I had heard from friends and other travelers that Bali is a place steeped in culture and a unique place among Indonesia (while the rest of Indonesia is Muslim Bali has remained a stronghold of Hinduism ever since the trade winds brought it here.) I think that when one comes to Bali its kind of like coming to a convention, or holiday retreat for Gods. Everywhere there are spirit houses and shrines and temples, pronounced “Pura” in Bahasa Indonesia, the language of this country of islands.
Now I am use to having spirit houses since most private residences and business have spirit houses since you must give daily offerings of food, incense and flowers to appease the spirits of land and house… however here, the Balinese make our daily offerings look like a cake walk of minimal ritual. 4-5 times daily I see Balinese locals walking around with giant baskets of offerings balanced on their heads as they make there way around the property, the street and sometimes even the block giving offering in front of the house on the ground, to the spirit house inside the yard, the spirit house outside the yard, the local statute of Ganesh down the street, as well as any neighboring statues or guardian statues that guard the house. The offerings look pretty handmade- a large banana leaf shaped into a square shallow bowl (about 5inx 5 in.x 5in.) filled with flowers, rice, sometimes deserts sometimes even cigarettes!-all topped off with a sprinkle of holy water. By the evening it is hard not to step on these little square banana bowls since they are in front of ever establishment on the street…however by morning they have all magically disappeared by 7am and fresh ones are put out.
To give you a visual of this amount I took a “before” and “after” picture of one of the shrines:
“Before” ---notice this lovely stone alter with minimal offerings at 8am.
“After” ----this is around 9pm at night, the shine is now packed in offerings above and below. Here is Gods get a lot of attention!
It makes me wonder that if this is the retirement resort where all the Gods have flocked to when others stopped believing in them, since here there are gods for everything and everyone to pray to. There are Gods for rice, Gods for birth, Gods for wind, Gods for tooth-filings, even Gods for relieving bad music! (I should know, I prayed to him one night to stop this really awful techno at a beachside bamboo bar, and lo and behold! It worked… wow...and…damnit! I guess I need to make some offerings at our next Pura stop.) Along with all these Gods there are also festivals for all of the following just about everyday I am told, and it’s very common for people to be parading down the street and dancing and singing daily. Oliver (with his efficient German mind) sometimes wonders how anyone on the island really gets anything done since… well efficiency is NOT the word either of us would use to describe how anything is done around here. However I would use the word “Happy” to describe the people here… oh…and the word “Hasselers”…. Since everywhere you turn it seems there is someone trying to aggressively sell you something. One time I aggressively gave into getting a beach massage and while she was massaging me she was trying to sell me stuff from her shop… blah… not cool. Sometimes this gets rather annoying to say the least, and you get far less Hasselers in Thailand, which surprises me to say that.
Of course our opinions could be eschewed since we have only been here for 4 days now and in the beachside surf town of Sanur --aka Dutch tourist/expat central. We have yet to truly experience the culture of Bali full-force and are hoping to do so at our next destination in Ubud. For the past 5 days I have spent my time riding my bike around town and up and down this lovely beach-front side walk that goes the entire length of Sanur, taking random photos of the coast as I go. Olli has been spending the past 4 days getting his PADI scuba diving cert. and that is the main reason why we are camped here in expensive-land. There not much to do here, but lie on the beach, read, spend money on overpriced meals and drinks, and go scuba diving or windsurfing. Oh, I did my first windsurfing lesson 2 days ago! It was rather fun! I enjoyed it and would probably consider doing it again…so Olli is going to try and locate his beginner windsurfing gear when we get back to Germany… yay!
Here's a picture of some random cock-fighting we saw on the beach, it was pretty awesome and also pretty brutal. FACT: before gambling, cock-fighting was actually a ritualistic tradition here only performed in temples during festival holidays.
Yesterday we woke up early and drove 3 hours to the north part of the island for 2 fun dives at Tulamben… it was a beach dive to the Shipwreck, USSA Liberty- a cargo ship during WW2 which was sunk offshore by a Japanese sub.
The ship made it to land and was unloaded where it sat on the beach near Tulamben for over a decade until an earthquake ~1967 rocked it back into the ocean a convenient 50 meters from the shore. Yay~! Even for rainy season it was a lovely dive, and the perfect beginners dive since the wreck ranged from 6 meters-28meters deep and you were able to swim through the hulled. Apart from the basic impression of a ship the massive object was a playground of sea life, teeming with hundreds of colorful fish, bright coral, and poisonous organisms. We swam up to sandy beds of sea kelp which were actually a field of sea snakes disguised as kelp who would slither calming and retract into their sand holes as we drew near. Swimming through the inside of the boat was like being inside a beautiful opera hall with intricate chandeliers suspended from the ceiling, while the rotted out hull created pillars of coral which spiral upwards with fish of all sizes-singular and in schools- swimming past us in their underwater highways. It was simply spectacular and we are thinking of heading there again.
Alright, it’s time to check out of the guesthouse and head to the beach one last time. Then onward to Ubud!
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