Picture travelogue Bali 2009

This year China Airlines was cheapest. Railway to Frankfurt, one night in Frankfurt, flight to Bali and two nights in Bali Agung Village, Seminyak, cost 993 Euro alltogether.

After two days in Kuta/Seminyak I took the Perama bus to Padang Bai once again.

The construction site above the beach "Bias Tugel" hadn't changed much since last year. Unfortunately, the construction stop had just been reversed.

From another angle, the beach looks still fine.

The bright and the dark sand display attractive patterns.

The road for the trucks is dusty, goes across a hill and offers no shelter from the sun. I prefer another way to the beach which can be tricky, too.

Cross the main street, take the alley to the left after the mosque, to this temple, then along the wall, where it can be slippery and wet, and finally climb up to the path.

Some underwater pictures. Explanations appear at the mouse pointer.

My Hotel in Padang Bai was Kerti again. In the renovated two-storied House, even warm water and AC would have been available. At 100.000 Rupiah (7 Euro) a night it was considerably more expensive than last year. Click the pictures for a larger view.

And now some underwater pictures of the "other" beach, the Blue Lagoon.

Pak Pica, der host of Warung Kasandra, invited some tourists to for a suckling pig dinner at his home. Click the pictures for a larger view.

There was a Barong dance performance in the same evening.

More underwater pictures. Explanations appear at the mouse pointer.

Die nächsten drei Bilder verlinken zu Desktop-Hintergrund-Formaten mit 1920x1200 Pixeln

Last year, the gastronomy in Padang Bai was mainly Dutch-owned, but now only Omang-Omang, Topi Inn and Ali-in-Bali. Bill, who had run the Marco Inn, had moved to Sanur. The Marco Inn had been expanded with the Polo Bar, which is located at the street even better than Pak Pica's blue table had ever been, and the new hosts were their own best customers. A British and a German had taken over the Zen Inn, but the General Manager is still Wayan (on the left in the picture).

I spent one day in Tulamben, again. The bemo to Amlapura cost 20,000 Rupiah and from there to Tulamben 15,000. The prices were the same on the way back.

The streets are decorated for Galungan. The blond man in the picture is called Haha.

The previous picture shows the View from the new building between Bias Tugal and the black beach towards Padang Bai.
And now underwater again: morays and turtles.

Some pictures of the temple district Tanjung Sari - Telaga Mas - Silayukti

More mixed pictures from Padang Bai

Back in Kuta. The hotels Taman Ayu and Diana were full. On a walk through Poppies Lane I and Jalan Sorga, I checked some dork holes with excessively high room rates, and was very lucky to finally find d'kubu.

My new Camera, Canon Powershot A2000, fits well into my Ewa-Marine bag that I had purchased in 2005 for my old Ricoh Caplio RR30. But when the objective extended up to the glass wall, the camera turned itself off with an error message. So I made a spacer using a plastic bottleneck, and it worked quite well.

This year I started adapting the colours of the photographs. I will show the steps with an example.

1. It starts with the picture as it comes out of the camera, but I present it scaled down to 400x300 pixels (Picture 1). It was actually 3648x2736 pixels and 5.1 MB big.

2. The Pinktail Triggerfish Melichthys vidua is cut out and scaled down to a convenient size.

3. If the picure has a blue-green cast (unterwater shots without flash are sure to have it) then I use the automatic colour balance (before: pic 2 - after: pic 3).

4. Using Gimp you find the automatic colour balance in the dialog "Tools-Color Tools-Levels", button "Auto". This function draws the small triangles below the histogram for every colour to the sides of the "mountains". In picture 4 the colour blue is shown for example. If the "Auto" results look too unnatural you can draw the triangles manually a bit back outward.

5. The automatic colour balance gets usually too dark. I brighten the picture by gamma correction. In Gimp, that is the box in the middle, containing "1.00". Picture 5 was adapted with gamma=1.2 (channel="value", not for a special colour).

6. At "Filters-Enhance-Sharpen" I chose the 20. There is no obvious difference, so it has at least done no harm.