Lake Bratan and it can give the illusion of actually floating on the water. Absolutely stunning :) !

Ulun Danu temple, Bedugul

The panorama en route to Ulun danu/Lake Beratan, Bedugul

Tourism Ministry to Increase Tourist Visits Through Four Efforts

The Tourism Ministry has set four efforts to increase the number of tourist visits to Indonesia, thus improving the local people’s economy, an official has stated.

“At least we have four efforts to increase the tourist visits. The first is the government is encouraged to set bigger target of the tourist visits to Indonesia which previously only reached 8 to 9 million per year,” the Head of Tourism Resource Development Agency of the Ministry I Gde Pitana said here on Sunday.

The minister said President Joko Widodo has set a tourist visit target from 2014 to 2019 at 20 million, with an increase of 16 percent per year.

Pitana said the average development of international tourism sector is only at 5 percent.

“The approach can help the people who have business in tourism sector to conduct innovation in order to achieve the target at our tourism sector,” Minister said.

The second effort from the ministry is using digital media as promotion tools to international community.

“We will develop the awareness, interest, and decision of Indonesian tourism before tourist candidate went to the destination. The digital media is more effective to increase the awareness of Indonesian tourism and we have allocated 50 percents of our budget to develop the digital media,” Pitana said.

The third effort is the enhancement of the tourism marketing and promotion in foreign countries, he pointed out, adding that the total budget for the ministry has also increased to RP3.7 trillion for 2015.

“The fourth effort is the stepping up of attention to tourism human resources. The human resources factor is a key success amid the competition era,” Pitana noted.

The Ministry also planned to establish three new tourism high schools in Mataram of West Nusa Tenggara Province, Palembang of South Sumatra Province and Manado of North Sulawesi Province.

Source: thebalitimes.com