Bali
In Bali, they sell cheap tours to all good places at once. One can go around the whole island for $ 30 per person. The trip includes just everything: mountains, temples, rice plantations, coffee factories, goldfish feeding, huge swing swinging, hanging restaurant dining, pictures for Instagram taking, waterfall bathing, Hindu temple oblution, and the devil knows what else.
Heaven's Gate
The epicenter of Instagram tours in Bali. Huge queues form since six in the morning.
The thing is that the photographer puts a mirror under the camera.
Comes out as if the gate stands in the middle of a lake, and there is also a mountain in the background. Well, nice.
In fact, there is grass and a stone floor in front of the gate.
Generally speaking, the gate is located in a Hindu temple, so tourists are given a wrap for their legs. After all, it’s haram to go to temples in shorts, but not make money.
By the way, the view from the temple is good without any gates. This is Mount Batur, they also have tours there.
Goldfish
The place is called “The Water Palace of Tirtha Ganga”. The level of sweetness here is so high that a glucose meter would explode. A path of hexagonal tiles is laid through the water.
Goldfish are swimming in the pool.
A tourist is given a bag of fish food at the entrance. The carps swim up in anticipation and open their mouths. If fish could talk, they would say, “Pour!”
Tourists are brought here in packs. The fish are overfed. Fat as penguins. How long can you live when you are fed fifty times a day? This will tear the liver. I bet they keep a fish restaurant nearby.
Still it’s a beautiful place, what can I say.
As always, some crazy Hindu figures.
A rice plantation is visible through the gap of the fence, where people work for pennies.
I am sure that for the money that tourists spend here, instead of feeding carp, it’s possible to feed all the beggars in the area.
Waterfall
Bali is full of caves with small waterfalls. Tourists are brought to one of these places to swim. One needs to put on flip-flops with swimming trunks and go down the stairs.
And there’s a cave like this and wet women walk.
The sun’s rays are breaking through the thickets from above. Another great place for vanilla photos.
There is a waterfall at the end of the cave.
A queue of about ten people waiting. Someone comes with a personal photographer who goes knee-deep into the water, unfolds a tripod and shoots with a long shutter speed so that the waterfall comes out smooth.
Hanging restaurant
In the middle of the day, tourists are taken to eat at a pre-arranged restaurant, which feeds the tour organizers for free. Can’t fool me, I always take the cheapest food to just throw some fuel into the bioreactor.
The restaurant is hanging because it is built on wooden supports and hangs between trees. Cliff’s underneath.
Coffee tasting
This is the coolest of the whole tour. They bring to a coffee plantation, where let taste a dozen types of coffee and several teas for free.
All glasses are carefully placed on the tasting card.
The highlight of the collection is a coffee called luwak. This is the best thing Indonesia has given the world after palm oil. Coffee beans are fed to a marten, which is called luwak in the local language.
The marten is not a fool and passes the grain through itself, hatching it out in the form of shit.
This shit is then washed and disassembled into individual grains.
After that is manually fried.
Comes out the luwak coffee. It seems to be considered the most expensive coffee in the world. Tastes like ordinary strong coffee, but during the tasting they allow to compare it with ordinary strong coffee. And it turns out that the luwak does not have a sour taste at all. Like, a marten has a special enzyme in its stomach that removes all the acid from the grains.
Interestingly, it is impossible to drink luwak with sugar. Pour half a spoon, and it instantly becomes sour.
Rice fields
Rice plantations. The views here are as sterile as anywhere else in Bali.
Field workers harvest rice manually. They get paid mostly with rice, too. They only eat rice. They also dream only of rice.
When asked how elite rice differs from ordinary rice, they answer: “Elite rice grows here, and ordinary rice grows there.”
The rice plantation is located on both sides of the ravine through which a river flows.
In order to quickly move between the sides, the planters invented a bicycle road over the ravine.
Well, the tour usually ends on the rice, and in the evening they take you back to the hotel until the tourist wants to eat again.