Secret Bali

Let Secret Bali guide you around the unusual and unfamiliar. Step off the beaten track with this fascinating Bali guide book and let our local experts show you the well-hidden treasures of this amazing city. Ideal for local inhabitants, curious visitors and armchair travellers alike. Black sand that has healing power, why you should not whistle while strolling down a beach at night, Bali's mostbeautiful and least-visited rice terraces, a very special giftto take home from Bali, a workshop where Batiks arecreated with unique natural dyes, a place to petition thespirits for a baby, the flute-playing pigeons of Ubud, anenchanting village of traditionally styled bamboo roofs, ahaunting reunion of some of Bali's most outrageousdemons, one of the world's best unofficial street artexhibitions, a tree it is impossible to plant, an ancientfertility statue with "more than the usual quota of penises",a mysterious breed of cattle, a village of the deaf, aminiature version of Java's Unesco-listed Borobudur,fantastic tranced bull races, the world's most spectaculartraditional fishing craft, an architectural wonder of Bali'sChristian heartland, Bali's only colonial-era rubberplantation ...Bali offers countless opportunities to step off the beatenpath and is home to any number of well-hidden treasuresthat are revealed only to residents and travellers who areready to explore.Secret Bali - An unusual guide is an indispensableresource for those who think they already know Bali orwould like to discover its hidden places, taking you farfrom the crowds and the usual cliches.

Six nerve-wracking hours dangling from a frayed cable in a Venezuelan cable-car sent Mark Eveleigh into free-fall on a career as travel writer, specialising in adventure. He taught himself Indonesian in preparation for an expedition he led into Central Borneo's "valley of the spirit world" (which became the subject for his first book, Fever Trees of Borneo). Mark fell in love with Bali when he spent a year living with a Balinese family in 2003 and for more than five years now his writing base has been in the island's "wild west." Although he's covered assignments in more than 100 Indonesian islands (for BBC, CNN, Esquire, National Geographic Traveller and others), Mark still describes the remoter parts of Bali as "a forgotten paradise." Narina Exelby is a freelance writer and editor who swopped stability in Cape Town and 15 years in the international magazine industry for freedom and life on the road. Her default setting has always been to seek out quiet spaces, which is one of the reasons Narina's base for the past few years has been the far west coast of Bali, four hours away from the crowds. She travels frequently - mostly around South East Asia, Southern Africa and Europe - and when she leaves her treehouse sanctuary for a city, she revels in the chance to drink good wine and indulge in cheese... and is often surprised by the delight she finds in the rhythm of big city life.