All About Bali

When I envisioned what Bali would look like, I pictured beautiful beaches and five star resorts. This part of Bali does exsist but not where we went. The resort area is not typical of traditional island life.

The uniquely Balinese Huindu-animist faith is evident everywhere you look and the sheer abundance of temples reflects the Balinese devotion to their deities.

Every village has three temples built in them. One is dedicated to the Brahma (Creator of the Universe), next is Vishnu (the Preserver), and last is Shiva (the Destroyer). In addition to the Hindu Gods, the Balinese people have a special set of deities all their own. The Good Spirits inhabit the mountains and the Evil Spirits lurk in the forest and lonely beaches. The sea is crawling with demons. Their fishing boats have Good deities on the front of them to protect from the demons. We saw a lot of black and white checkered material. The material reminds them that both good and evil must exsist but that both must be kept in balance. They make offerings to both spirits so that they don't offend either. They make offerings to the the Good Spirit with beautiful flowers and food. They make offerings to the Evil Spirit by putting old food and dead flowers on the ground.

All temples face the mountains and away from the sea. There are six holy sadkahyangon shrines in Hindu style temples that belong to everyone.

In addition to all these other temples that I have told you about, EVERY HOME MUST HAVE A SMALL TEMPLE. They make offerings twice a day at their own home temple. There are more temples on the island than houses.

Our Balinese guide told us more things about his people. Most people live in compounds. There would be the husband and wife, the children (they can only have two), and the grandparents living in the compound. The compound would consist of a wall surrounding their property. Inside this area would be six buildings.

1. The kitchen or cooking area.
2. The sleeping building - they all sleep in the same room.
3. The guest room building.
4. The storage building - all their food is stored there.
5. Ceremony building.
6. Their home temple.

When I think of a compound I think of a large area but these compounds are about the size of one of our homes. They wash their clothes in the river. The river is the same place that they have to take their bath.

The wife gets up about 5:30 in the morning to cook the rice and what ever else they will eat. They have rice with every meal. Breakfast is the only warm meal of the day. The lunch and dinner will be served cold and consist of what was cooked that morning. The wife only cooks once a day.

The wife is the one that takes care of the money. Our guide said that it was wise for the wife to have the money because the husband would probably lose it all on gambling.

Only one or two families in the village have a TV. If someone wants to watch TV then they go to the community center in their village.

The Balinese culture centers on agriculture. Cattle, copra, and coffee are exported, while rice is grown almost exclusively for local use. We also saw mats left out in the sun to dry rice, peanuts, and cakes. The cakes were made for food offerings in the temple.

They had magnificent terraced rice fields. The whole island is so green. Each family has a garden to grown as much of their own food as they can.

There were a lot of roosters in basket cages. Cockfighting is very big there. That is where most of the gambling takes place. Sometimes the rooster is dyed pink, yellow, or green so that they can tell which rooster belongs to each owner.

There are two villages where the Bali Aga live. One in the mountains and another closer to the sea. These people are descendants of the original island people who maintain their pre-Hindu culture. Their compound is arranged in two rows along a wide, stone-paved street running the length of the whole village. These people must marry someone from the compound. If they marry someone outside of the compound, then they must leave and can never return.

Men have their eye teeth filed down to get rid of evil thoughts. This is not done by the dentist either. They believe in reincarnation. They have a celebratory funeral ceremony to help the spirit get liberated from the body and cross over to the "real" world.

The street vendors were the worst that we have had so far on this cruise. It was bad enough when they would surround you with five or six people but sometimes they would start touching us.