During our first day at Bali, we walked in the Sanur streets, and along the beach, I saw this unique split triangle shaped structure at front or side entrances to temples, cemeteries. Typically the structures have carvings and decorations in the front and back triangle zones, but the vertical flat sections are plain. The slender split gates look more mysterious to me.
The gate to heaven
They are split gates, or candi-bentar.
A candi bentar is a candi-like structure split perfectly in two to create a passage in the center for people to walk through. These gates are commonly found at the entrances of religious compounds, palaces, or cemeteries in Indonesia, particularly in Bali and Java.
Another explanation for the split gate is that it symbolizes a mountain that has been split into two, and mountains are considered sacred by the Balinese.
The main faces (front and back) of the gate have ornate shape and decorations, the sides of the passage are left completely plain. The passage is usually elevated with a flight of stairs to reach it.
No matter how we interpret the gate, in Bali Hindu, a split gate is a gateway from physical world to spiritual world, a transition from ordinary to sacred.
front entrance to a small place for worship
side entrance to a temple
The two big temples we visited are Besakih Temple, and Tirta Empul Temple. Each has many split gates.
Besakih Temple is the most important, largest, and holiest temple of Balinese Hinduism. It is located nearly 1000 meters up the side of Gunung Agung, it is an extensive complex of 23 separate but related temples with the largest and most important being Pura Penataran Agung.
We visited there on a rainy day. But the split gate at stood out in the forest of pagodas, the split gate to Pura Penataran Agung stands at the top of a terrace, and there are many split gates within the complex.
Split gate to Pura Pebataran Agung
Split gate to a side temple
Tirta Empul Temple means holly spring temple. The temple compound consists of a petirtaan or bathing structure, famous for its holy spring water, where Balinese Hindus go to for a ritual purification called Melukat.
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a split gate at Tirta Empul
The most beautiful split gate at Bali is the gates to heaven at Lempuyang Temple - with the view of Mount Agung framed by it. We did not visit there during our trip to Bali, but here are a couple photos of this beautiful split gate from internet.
Note -
Another well-known, and simple gate to a temple is torii, a traditional Japanese Shinto shrine gate. I saw torii in person during my visit to Japan - there are many toriis along the trail to the summit to Mt Fuji, and at Meiji Jingu.
Torii is similar to split gate in function, and symbolism.
The Kiss is the most famous painting of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. The first time I saw this painting was on the morning of January 1st, 2025, in the street of old quarter of Hanoi.
The giant mural of this painting was replicated on the wall of an art gallery entrance. It attracted my attention right away when I saw it. In the painting, a women kneeled in a flowered medows, a man bent over her, two hands cradled her head, placing a gentle kiss on her right cheek. She was in a blissful, calm, serene state; Her eyes closed, head bent backwards a little, her right arm wrapped around his neck, her left hand held his right hand.
The man had a patterned robe, the woman flower decorated dress. They seem to be in a halo due to the added gold leaf, silver and platinum.
The impression of the painting is deposited in my memory.
Last week, a commercial for an exhibit from Kallang Wave Mall flashing the painting of The Kiss brought back my memory of it. We went for a hybrid outing on Sunday with outdoor hiking along Kallang river and indoor immersive art at Gustav Klimt art exhibit.
Because Klimt's paintings featured gold regularly, the name of the exhibition is Gustav Klimit - Falling in Gold.
Of course the Kiss is prominently featured in this exhibit - a floor to ceiling replica of the painting is placed at the end of a "tunnel " that chronicleed his paintings with Beethoven 9th symphony as the theme.
Many of paintings were related to Greek mythology and biblical stories.
'Danaë", painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907, is an oil masterpiece exemplifying Symbolism, depicting the moment when Zeus, in the form of a golden shower, impregnates the maiden Danaë, who is imprisoned in a bronze chamber. It symbolizes the interplay of the divine and the corporeal.
One intresting and profound quote from the painter is "Truth is like fire; to tell the truth means to glow and burn ". His painting Nuda Veritas 1899 reflects Klimt's bold exploration of themes that challenge societal norms, particularly through the direct depiction of nudity and sensuality, which sparked widespread controversy. It was rebellion against the dominant classical realism techniques, showcasing an inevitable transformation trend in the art world.
At the top of the painting is a quote from the German poet Schiller: "If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please only a few. To please the many is bad."
Bronze Horseman is a famous Statue of Peter the Great at St Petersburg in Russia. I got to know this statue from listening to the audio book (biography) Catherin the Great.
What piqued my interestin this statue is neither its historical significance nor its artistic features, it is the mechanics involved in structural design of the statue, as well as how the statue's pedestal, a 1500 tone boulder, was transported.
The statue portrays Peter the Great sitting triumphantly on his horse, his outstretched arm pointing towards the River Neva. The horse reared on its hind legs, its tail crushing a serpent (*). The horse itself stands on a thunder stone pedestal. The pedestal has inscription Peter I and Catherin II.
At the time of the design of the statue by French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet, some criticized the the design about the placement of the serpent. The sculptor argued that Functionally the tail on the serpent provide a third point of the support, without it, the statue would break. This demonstrated the sculptor's good understanding of mechanics and structural stability.
Moving the pedestal, the 1500 tone thunder stone, from at Lakhta, 6 km inland from the Gulf of Finland in 1768 to Senate Square at St. Petersburg, is an engineering feat in itself (Wikipedia).
Workmen waited for winter, when the ground was frozen, and then they dragged the giant stone over the frozen ground to the sea for shipment and transport to the city. A metallic sled that slid over bronze spheres about 13.5 cm (6 inches) in diameter, over a track. The process worked in a way similar to ball bearings. Making the feat even more impressive was that the labour was done entirely by humans; no animals or machines were used in bringing the stone from the original site to the Senate Square. It took 400 men nine months to move the stone, during which time master stonecutters continuously shaped the enormous granite monolith.
The Bronze Horseman - the statue of Peter the Great of Russia, is a master piece of sculpture, and its construction is an engineering feat. It is one of the most admired equestrian statues in the world!
(*)The snake represents Peter the Great's enemies, especially those who opposed his reforms and military victories. It also symbolizes ignorance, resistance to progress, and Peter’s triumph over old traditions. The Bronze Horseman’s raised hand and forward-leaning posture emphasize Peter leading Russia into the future, while the crushed snake shows his dominance over obstacles.
As a bird watcher, I resisted going to a bird park to watch birds until a relative could not use his pre-purchased tickets a few weeks ago. We went to the park on a Saturday and arrived at 3:30pm. We saw a lot of birds, it was kind of overwhelming !
When we got to the park, we walked straight into the bird sanctuary - many exotic species of big hornbills were locked behind small cages/nets like prisoners - they could not fly freely, they could not forage. It was a sad scene, and it annoyed me. The penguin cove was ok, ironically the restaurants and stores are larger than cove itself., it seems the goal of the cove was to lure customers in, to eat, to buy stuff.
It was late, the amphitheater was closed already, so we did not go there and surrounding area.
We visited 4 main outdoor areas - Heart of Africa, Wing of Asia, Mysterious Papua, and Australian Outback. These 4 areas are segregated, each under a giant net.
We entered the Heart of Africa section from the shuttle station side, and were greeted by the chorus of bird songs! There were so many birds in the woods under the board walk, and olive backed sunbirds and crimson sun birds were the familiar ones, and there were many new species to us, including superb starling, and the weaver birds - which I was trying to locate in the open world for sometime. We were pleased to see quite a few different species of weaver birds including vieillot's black weaver, orange weaver and chestnut weaver. It was interesting to see some large exotic birds which were just different species of pigeons - speckled pigeon was one.
superb starling
Vieillot's black weaver
orange weaver
chestnut weaver
speckled pigeon
Wing of Asia houses mostly common birds in Southeast Asia, egrets, herons, pigeons, spoonbills, painted storks, ...nothing special for us.
black faced spoonbill
painted stork
When we were wondering what different bird species there are in Mysterious Papua, we were greeted by a crimson sunbird - which stayed at its perch all the time we were around - we observed one main feature of the bird - the two black strips on its red neck. The sign in the area indicated that there are crown pigeons around. As we turned the corner, there was a big bird with a crown, it was standing there waiting for us to see it...it was a crown pigeon!
crimson sunbird
crowned pigeon
In the section Australian outback, we saw quite a few birds we saw during our trip to Perth West Australia, which included galah, Laughing kookaburras, parakeets. There were a few we saw for the first time: red tailed black cockatoo, tawny frogmouth. Tawany Fogmouth is just like a piece of tree bark when it closes its eyes.
papuan eclectus (male)
papuan eclectus (female)
red tailed black cockatoo
Overall the bird park is too small for so many birds compartmented into different giant nests to let them have natural food...they have to be fed man-made food, which attracted a lot of mice! We saw a family of mice having birds' food in Australia outback at the park. A couple of park employees happened to passing by. They shooed at the mice and kept walking, apparently it was not an one off incident. A few days later there was news that the bird park was infested of mice!
The mandai bird paradise in Singapore is a ok park.
Hampstead wetland park is a tiny park near lower Seletar reservoir, with a small pond; there are many species of birds there. One can walk around the park in 10 minutes. Some people call it the "hidden gem" of Singapore because not many people know about the neat park.
I first visited this park in January 2022, and loved it right away.
The snag trees in the pond, plants, dense wood around it, made it a paradise for birds. Many beautiful birds were flying around or rest on tree branches: collared kingfishers, red breasted parakeets, banded woodpeckers, and blue tailed bee eaters among others.
A grand egret flew over without stopping at the pond. In fact I never see an egret or heron standing at the water's edge of the pond at Hampstead wetland. It could be that there were monitor lizards in the pond.
Hampstead wetlands
The blue tailed bee eaters were most colorful of them all, and they flew around regularly. However the banded woodpecker stole the show that day in 2022. When I was busy taking pictures of birds around the pond, a banded woodpecker flew in, and started to peck a hole on the snag tree in the pond. After taking a few pictures of the woodpecker, I recorded a few seconds of it pecking at the hole.
It was really cute to see the woodpecker pecking diligently - peck, pause like it was thinking and peck again ...
A blue tailed bee eater flew into the view and perched on a lower branch of the snag tree.
There were also birds on land - a pair of Asian glossy starlings resting on top of a tree across the pond, a female olive backed sunbird building a nest on a tree on the side I stood. There were also black napped oriole, yellow vented bulbuls.
With so many birds around, there was a sizable crowd of photographers there.
Asian Glossy Staring
an olive backed Sunbirds building a nest on a tree on land
a black napped oriole
yellow vented bulbul
photographers at Hampstead woodlands
Since then I visited the park a few more times.
The second time was about two years later (December 2023). Similar types of birds, but this time I had a powerful tele lens with me for taking more close up photos. Also there were many more blue tailed bee eaters there. I took some very good burst shoots of blue tailed bee eaters taking off or landing on their perches.
Blue tailed bee eaters eat bees, and other insects, such as moths
One particular perch was popular, two bee eaters were resting on it: in one instance a bee eater flew to the perch and landed on it when another one was on it already. In another instance, one bee eater had prey in its beak, another seemed to beg for it! Sometime, 3 or 4 bee eaters perched on the same branch. That day there was a blue tailed bee eater crowd! I also captured the rare footage of blue tailed bee eater preening.
hot real estate !
Lucky for us that day, there were two owls on a big tree by the pond. This was the first time we saw owls outside Sugei Bluoh in person.
Later (Oct 2024) we planed to visit Hampstead again. Somehow I decided to check Hampstead wetlands' status on Google map. To my surprise, there was a review which described the dire situation at the wetlands - " dried water body, disappearance of lily leaves and almost a couple snag trees have fallen. No birds in sight and no fishes ether". We did not visit the park that day. But I thought I need to do something. I wrote to National Park Service about the situation with screen captures of the review, and asked if they could do anything to save the wetlands. To my pleasant surprise, the park service wrote back a week later - they sent inspectors over to check the park, and explained that the dried up pond was due to natural process, and so was the fallen snag trees. They told me that the park was almost back to normal, and encouraged me to visit there again.
The third time I visited there was 3 weeks ago, the wetland was almost back to normal , the fallen snag tree was in the pond - true to the practice of letting nature takes its course, Lily flowers were blooming, birds were chirping, and a monitor lizard was swimming, turtles rested lazily on rocks, and best of all I took a perfect photo of a blue tailed bee eater.
Note - there is a good French restaurant, 5 by Sans-Façon, nearby, where we had lunch after our first visit to Hampstead Wetlands
