During our Bali visit in Jan 2014, we rented a car from Pak Iwan, 62 812 399 56562 including the driver to avoid wasting time of wrong direction. Most of the rented car in Bali has a manual gear, as the street condition is hilly. We arranged the itinerary by ourselves, this trip was to show our mom about Bali as she hadn't visited Bali at all. One of the beautiful place recommended by my elementary school's classmate was Jatiluwih.
After consultation with our driver, we agreed to go to Jatiluwih after visiting Bedugul (2 hours from Kuta), which took around another 45 minutes. Lucky that our driver knew the area, and he didn't reject us to go to this destination. The road was quite bad, it's narrow and some big holes at some places, so we could not drive fast. We felt the journey took a long time as we were starving after exploring Bedugul with its cool mountain fresh air. Anyway reaching the place, the very amazing scenic scenery of "Jatiluwih" located at Tabanan, Bali was so breathtaking. We asked the driver to stop at the edge of the street where there was a space to enjoy the scenery.
No wonder it's nominated for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the terrace looked green and provided a very neat and beautiful contoured of rice terraces. We seldom saw the farmer and the cows, I heard the farmers already used machine instead of cows to plow the fields. The water system for irrigation developed impressively by Balinese farmers. The weather was quite mild, unfortunately it's cloudy, so we could not get a bright blue sky. Expatriates preferred to go with an open air car, while domestic people prefer a car with air conditioning :-)
As we're starving, and it's over lunch time already, we rushed to return to the car, ask the driver to go directly to the restaurant. My friend said there was a restaurant in the middle of the rice terraces that only could be reached by bike, unfortunately he forgot the restaurant name. When I searched in the internet, comparing all of the restaurants, I saw a good picture of J-Terrace restaurant, so we decided to select it.
Entering the area, we had to pay IDR 15.000/car, anyway there was no more fee for parking anywhere. Many restaurants next to each other on the side of the road where we could see the terrace view during lunch. It's very quiet, maybe the place was not as popular as other tourism places in Bali and it took a long journey to reach it. The waitress was quiet friendly, we ordered the recommended menu Balinese crispy duck served with organic red rice, we also ordered special fried rice and chicken marmite (boneless fried chicken in sweet sour sauce sprinkled with sesame). The foods were delicious, savory and tasty, the presentation was attractive too.
While waiting for the foods, we were taking some pictures from the restaurant, which was higher than the parking area and the road. The left back side of the restaurant was very beautiful, its small pond with rice terrace and mountain as the background. A small statue for Balinese praying also available at this side, the entrance of the restaurant at the end of the stairs.
After lunch, we went across the road to take more green velvet pictures with the astounding terrace, avoiding the promotion billboard and electricity cables. The largest rice terraces in Indonesia spanned in a huge area located in the middle of Bali in the plateau of Watukaru Mount which is suitable for the agriculture development. There were a young couple, not Indonesian people, took pictures for their pre-wedding photos. I tried to go down to the fields, but its embankment was muddy and slippery because of the rain, so I didn't dare to go to the middle as the slope was quite steep and nobody would be able to help me.
We love with this place, as we could relieve our fatigues from daily work with the finest imaginable view which really refreshed our mind, body and soul. The scenic drive through the quaint villages and verdant slopes of the central coastal regency of Tabanan was the unforgettable experience. Tabanan government must pay attention to repair and maintain the infrastructure to get more income from tourists, as we also saw a car was broken down in the middle of the road on the way home.
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