Thursday, July 17, 2008

GIANYAR REGENCY

Gianyar is an art and cultural town, has been well known throughout the word. Apart from proliferation of its archeological remains, in recent development, Gianyar looks so fascinating with the establishment of gardens and statues of Gods and demons along its street or at every road intersection. It is really worth seeing, because all the art works erected in this town are master pieces of Gianyar's artists, those are inspired by a single source called " Paramayoga " Hindu legend or " Purana Dewa " in mount Tengguru, that tells us about the cooperation between Gods ( Sura ) and demons ( Asura ) in their succesful effort to turn or stir fast mount Mandara, searching for elixir water or water for eternal life, which is finally ended with the change of cooperation into a war disputing the elixir ownership. MAP OF GIANYAR A word from head of regency Gianyar regency constitutes an agricultural region with its beautiful nature panorama, that it's why many kinds of agricultural plantation can be developed in this region. Additionally, Gianyar Regency is rich with ancient remains and famous for high creativity of its people in field of art and culture, which considered as one of invaluable asset to the region. With this high potential, in reality nowadays, Gianyar has grown rapidly in tourism, which is the result of the richness of the nature, traditional culture heritage as well as modern one. Having this reality we realize there is possibility of emerging negative impacts towards the progress of Gianyar Regency globally, somehow, by understanding strong concepts of Hindu religion it is expected these impacts can be filtered, that local culture and foreign one can acculturate to each other positively and naturally. Finally to all parties, especially those entrepreneurs are involved in tourism, we are expecting their participation to keep and develop tourism positively, that the tourism and Balinese culture which had has high value more well known and praised in the world

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

TANAH LOT

Tanah Lot Temple is located in the south of Tabanan Regency, precisely in countryside of Beraban, district of Kediri. It is about + 12 km apart from Tabanan town and + 25 km from Denpasar. The temple is built above land of coral reef with size more than 3 acre (wide: 202.830 m2 and circle: 2.509 m). The word of “Tanah Lot” consisted of two words that are Tanah word means land (isle) and Lot or Lod word has meaning the sea. So Tanah Lot is meaning “The small island floating on the sea”. Tanah Lot is said to be the work of the 15th century priest Nirartha. The story goes that during his travels along the south coast he saw the rock-island’s beautiful setting and rested there. Some fishermen saw him, and bought him gifts. Nirartha then spent the night on the little island. Later he spoke to the fishermen and told them to build a shrine on the rock for he felt it to be a holy place to worship the Balinese sea gods. Tanah Lot temple was then built and has been an important part of Balinese mythological history for centuries. The temple is one of seven sea temples around the Balinese coast. It was said that each of the sea temples was to be within eyesight of the next so that they formed a chain along the south-western coast. As a favorite tourism object in Bali, Tanah Lot has been visited by one million of domestic and foreign tourist every year. Because Tanah Lot owns a magnificent view in particular at the sunset time where the sun slows down to the earth stomach. Every visitor will be marveled to see the beauty panorama of Tanah Lot. Its Coast is rock bound and its wave is big adds the beauty of Tanah Lot Temple which can be seen from various location. To reach the temple, visitors must walk through a carefully planned set of Balinese market-format souvenir shops which cover each side of the path down to the sea. On the mainland cliff tops, restaurants are built for the tourists to relax. Beside of Tanah Lot Temple there are other temples which can be seen on your visit to Tanah Lot like Batu Bolong Temple, Batumejan Temple and Enjung Galuh Temple. At some nooks of coral reef around Tanah Lot Temple there are holy tame snake in black and white color and it is believed as the guard of the temple from the bad influence and evil spirits. It is also believed that this snake was created from Nirartha’s scarf when he established the island. Part of its stomach there no athwart skin, there’s only small skin, but this sea water snake very noxious but snakebite case are very den happened, because the sea water snake generally very passive. People cannot disturb these snakes because according to the belief, they belong to the God in the Temple.