Bali

From Australia, which felt somewhat like home, we’ve traveled to exotic Indonesia—an archipelago of over 17,000 islands. Our first stop was Bali Island—hot, humid, colorful and noisy. We chose to leave the cities and retreat to the rural part of the island. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto….

We started at the market in the village of Tulikup, shown in Picture 1. The people in rural villages shop every day, because 90% of them do not have refrigerators. In addition to the fruits and vegetables we’re used to seeing, we also saw more exotic fruits like Mangostene (purple fruit that looks kind of like a tomato) and Durian (smells disgusting, but tastes wonderful—so we’re told!).

While the predominant religion in Indonesia is Islam, Bali remains predominantly Hindu. We visited the second largest Hindu temple in Bali: the Pura Kehen Temple from the 13^th Century. Figure 2 shows the stairs leading to the first gate. In total, there are 3 sets of stairs, each ending in a gate. Hindus are constantly making offerings to the gods and Picture 3 shows one wall of the temple, where dinnerware has been donated—older Chinese porcelain. When you reach the 3^rd level you find many different altar-like structures (Example shown in Picture 4), where people leave offerings during festivals.

Our next stop was a cultural center, where children were taking Sunday English classes (schools are generally closed on Saturday and Sunday). We brought school supplies for the class, so they reciprocated by singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. They’re 7-11, really cute and are doing a pretty good job of speaking English (Picture 5).

We then strolled through town and into the rice fields, where we enjoyed a wonderful lunch. (Picture 6). Most houses we saw were really compounds for multiple generations. Unique to each one is the gate—a typical one is shown in Picture 7. They are generally narrow to keep out evil spirits and most have been modified with a ramp in the center of the stairs for their motorbike. The kitchen is usually a separate building from the living area and much cooking is done outdoors. 95% of the homes in rural villages still cook over wood fires—there is no electricity and bottled propane is very expensive (these families live on an average of $2 per day).

Sexual equality has not come to this part of the world. When a boy is born, his umbilical cord is placed in an under-ripe (yellow) coconut and placed in the ocean, so he will go out in the world and be successful. A girl’s umbilical cord is placed in a container and buried outside the kitchen, so she’ll be successful at home.

At the front of every home you’ll find a small structure for offerings. Picture 8 shows an example. Offerings are often constructed of woven plate-like bases with flowers on top. People can make these, but there was a brisk business selling these in the market.

We also saw the cookware salesman walking through town. (Picture 9)

Rice fields are everywhere on Bali. Picture 10 shows an example. They plant and harvest 3 crops of rice each year and none of it leaves the island—it is for their consumption. They estimate that the average person eats half a kilo (a little over a pound) of rice PER DAY—breakfast, lunch and dinner. Rice approaching maturity is shown in Picture 11. The seeds at the end are the rice kernels. The brown husk is removed: by machine or pounded off by hand. The brown husk is fed to pigs. So I’m wondering where the nutritional value is….

Following lunch we had a demonstration of Indonesian dancing (Picture 12). Foot and hand/finger placement is very important. They bend their fingers in such a way that amazes—our old fingers couldn’t’ come close!