Photo Galleries
Amlapura Palace
September 2014
Most of the temples and palaces we’ve seen in Bali were built in traditional styles. The exception is the palace of the last two kings of Karangasem (eastern Bali) in Amlapura, which was built in the late 1800s in a mix of Chinese and European styles. Some members of the royal family still live nearby, but the central palace has been unoccupied since 1966, when the last king died. Today, the buildings are reserved for ceremonies and visits by the occasional tourist. (The last king loved to design water gardens; don’t miss the Tirta Gangga gallery for photos of one of his most beautiful creations.)
The view from our little but breezy room in Jemeluk, a small fishing and snorkeling village on Bali's eastern coast
The view from our hotel (Galang Kangin) looking away from the sea, up the hillside where most villagers live
Family shrines on the second floor of our hotel, where the owners lived next door to our room
A shrine on the hotel's terrace, facing the sea
One of the breakfast options was a banana jaffle (a type of grilled sandwich popular in Australia)
Fishing boats on the black-rock beach in front of the hotel
The outriggers give these narrow little fishing boats more stability
When on the water, these fishing boats look like water- strider bugs
The little beach of Jemeluk (seen from our hotel) has beautiful coral reefs teeming with fish just offshore
A typical shopfront in a small town (note the water-cooler-type bottles that most homes and businesses use for drinking water)
In the morning, carts appear selling a popular Balinese breakfast food: bakso ayam (chicken soup with dumplings)
Jemeluk is a poorer area than others we've seen in Bali, although tourism is starting to change that
A songbird in a cage at our hotel
Rice, eggs, and sea salt sold in bulk at a local shop
The same shop also sells petrol in bulk and will even fill your motorbike for you (we rented this Vespa to get to a village about 10 miles away for more good snorkeling)
At low tide, local kids comb the beach in Jemeluk for small fish and eels, which the fishermen use as bait
It's hard to see, but the kids use red thread to catch a certain type of small fish, which they pull up and put in old water bottles
If you look closely, you can see a fish in the bottle
Jemeluk sits in the rain shadow of Bali's tallest peak, Mt. Agung, so it is much drier than the rest of the island. That's one reason the area relies more on fishing than on agriculture.
