Tom and Jan Journey East 2012: Beautiful Bali High

Beautiful Art of Bali

March 2012
We are sitting on the balcony of the Ruma Roda Homestay watching the sun set over the palm trees and the egrets flying home in flocks to roost somewhere to the north. The weather is cloudy with occasional torrential rain and thundershowers off and on during the day, but it is balmy tonight. Without the rain it can be very hot and humid, but right now the temperature is perfect. Next door, down the block, there are gongs and Balinese music coming from a local temple wafting across to us. We have a view from our fourth floor room of tile and palm frond rooftops from ours and our neighbor's compounds and some rice fields beyond.

Rice fields around Ubud

I can tell where the narrow cobbled street runs through the neighborhood from the line of 30-foot tall bamboo poles. They are decorated with leaves of banana, bamboo, rice, and corn, which are cut, twisted into loops along the bending shafts, and placed at every front gate.

To the Balinese, these are their Christmas trees, put up for several months and then taken down and burnt on the full moon of the last month. These decorative poles have just added another layer of charm, and mystique to this beautiful, lush, garden city of Ubud, Bali.

Everywhere is lush, green and colorful.

We went to Bali with the idea that we would need a month in one place to slow our travel pace, and to get to know one country and people more intimately. Bali was a good choice as there is much to do here, and so much culture, it could take many visits to absorb it all. We found beauty, friendly locals, and were able to observe the spirituality and calmness of Bali life.

Typical gate of a private family compound. Every home
has it's own shrines and temple, even when the home is simple

In Ubud, which lies in a inland rice terraced, valley, we decided to try a "home stay" in a family compound. It not only fit our budget, it also seemed like the most culturally rich environment. The Rumah Roda home stay belongs to Darta and his immediate and extended family. There are a large number of relatives that live behind these main walls in several different buildings.

When you come in the front gate you might be greeted by Darta or his wife, several grown children, babies, grandparents, or the old uncle who has his own little covered platform right at the entrance. You see grandma combing her hair, babies being minded, the uncle making dishes out of banana leaves for their restaurant's Sunday night buffet.

Kids at Ruma Roda's

Grandma making offerings at Ruma Roda

There is a family temple that you pass by, and a fishpond full of koi, lotus flowers and a few turtles. Our room is on the fourth floor, one of 9, in a hotel-like complex at the back of the property. We have the nicest view and can keep tabs on what the family is up to by leaning over the balcony and looking down. Since we are staying longer than most guests, we've also met several interesting international travelers.

Looking down from our Balcony at Ruma Roda into the Temple. All the baskets are
full of things for making offerings around the house and for temple ceremonies.

Balinese people have such esthetics in their culture and life, that your senses are almost overwhelmed. Everywhere you look there are complex sculptures, small and large shrines, temples covered in flowers and offerings.

Painting of a Balinese woman placing an offering.
We saw this scene over and over.

Ubud is a city of art. Besides the painters and carvers working in their shops, the regular people spend A LOT of their time making decorative offerings to leave in various places around their homes and in the street. Each morning people ~~ceremoniously~~ put little banana leaf boxes full of fruit, flowers, rice, cigarettes, incense etc.

as an offering, on the sidewalks in front of every business, on alters which front every house and corner of the street, on cars, bridges, or any place else that needs a blessing or good luck. We are lucky if we don’t step on them as we walk.

Offerings left daily on the sidewalks

Lots of monkeys in the Monkey Forest Temple.

I'd been asking our homestay owner, Darta, about a procession that we'd heard was to take place, and where would be a good place to observe the activities? He told us to go to the temple, and that we should both wear a sarong and sash. Getting Tom into a skirt was not easy, but finally he agreed. As we made our way there that evening, we noticed lots of people heading the same direction, looking like they were dressed in their finest clothes. Both the men and women were wearing sarongs made of batik material, although they tie them differently.

The women wrap them around very tightly and shapely, (and hard to walk), where the men wear them lose and tied in the front and have easier movement. The ladies wear very fancy lace and sometimes spangled blouses if they can afford it and the men and boys wear a white shirt and white scarf tied in a front knot on their head.

Many of the women were carrying huge (20lb?) baskets of fruit and food on their heads to be blessed at the ceremony.

We were looking for a good place on the sidewalk to watch the procession go by, when we saw our buddy, Darta up by the Temple entrance, waiving at us to come over to him. He motioned us right up the stairs and into the midst of the Temple and the people praying and preparing the icons for the journey. We seemed to be the only non-Balinese present. There were several large masked figures from Hindu stories, about four feet tall, that are carried on the shoulders, and made up of a wild looking scary masks, surrounded by hair, gold decoration, and flowers (representing evil spirits.)

There was also a dragon figure that was carried by two people (to scare away the evil spirits) which were accompanied by people carrying umbrellas on long sticks. A group of about 20 women each carried a large decoration or a stack of food on their head and a band carrying symbols and gongs and xylophone like instruments, called Gamelins, led the procession. Soon the band started playing and everyone proceeded out into the street and started walking. We were urged by Darta to join the group and got swept up in the crowd, following our friend, who was making his way up to the front.

As we walked through the streets, crowds of tourists lined the road, snapping pictures of the colorful procession. I’m sure some of them will be unhappy when they check their pictures to find a couple of " gringos" in the middle of their Balinese celebration scenes. We made our way through the streets with the symbols and drums clanging and women singing a high keening song, toward the river. We finally stopped on the side of the road and extracted ourselves from the procession. Tom took out the camera and shot some video. Following the parade into another temple at the confluence of two rivers, we walked in past another band of gong-gamelin players and made our way to the center. Darta told us that the people of Bali were originally Animists (like our Native Americans) and when the Hindu came they mixed their old beliefs with the new, creating Bali-Hinduism. This ceremony was one of those mixed ideas, and was supposed to cleanse Bali of bad spirits. They do this most every month on the full moon, but this one was a big 6 month celebration. After a while we got tired of sitting cross-legged on the cement watching holy water being sprinkled around, so made our way out the back door. It was an amazing experience being in the middle of it all... I never did get many photos, but it will remain a powerful memory for us.

(Here is a video of the procession; disregard the other videos that come after. They aren't ours)

We stayed in Ubud for about two weeks, and then traveled to the East coast to Amed for a few days. It had charming fishing boats lining the waterfront of every village.

Amed and fishing boats

We also spent 5 days in the little town of Candidasa in the south. We hadn't gotten much beach time this winter on any of our trips, so we were hoping for some time by the sea.

Bali was a wonderful place to visit, but it's not without it's downside. The weather, even though it was usually hot and humid was also rainy much of the time in February/March. Every day we could plan on rainstorms, and we hit some big stormy days at the coast. (OK, I know we can't complain, but we hadn't really planned on cloudy skies much of the time.) Also, since it has been a tourist destination since the 1930's the people definitely have a hard-sell edge for the tourists. Just about anywhere you go there are people trying to get you to rent a taxi, buy a trinket, come into a restaurant, have a massage (Which were great, by the way.... $7-10 for an hour!) etc. You had to get real good at saying "no thanks" constantly. The only other problem with staying in Bali, is that everyone keeps chickens, even in town. There were a half dozen roosters in baskets just below our window in Ubud which all start to crow about 5:30 in the morning. Oh well, have earplugs, will travel!

Exploring the countryside by motorbike

Women seem to be the workers, carrying
everything on their heads, including heavy
bricks and construction materials.

Balinese Dancing is a nightly occurance in Ubud

Rice paddies abound

Can you say hot and humid?

Rice planting and farming is done the old way.

Raiders of the Lost Arc Jungle temples

Bali seemed to have one celebration after another. The day after we were to leave was the Balinese New Year or Nyepi, the Day of Silence. It is a day where no one in Bali, except the religious police, are allowed outside of their homes (including tourists who are to stay in their hotel complexes). Even the airport is shut down and no one flies that day. It's a day of reflection and thinking about starting the New Year with a clean slate. No one works or cooks or plays for 24 hours. Supposedly, the evil spirits are supposed to think that everyone on Bali has died, so there is no use stopping there. We had the last plane out of Bali before Nyepi, but before we left we were able to view some of the Ogoh-Ogoh celebration in the street the day before Neypi. The youth from different temple groups have a competition of building giant demonic statues of mythological beings out of bamboo and Styrofoam.

Construction of the Ogoh-Ogoh went on the whole month we were there.

These are mounted on a bamboo frame and carried through the villages by groups of 10-20 guys. They parade through the town the night before Nyepi, along with Balinese music bands, making as much noise as possible to scare away the evil spirits. At each intersection, they spin the "floats" to confuse the spirits. We figured it was kind of like a Balinese Halloween. It wasn't the Rose Parade, but it was fascinating to see the creativity and hoopla surrounding it.