Bali – First week

(The tropical heat and humidity make all non-essential activity impossible.  Essential activities are eating, sleeping, getting massage and swimming in the pool.  Thus the delay in this blog post, which I started a couple of days ago.)

It’s had to believe we’ve been here nearly a week.  Time just seems to drift by in the tropics.  When it’s hot and humid, your body just naturally slows down to prevent overheating (not always successfully!)  I would have thought that this would cause extreme  boredom.  Just the opposite is true.  When you slow down you notice all kinds of stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise.

I’m sitting this morning in the beautiful villa that our friends Steve and Michael have rented for 3 months.  Rather than describe it and include pictures, I’ll just give you a link (here) where you can read all about it.  There are 5 other guests staying at the villa.  Steve and Michael act as tour guides and encyclopedic sources of information about all things Bali.  If they can’t answer a question they can always point to someone or something (book, museum, etc.) that can.

Just to set the scene…. I’m sitting in the “lounging” pavilion of the villa, looking out across the lawn toward the 25 meter pool.  One of the other guests is getting a massage under a thatched poolside palapa.  Ralph’s out on a walk through the rice paddies with a couple of the other guests.  The sound of the cicadas overwhelms the soft music that someone has put on in the other pavilion.  An electric blue butterfly just went fluttering by.  It’s 10 in the morning, about 80 degrees and 80% humidity and I am very content to just sit still and watch it all happen.

The Balinese culture is like no other I’ve ever encountered.  It’s impossible to overstate the extent to which religion is integrated into Bali life.  This is not fundamentalism, with preachers/imams shouting “Our way or you go to hell!”, however.  There are three Balinese Hindu temples in every village.  On the temple’s “birthday” (once every 210 days), the temple is thoroughly cleaned and the people come to bring offerings to the gods, to be blessed, and to participate in ceremonies.   Since there are 3 temples in every village and villages scattered all over the place, there are ceremonies being performed somewhere all the time.  There are also personal temples inside each family compound.  Offerings are made there daily, to seek the help and protection of the “good” gods and keep away the demons.  (Photo at right from Joan Thewlis.)  Offerings are also placed around the houses in various places, at crossroads, on statues of the gods, and on and on.  Just about everywhere you look you see little baskets made of palm leaves filled with flowers, food, incense, etc.  I even saw a cigarette in one of the offerings.   At Steve and Michael’s villa, one of the staff (out of 10) is a lady whose only job is to create the offerings for the house.  In addition to the daily offerings, there are other offerings which must be made on special days, of which are are dozens.

The first day we were here Michael took us, as part of his “Bali 101” introductory tour to the Monkey Forrest.   They were pretty cute.  However, a little later as I crouched to take a picture one of the monkeys jumped onto my shoulders and started inspecting the top of my head.  I think he was looking for lice; I was pretty insulted.  Unfortunately, no one got a picture before the monkey started scratching gently at my scalp.  I shook him off before he could start scratching harder.

That evening we got our first taste of Balinese dancing.  There was a gamelan (Balinese orchestra) of about 20.  The dancing is so different from Western dance that it is difficult to describe.  The eyes and fingers are as much a part of the motion as arms and legs.  (Try moving your ring finger, without moving the rest of your hand, left and right so fast that it can barely be seen.)  I have a video that I will post on the blog when we get to a place with a faster Internet connection. 

 

 

 

 

 

Frank and Janet, Sile’s brother and sister-in-law, arrived on Wednesday and I got to do the “Bali 101” tour from memory.  (Michael was unavailable.)  Part of the tour is visiting temples and, for this, everyone must wear a sarong.  No Western man looks good in a sarong.  I leave it to the reader as an exercise to pick out the most ridiculous looking individual among the following:

More on our Bali adventure later…..