This is my second time visiting Bali, my first trip to Bali was many years ago when the blog wasn’t popular at all. So I didn’t blog and I didn’t take many photos. Thanks God that now I blog and I took many valuable photos so that my 7 days journey to Bali will be forever etched into my memory.

Maybe I should explain what attracted me to Bali. I read a lot about the awards and credit given to Bali for its natural attractions, activities/sights, restaurants/food, people and value.

Bali received award as The Best Island in Asia Pacific 2008 from DestinAsia Magazine last February in Hong Kong.

Bali had been chosen twice as the Best Island in Asia Pacific of three nominations held by DestinAsia Magazine since 2006.

Besides, Bali named World’s Top Island again in 2007, 6 years running, by Travel + Leisure magazine.

So it can’t be wrong to pay a visit to Bali, especially when AirAsia is giving such a good deal of the air fare and it is only 3 hours flight from Malaysia to Bali.

This is the longest trip I have ever had to any island. I usually spent the most 5 days in an island but in this trip to Bali, we added 2 more days to make up to 7 days. We just wanted to do as many activities as possible in Bali and yet not to rush ourselves.

One of the biggest plan is to hike and camp in Mount Rinjani in Lombok which takes us at least 3 days for the whole journey from reaching the top of the ridge to making the way down to the very beautiful lake and finally back to the bottom.

Mount Rinjani is Lombok’s highest volcano and is also the second highest peak in the entire Indonesian archipelago. The volcano stands at over 3000 meters and is still active although there is not another eruption expected for some time. The first recorded eruption was in 1847 and since then there have been a further three eruptions when Mount Rinjani went through an unstable phase and erupted in 1994, 1995 and 1996. These last three eruptions have created a cone effect in the center of the grate lake that stands in the center of the Volcano, which is protected under the Indonesian National Trust. Not only is this lake home to some strange and struggling wildlife but it is also a scared peak that the locals believe to be very holy.

Besides hiking and camping, diving is another activity that cannot be missed from our plan. Because of the Mount Rinjani hike that was going to take up 3 days of our 7 days trip, we can only allocate one day diving trip in Bali. Another 3 remaining days will be spent on visiting places like Uluwatu, Ubud, Tanah Lot, and of course shopping.

So this was our initial plan and we were very excited about it. But after we reached Bali and did the research on the time taken to Lombok only we realized that it was too time consuming. In order to get to Lombok, we need to take an approximate 4 hours ride of regular ferry from Bali. The high-speed ferry is available too that takes only about two hours. Gili Cat and Mahi Mahi are two well-known ferry companies. But guess what, they charge USD65 a person each way. With USD65 each way, I can stay in a very nice hotel already (for backpacker standard, of course. Not talking about those tourists with Samsonite luggage).

After reaching Lembar harbour (LOMBOK), there will be another 2 hours drive to Mount Rinjani. The time spent on transportation already take up 12 hours back and forth, not to mention about 3 days spent on hiking and camping. So we gave up the initial plan. Instead of challenging Mount Rinjani, we switched to conquer Mount Batur. Mount Batur is one of the volcano located in Bali with the best view of sunrise from the submit.

So here we came out with the final plan in the first day in Bali:

Day 1: