Kedungu Beach (Pantai Kedungu)

Kedungu Beach is one of the off-beaten, not known, not that popular beach. Ehr... oh oh... now I am writing about it! Please don't flock here! As you can see, not so many people here. The reason I am visiting is to chill just before going to start my half day work. Also, a reason to take a product shot of WONKY POTS Ceramics' reusable travel cup from the ocean collection...

So tell me guys, would you prefer a quiet beach or the one that has music, bar and loads of tourists?

Enjoy the picture after the jump!

Sunflower Garden Belayu

I hardly had time to make a post these days, and here I am back with this one place that you all MUST visit! It is the Sunflower Garden in Belayu ,Tabanan, Bali! If you've seen my post before about the Celossia Garden here, this one is 300 meters away from Taman Bunga Marga (the celossia garden).

Enjoy the picture after the jump!

Si Datu Bua Sojourn

Si Datu Bua (Beloved Princess) is Silolona Sojourns newest traditional sailing ship. Built by the master Konjo boat builders of Sulawesi to exacting German Lloyds specifications this magnificent vessel melds the best of traditional island sailing vessels with all of the modern amenities and safety features that have established Silolona Sojourns as the undisputed standard for excellence.

From the Sulawesi Sea to the mountains of Toradja in combination with our fully refurbished intricately carved 164-year-old clan house on the slopes of Gunung Sesean. Si Datu Bua’s tastefully appointed décor, spacious decks, delightful Asian fusion cuisine and full range of aquatic activities provide the perfect counterpoint for a combined land & sea adventure.

Enjoy the pictures after the jump...

Ceramic Village of Pejaten Bali

It's a day of visit to another ceramic studio, and the Pejaten Pottery village couldn't be more perfect!

The village of Pejaten was a kingdom in the old days. The village was surrounded with forest area and a lot of big trees, especially teak tree (JATI). This is how the village start getting the name , PEJATIAN.

Pejatian means “a place to find teak (jati) tree”

The soil in Pejaten village contains large amount of terracotta clay. So in the old times, plenty of people around that village started to make pottery. Back then, pottery was used as an exchange comodity jn the market  for food etc. As time changed, the pottery business changed too. Functional become practical items, and art never been huge in the era.

Nowadays, how Pejaten village grows to become a pottery village with many modern type kiln and products, is because it was a pilot project village for pottery industry in Bali.

Sanur Village Festival 2019

The 2019 Sanur Village Festival is the 14th village party that is held within the village of Sanur, Badung regency.  August until September is the best month to have the village festival in Sanur. It is the month of the windy season, thus the kite festival that comes along as a part of the Sanur Village Festival is just perfect to be held the festivities.

Instead of having the festival at the Segara Beach, this year it is held at the Matahari Terbit beach. It was a wise decision. In terms of location and how the place would accommodate parking, stage(s), food vendors, etc. –it’s PERFECT!

Since the beginning of Bali village festivals, Sanur village was not the most popular! But to date, it is one of the best and the only Bali village festival that made it to Indonesia’s top eight tourism event calendar.

With the theme of the festival “Dharmaning Gesing” (the new spirit of heritage) it glorifies bamboo and it’s use. As you all probably know, bamboo (besides coconut)—has a huge role in Balinese life such as religious ceremonies, buildings, etc. In this regard, the usage of bamboo in this 2019 festival was meant to build the awareness of the importance of bamboo in Balinese life and encourage togetherness in protecting the environment.

Enjoy the picture after the jump!

Life of a potter: Sunday Market

From the Sanur Sunday market at the Mertasari beach, here goes my life as a potter. Not only that I am making them ceramics, I have to sell them after firings et cetera. Moments like this, pictured here, is the best moment ever. Inspiration floating, meeting people and feeling happy as they appreciates my creation, my hard work...

Sometimes seeing funny cute little things around me is also inspiring...

My ceramic pieces as displayed here, is very much influenced by the Japanese pottery, the wabi sabi...

Bali Kite Festival 2019

Bali Kite Festival

You must be wondering what kind of festival this is and how exciting this can be?
Well, I am telling you that it is super exciting!  When you combine such fun with Balinese Culture, you will get a whole lot of awesomeness...

The opening is at the biggest ocean front field of Padang Galak, gamelan and musical instrument as well as the kite puller, kite technician, cheerleader, all together supporting their own group. This traditional musical instrument cheering, the supporter making sounds as of to provoke the other group, but still keeping it a friendly competition as they were just joking, sportsmanship and a whole lot of fun to celebrate the dry season, holiday and windy days...

This one event, you should not miss!! Run through Jul-Sept 2019, but who knows where the wind blows? right?

Belayu Tabanan Garden

Celosia is a small genus of edible and ornamental plants in the amaranth family. It's generic name is derived from the ancient Greek word Keleos that means "burning"; it is referred to the flame-like flower heads. The species that you are looking at here are commonly know as wool-flowers / cockscombs. I have grown up to know the name in Dutch as Hanekam. These plants are well known in East Africa’s highlands and are used under their Swahili name, Mfungu.

The Belayu Garden situated in Tabanan regency, Bali has these Celosias grown for this dry season of June-August. I am not sure what type of flowers that the garden will grow on the rainy season. Before the celosias were growing beautifully; there were Sunflowers all over the place.

With IDR 10.000 entrance ticket; you can take instagramable images at this place.

I was just amazed with plants in general and want to take part of experiencing among it.

Moana Bali

Mertasari beach

Sanur is a coastal stretch of beach that is located east of Denpasar. Sanur has grown into a little town or a wide village of it's own. The Sanur coastline that is stretched about 5+ kilometer until Mertasari beach was reclaimed in 2008.

Sanur is a fisherman village, thus fishing boats are on display when you walk by the beach...

Berawa Beach Art Festival [BBAF 2019]

On this particular post, I have to copy paste http://www.berawabeachartsfestival.com for information behind the idea of Berawa beach Art Festival 2019. This is the first BBAF and hopefully not the last.

Here goes:

Bali has been widely known for its rich cultural heritage that based on Hindu values, in which art is closely related to religious entities. Art is an inherent part of religious (religious) life, stated that "religion is an art and art is a manifestation of religion (Hinduism) itself.” Bali has strong roots of tradition based on the values ​​of Shivaism (Hinduism), and its culture continues to grow along with the times. These developments indicate the continuity of tradition values, which make Balinese culture have a strong identity; represented in various forms of culture. This identity representation also indicates the existence of a connection between tradition values ​​and present-day culture. This relationship is believed to maintain the culture identity when it is interacting with modernity, this becomes its own strength to be a formulation of Balinese culture resilience.

.... read more and see more picture,

Rice fields of Bali

There are so many rice fields in Bali, and as far as you can see! And one of them was the UNESCO heritage one called the Jatiluwih that I have already covered in my posts here, here, here or here

These rice fields that I am covering now, is in two different parts of Bali, they are as grant as each.

Potter's Life: hobby and earning extra!

Doing a pottery—is at first—an understanding of what would be the process of the whole scheme to come to a product that is becoming a ceramic piece. For me, learning a process is a way to understand how something can be done and adding knowledge to myself on how something can reach to its final point.

Along the way of learning the whole process; I absorbs the how and what and all the things in between to come to a certain style that I wanted to create for my own personal pleasure. Wipe that dirty mind of yours!  What I wanted to explain is, that I love an irregular shape, one-of-a-kind shape that I created instead of industrial-mass-production items that is out there in the market (I started to like a lot of Japanese ceramics too). This is how "Wonky Pots" was created.

After hoarding my own creations and have no clue of what to do with them; a friend of mine was asking if I wanted to sell them in the artisan market that she regularly joined. It was a whole lot of pieces and a huge pile of ceramic; but I discovered, people love them.

And so... I keep making, because 'makers gonna make!'

And I am earning extra from my hobby! 

White water rafting in Bali

If you are an adventurous person and love the outdoors, white water rafting might be something that you should try in Bali. The activities are located in 3 different rivers, namely Sungai Ayung (Sungai = River), Sungai Telaga Waja and Sungai Melangit. There are about a hundred rafting company. Make sure to join the one that has the longest route! For me personally, I love the Telaga Waja River. However, these pictures are from my latest experience on Ayung River.

Potter's Life: Behind the story of my Ocean collection

What is the story behind my ocean collection? 

First and foremost is my love to the ocean; and then how I have grown to learn that homo sapiens can be such destroyers of planet earth.

It was one fine Sunday that I've spent swimming in my fave spot, when I was trapped in this food plastic pack while swimming and facing the bottom of the ocean. Of course it was just a little bit more then an ankle deep, but this plastic pack has no business to choke me.

I swam almost every week at the same spot, a clean one, I even know exactly what time this sea snake will cross. Same snake! I know!!

More and more plastic packs in all sort of variations swimming along with me.

I felt disgusted, as if I swam in a huge dumpster with water filled up to the brim.

Long story short, I practiced reduce and reuse in my life, you can see some of the pointers here 

pictured here: Seline harvesting the black beach sand that I will mix to the clay body

The blue in this collection representing the color of the ocean of course, and the sand is literally representing the ocean. A few of this collection has been sold out and restocked. I am simply beyond happy!

thank you for stopping by and reading the post....

xxx

Potter's life: Japanese tea ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony, also called the Way of Tea, is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha the powdered green tea.

There are two main ways of preparing matcha for tea consumption: thick (濃茶 koicha) and thin (薄茶 usucha), as the terms imply, koicha is a thick blend of matcha and hot water that requires about three times as much tea to the equivalent amount of water than usucha. To prepare usucha, matcha and hot water are whipped using the tea whisk (茶筅 chasen), while koicha is kneaded with the whisk to smoothly blend the large amount of powdered tea with the water.

On this particular pottery workshop that I did with Shozo Michikawa sensei, each workshop participants must produce 1 chawan (tea bowl) for the Tea Ceremony that will be held at the end of the pottery workshop.

Tea bowls (chawan) are available in a wide range of sizes and styles, and different styles are used for thick and thin tea. Shallow bowls, which allow the tea to cool rapidly, are used in summer; deep bowls are used in winter. Bowls are frequently named by their creators or owners, or by a tea master. Bowls over four hundred years old are in use today, but only on unusually special occasions. The best bowls are thrown by hand, and some bowls are extremely valuable. Irregularities and imperfections are prized: they are often featured prominently as the "front" of the bowl.

Potter's life: Anagama wood firing

Some of you might not know yet, but in this lifetime, I am also a potter (among other hats I am wearing).

[me stoking the anagama kiln with wood as fuel]

[schooling time, learning how to throw 'seasons" tea bowl for tea ceremony]