Time for friends and travelling

1½ week ago Mailiss & Erling arrived from Norway, for a 2-week holiday on Bali. And they brought the sun and good weather with them. The last 2 weeks before they came it had been raining a lot every day, more than we have seen in the 8 months we live here. Luckily it stopped and Bali shows its very best side to our dear visitors. The first 9 days we spend time together and at the moment they have some romantic days on their own in a beach hotel. Last week we were hanging on different beaches and just relaxing, showing the good, slow Balinese life. Iris also took them on a daytrip to Ubud, showing the foundation she worked at and just to see Ubud, which is our favourite place in Bali. Both Mailiss and Erling practiced a couple of times on driving the scooter in Bali traffic and after a couple of days we drove easily around both to Ubud and to Balangan beach in the south. Especially Mailiss just loved it. After driving scooter for many years in the past, it was a familiar and fun activity for her! For us it is fun to have people over and see Bali through new eyes again. Even though we highly appreciate our blessed everyday life here and enjoy every second. It is good to see how others react when they see things, realizing how easily we actually adapt and get used to things, we almost forget that all this wasn’t to natural when we first came here. We probably get a new culture shock when we come back home to Norway and the Netherlands…



Mailiss & Erling have a camera with a good function for panorama pictures, which we miss a lot, with all the nature and beaches we photograph here on Bali. We are so happy to have some panorama pictures now from this paradise island!

Van week 16 Bali, Mailiss& Erling

“Our” beach in Seminyak

Van week 16 Bali, Mailiss& Erling

Beautiful Geger beach with seaweed farming in the water

Weekend trip
We had booked Nyoman, who was our guide once before, to be our guide together with his driver Komang for 3 days in a row this time. Nyoman is a good guide and good company to travel with and Komang is a humble and good driver that makes us feel safe. We wanted to show Mailiss & Erling a variety of the beauty of Bali, a mix of things we had seen before and things we also still wanted to see or do. One of those things was to climb Gunung (mount) Batur and see the sunrise. Saturday at 8am we were picked up and started our journey. The weather was beautiful, we were excited to show Bali we have learned to love so much and
M&E were excited to see so much of Bali’s other beauty after a week enjoying the beaches.

We headed to the north with a waterfall, rice fields and a couple of temples in mind. We visited the royal temple Taman Ayun in Mengwi. When you think you have seen all kind of temples in Bali, you get to see a new one that looks again different than the ones you saw before. Again a beautiful temple to see and to photograph without it looking just like our other pictures. After this we drove to the UNESCO world heritage nominated rice terraces in Jatiluwih. We had been there before and we really want everybody visiting Bali to see this almost artificial landscape and magnificent rice fields. We would like to see it with newly planted rice once, but just like last time the rice was already high now. Beautiful, but the view is probably totally different with young rice, we hope to maybe see this one time before leaving Bali.

Van Week 16-17; Bali; the trip

Panorama view on Jatiluwih

Close to Jatiluwih the public temple Pura Luhur Batukaru is laying on the foot of Gunung Batukaru. Today there was an important ceremony going on in whole Bali, especially for all school kids and students, Hari Raya Saraswati. A ceremony to thank the Goddess of learning, science, and literature through offerings and prayer. In and around the temple we saw around 1000 children and teenagers in Balinese clothing bringing their own small offering to the temple. We had never seen such a massive ceremony with so many people waiting to make their offering. Teenagers were actually standing in line to get in to the praying area. Just like back home we stand in line for a concert or something else, laughing, talking and just being like teenagers are. It looked and sounded so familiar in one way, but then again so different.
We took of over the mountains and towards Singaraja. On the way down we still had daylight and time to see Gitgit waterfall. A nice short walk towards and a beautiful waterfall, but too many souvenir shops along the path and too much “cheap, cheap”, “1dollar, 1dollar”, “yes, please shopping, shopping?” We stopped in Singaraja to eat some food and watch the sunset from the nice warungs on the old harbour front.
It was getting dark and we were tired and full of impressions from the day. Komang drove us safely to Kintamani, the village in front of Gunung Batur, the mountain we were going to climb at 4am next morning….

After the climb on Batur (see further down) it was still morning and we wanted to take it easy the rest of the day, after a volcano climb you are not taking inn so much more that day. Amed on the east coast was the destination and relaxing and snorkelling was the plan. Nyoman and Komang once again drove us safely and were great company. We booked a nice and clean hotel with swimming pool for the night. After some snorkelling, swimming and beers we were more than satisfied of the day went to bed early.

Monday late morning Nyoman and Komang picked us up and we slowly headed to the west and back home with a couple of destinations on the way. Tirta Gangga water palace is one place to be if you are in Bali, it is a peaceful and beautiful Royal palace and temple and most of all a big garden to explore and admire. The restaurant with view over the garden is slightly expensive, but highly worth the money. The food is fantastic, the service is good and the view is rewarding.

Van Week 16-17; Bali; the trip

View on Tirta Gangga

Back in the car we made a route through Sidemen road which one of the most beautiful valleys to drive through in Bali. We had a few stops, a small traditional Ikat weaving factory and we also made a visit to the only resort in the area, just to have a look. If you want to experience peace of mind and harmony just by staying at a place, you should stay a night or more at Surya Shanti in Sidemen. We are thinking of it, even though it’s quite above our budget (donations are accepted ;-) ). Combination of the amazing rooms, interior, atmosphere, swimming pool and not to forget the indescribable view, makes it just an oasis in the middle of Bali.
To end our day and long weekend with almost overkill in input we visited Gyanyar evening marked, which is supposed to be very nice and cosy. Erling and Rino tried to eat Babi Guling (suckling pig) and burned their mouth out of the spicy local food and we walked through the marked and just experienced the Balinese roaring marked life. We went home and let the weekend and all the experiences sink in on us.



Gunung Batur
We have been looking forward to climb a volcano already since we came here. But in the rain season its not really recommended and often the passes are even closed. Now the wet season is slowly ending and with all the visits coming up we wanted to finally go for it. Gunung Batur is a 2-hour hike up the 1717m high mountain and you see sunrise from the top. M&E were also excited, none of us had ever seen or climbed a volcano.
After a banana pancake and coffee at 3.30 in the morning, Wayan, the guide picked us up and we started the hike in the dark with flashlights and enthusiasm. Through forests in the beginning, followed by steep and curvy paths up the side of the mountain. We took a few small drinking stops and admired the dark valley of Kintamani and lake Batur beneath us under the stars. Slowly a tiny hint of purple light was coming up on the east horizon and we continued our climb up to the top. Wayan, our guide is a highly experienced senior guide, born and raised in the area. He made us feel safe and always on ease and had a perfect tempo for the 4 of us. Sweaty but not too exhausted we arrived on the top op Gunung Batur and together with a few other groups and guides we could take in the stunning view, while the sun minute by minute made its entrance on the landscape around us. The big crater and all the details of the volcano slowly became visible for us. It was such a rewarding feeling to stand there together the 4 of us at 6.30 and look at the beauty around us and smell, see and feel the volcano we stood on. The steam poring out everywhere, the hot stones we could touch and the fact that we could boil eggs in the steam in the mountainside was so fascinating! Breakfast on a volcano: Mountain steam boiled eggs and mountain steam cooked banana sandwich, yuuummmyyy!! :-)

Van Week 16-17; Bali; the trip

Van Week 16-17; Bali; the trip

The sun is entering the landscape :-)


The rest of the journey was to walk around parts of the big crater and then slowly go down on the other side of the mountain, seeing a smaller, but more recently active crater and walking to a point were we would be picked up by our car.
Mailiss and especially Iris were finding parts of walking on the (sometimes narrow) crater edge a bit too exciting, but with lots of adrenaline, positivity and sometimes a steady hand from the guide we all had a trip and experience, which we find hard to describe in words. A tear in the corner of an eye and goosebumps are some of the ways to explain the beauty. It is on top of our experiences and places to be on Bali.



After this trip we have decided to also climb the highest volcano in Bali Gunung Agung (3142m) together with Sarah, which we picked up from the airport yesterday. WELCOME SARAH! We want to climb Agung together with Wayan, the guide we also had for Batur. We are excited about how that is going to be, harder for sure but maybe twice as rewarding…you have to wait and see. We will tell all about it when the time comes.

Van Week 16-17; Bali; the trip

Gunung Agung in the very back, our next goal :-)

Bali Hindu offerings

As you know Bali has a very rich culture and a complex Hinduism, which influences the people and their daily life enormously. One of the things that are visible in every corner, street, crossroad, shop entrance, kitchen, restaurant floor, on the bar, simply everywhere, is the small colorful offer baskets for the Hindu gods and spirits. This small basket made of palm leaves, are filled with different holy flowers in many colors, rice and with different items, depending on the family or where the offer is placed. Mostly you will see candy, a cookie, fruit, a cigarette or money, again depending on the place of the offer. The Balinese believe in the balance between good and bad, yin and yang, they say one cannot exist without the other. So they will always equally make offerings to the good spirits as well as the bad spirits to please them all. The good spirits are then happy and will give fortune and wealth and the bad spirits are kept satisfied and quiet and will leave the people alone. Every house, room and area has a beautifully painted wooden box hanging on the wall somewhere. This is where they put the offer basket for the good gods. The offer baskets for the bad spirits will be placed on the ground, the ground is considered dirty and belong to the bad spirits. Which you also see when child in Bali will not touch the ground before a ceremony is done at 3 months and it’s rude to sit with your feet towards another person.

The offerings are done several times a day, mostly morning, afternoon and evening, depending also on the family, shop, hotel or other place. Because it is everywhere, at a shop they will offer to the gods of money and business. And at a school it’s important to offer to the gods of knowledge. At the beach you see offer baskets everywhere, to bring good luck, to keep the tourists and surfers safe and to please the gods of the ocean. And so on. This are just the regular days, then you off course also have all the special days of the Balinese calendar, where there will be offered more and with more items and more beautiful baskets. The people have obligations to offer and pray at certain days in the calendar at their family temple, village temple and public temple.

Placing the offering is a small ceremony on its own, the woman will always do it, except when there is no woman present at the time, a man will do it. They put on a sarong and a scarf around the middle, which is also used when you enter a temple in Bali. The basket is placed in the box or on the ground, an incense stick is put in front of it and with the right hand they make a move like they give it to the spirits and say a prayer. The baskets on the ground also get a splash of arak, the local liquor, this is of course for the bad spirits and not for the good. This ritual you can see everywhere at any time of the day, that’s if you are in a shop, at a restaurant, at the beach or just walking on the street. It is beautiful to watch and it makes us actually feel safe here. Outside our door, which is in our neighbor’s garden, there is a box hanging on the wall. Every morning there is an offerbasket and an incense stick inside it, it must be for us and our wellbeing. That’s how it is everywhere, they will offer for themselves, the island and wellbeing, but they also offer for the visitors, strangers and tourists. No wonder we feel safe!

Many people are scared to step on a basket or ruin it, but when the incense stick is burned out, the offer is absorbed/taken by the spirits and the offerbasket is not considered holy anymore. That’s handy to know, because the baskets are often lying in the middle of the sidewalk or exactly where you drive your scooter. I also wonder if they take back the cigarettes and money…never saw anybody do it yet. The dogs are anyway happy for the cookies and the rice.
For the bigger ceremonies also bigger offerings are maid. The woman will bring baskets with fruit and food, carrying it on their head to the temple/ceremony. Men will offer an animal, a pig, chicken or rooster, sometimes also done by a cockfight. For some special ceremonies the woman carry big creations on their head, made of fruit and flowers. The people will eat all the food, fruit and meat when the ceremony is finished, the spirits already had their share.

As you already can imagine the offerings are a big part of the Balinese Hinduism and the people’s daily routines and traditions. It is also a visual and artistic beauty for others visiting Bali, because you can see the offerings and the offerings being made at all times and at all places.

Rain, routine & the beginning of the end

Last couple of weeks have been terrible weather-wise, we never had so much rain and unstable weather since we moved here. It actually has rained every day, several times a day for 10 days in a row. Bali has mostly a couple of hours of heavy rain and then the sun shines again or sometime it rains many hours during the night. But like this we have never seen. It doesn’t matter so much as long as it stops NOW, before our visit is coming. We feel sorry for the tourists who were here only last week, they have hardly seen sun at all. Iris has used the last weeks on building up energy again and reading books while Rino is working, during the afternoons we have been hooked on the serie ‘Californication’. We have seen all 4 seasons in 10 days. It is so funny! That’s the way we have survived the rain so far.

Last weekend we finally went away again on the scooter to see new parts of the island. We took a chance that it would be better weather on Saturday, which it was and we went away from the rain that was falling back home we heard later. We tried the west this time, which we had never explored before. Saturday morning we drove a couple of hours to the west and had planned that we would stay at Medewi beach. The road and traffic is terrible, it is the main road to the ferry that goes to Java, so there is a lot of heavy traffic with big trucks and busses driving (for Balinese standard) really fast! The pollution is crazy and for the first time on Bali we didn’t feel that safe on the road on our small, cute scooter between all the big, heavy, stinky trucks. It was a beautiful drive partly though because of a nice view over the ocean and vaguely we could see Java in the horizon. Keep left, drive carefully and let all the big trucks pass when they honk, then everything is ok.

The west coast of Bali is known for the good surf breaks and the homestays, hotels and beaches are also focusing on the surfers. There is not much tourism either except from surfers, yet. The beaches are not that nice, mostly black sand and much stones, but the breaks are beautiful and close to shore, without dangerous riffs. But we didn’t surf ourselves, we didn’t bring our board and it was not a priority this time. We checked in to a nice hotel and explored the area, we found Balian beach with cosy restaurants and swimming pool, which we enjoyed the rest of the day.

Sunday we had planed a drive up an alternative route before heading homewards. The route was up the hills of west/central Bali on small roads, through small villages and beautiful Balinese landscape. The route starts in Pelukan and ends back on the same road further east at Antosari. It’s a road well worth taking. We saw the beautiful (at this point for us) familiar rice paddies, we still never go tired of seeing rice fields here, they are stunning eye candy every time again! In this area there was also a lot of other farming, different spices, nuts, coffee and fruit. We even drove through an enormous tree where the road was made in the middle of the tree, really beautiful! We wanted to take a break and walk to a waterfall near Pupuan, halfway the route. One of the women in the village stoped us and told us that we had to take a guide, we would not find the waterfall otherwise... Probably she just wants to earn some money, but ok, we did it, it’s also nice to leave something for the locals anyway. We agreed on a good price for everybody and we walked together with Ketut, who turned out to be a really sweet, intelligent woman who talked perfect English. The waterfall was beautiful and the walk as well, the Balinese jungle is always fascinating with all the spices and fruits growing everywhere. Until now the weather had been treating us really nice, but on our way back from the waterfall the sky opened up and all water fell down that didn’t fall the two days before. We hurried back to the village and Ketut invited us to drink coffee at her family’s compound until the worst rain would stop. We drank Balinese coffee and tasted different Balinese vegetables and fruits she offered us and we met her sweet (youngest) daughter and just as sweet grandmother in law.
We had a wet and long drive home and the rain didn’t stop. But we had already seen the beauty of this route and of the west of Bali and were happy to just get home and watch more episodes of Californication. :-)

We are a little out of routine, because Iris was sick and with the rain last weeks, the days and weeks have looked different the last months than before. At the moment we talk a lot about going home, traveling and leave Bali. We now really look forward to have friends coming over, it’s just perfect timing for us and we need some social input and fun with friends. Through their eyes we can enjoy Bali to the max again for our last period here! Because paradise it is still, we are very aware of that!

Planning new adventures!

As we say in Dutch ‘the bullet is through the church’ we have booked our journey out of Bali. Of course we still have three months on Bali left to enjoy paradise, but flight tickets get expensive quickly so we had to make some plans for our trip. Our flight back to Belanda, I mean the Netherlands, is on the 28th of July from Bangkok and Rino’s internship finishes on the 1st of July. We look forward to travel south-east Asia, so we decided to hit the road already a few hours after Rino finishes his last day. We will also celebrate our second anniversary on the 2nd of July and we would like to do something special of course. We now have booked two flights, one from Bali to Kuala Lumpur and one 12 days later from Phuket (Thailand) to Udon Thani (Thailand) near the border of Laos. So we have planned to travel parts of Malaysia, south Thailand, Laos and finishing with Bangkok and its surroundings.

But first we still have lots to look forward to in the coming months with many visits and hopefully loads of trips around the island. At the moment we are in a quieter period with Iris her dengue fever and we are saving money for the visits. So it has been nice for us to talk and plan about our trip in July. Especially Rino is looking forward to that time as he then finally finishes his internship and hopefully graduates. ‘The last mile is the longest’, this definitely counts for his internship.

Iris is making good progress in recovering from dengue fever and is feeling better every day. The energy is slowly coming back and the blood levels are back to normal. She only has to come back to the hospital to check her liver functions. She slowly builds up energy as the virus really cuts into your immune system. We are using more of the mosquito spray nowadays, as we now know what a terrible virus this is.

Dengue Fever

The fun
It has been a while since our last blog post. The weekend after Iris returned from Singapore we stayed at home and on Sunday we went to the Waterbom Park in Kuta, which is a very touristic but fun park with many water slides. We like these kind of parks, because you can act as a child again, especially the CLIMAX water slide, where you are standing on a ledge that at a certain moment just disappears under your foot, was a huge adrenaline kick. On the Friday before, Iris had an extended lunch with Carla, an Indonesian friend we once met at one of the concerts of Ronaldgang. Together with her boyfriend we had diner in Cafe Bali, one of the better and restaurants in this area (see here Rino’s review). We had a great evening with Carla and Vincent and look forward to spend some more time with them.

The next Thursday we gat to see how small the world can be. In Singapore Iris was hanging out with a group op different travellers, also Monaliza, a Swedish girl. By crazy coincidence we were eating at the same tiny, cheap warung in a unknown back alley here in Bali. After some chit-chat Iris and Mona-Liza exchanged phone numbers and we met again the day after for a party at La Planche, a very cool beach bar/lounge in front of Rino’s hotel. Together we had a good time this evening and we enjoyed going out partying again for once, we don’t do that so often.

No more fun
The next morning Iris woke-up with a huge headache and soon she also got a fever. This day we had planned to go to a yogathon and another full moon celebratioin organized by Desa Seni, the village resort Iris does her yoga. But unfortunately Iris was not getting any better and we stayed at home. The yogathon was also a pre-party to a big yoga festival, which is in Ubud at the moment, the Bali Spirit festival. Iris had applied as a volunteer and was looking forward to work there. The next day the fever unfortunately rose up to 39 degrees. We soon thought of going to the doctor, but the Balinese doctors are not always really to be trusted, so Iris wanted to wait a little while.

After a couple of days with changing temperatures we finally decided to go and see a doctor on Wednesday. We were advised to go to one of the international hospital, as they have international service. The doctor Iris saw was very professional and he did a thorough examination. He concluded that Iris her blood needed to be tested against several diseases, including Dengue fever and Malaria. Yesterday evening Iris already got the results back and unfortunately Iris has Dengue fever.

Dengue fever is a virus which is spread by the infected dengue mosquito. The virus has four levels and luckily Iris has one of the milder levels. Until now there is no cure or medicine for dengue fever, you just have to rest and wait until it gets over. At the moment Iris still has a low fever (around the 38 degrees) and is very weak. She sleeps most parts of the day and is hardly able to do anything else than laying down on the bed or couch. She also is supposed to only rest and do nothing more, drink a lot and wait till it gets better. The doctor says dengue can take 7-10 days, but how long you will be weak is not sure. She is really ‘sick’ of it, as she would be volunteering at the Bali Spirit Festival. Tomorrow we are going back to the hospital and they will do more blood tests. As far as we know Iris can stay at home as long as it doesn’t get any worse. Every other day we have to go to the hospital for new blood checks. Tomorrow is also Iris her 7th day, so we hope she will improve from that moment.

Singapore

I (Iris) went to Singapore for 3 days this week. 9 March I had been here for 180 days (time flies!!!), which is the max for my visa. I have to go outside the country to be able to come back with a new visa an stay here legally again. This time I fix my visa through other people then Sjaki, because I don’t work there anymore. This is not a big deal now that we live and know people here. I was able to get a new sponsor and gat a phone number to an agent in Singapore that was going to fix everything for me. Relaxed, so I could enjoy Singapore even more! ;-)

My days in the Asian Big Apple were wonderful, it was nice to see something new again and Singapore is such an impressive city. Unbelievably clean, high-tech and hip. We were here already 1 day in September, but it was nice to be able to explore more of the city now. Rino doesn’t have to go for his visa and therefore the trip would have been too expensive, although he would have liked to see Singapore again too.

Wednesday I met with the agent for 2 minutes. It felt really weird to give a guy I never saw before my passport and 170 S. dollars…. But in the afternoon he came to my hostel with my passport and the social visa inside. Just perfect and I could enjoy the rest of my time in Singapore knowing that my way back to Bali for the next months was safe! :-)

I slept in the hostel Rucksack Inn that we discovered last time. We LOVE this hostel; it really must be the nicest and coolest hostel in the world. It has a fantastic atmosphere and you feel like home immediately, which is a very good thing for backpackers who travel all the time. Fun and genuine staff who are backpackers themselves, homey, cozy and clean.
I talked to a couple of the other people sleeping in the dorm with me and I joined an English couple sightseeing the city. Later we went out eating and drinking beer with other travelers in the hostel. I love Singapore, it is a must see and perfect place to hang out a couple of days when you do South-East Asia. Shopping heaven, fun, hip and impressive!

I am safely back in my little paradise Bali and I am very very happy to be able to mingle in this relaxing atmosphere a while more. On the other hand I for a second there recognized the urge and nice feeling again of traveling and discovering more of the world.

Balinese New Year, part II Ogoh Ogoh & Nyepi

Selamat Hari Raya Nyepi Tahun Baru Saka 1933!!! Happy Balinese New Year!!!

Yesterday we experienced Nyepi the day of silence. Everything on Bali is about balance between: good & bad, yin & yang, black & white etc. This symbolism is shown in all rituals, so also during Nyepi. Nyepi symbolizes good, silence and self-reflection and this is balanced with Ogoh-Ogoh the day before.

Ogoh-Ogoh
Ogoh-Ogoh’s are statues built for the Ngrupuk parade, which takes place on the eve before Nyepi day. Ogoh-Ogoh’s have the form of mythological beings, mostly demons. The main purpose of the making of Ogoh-Ogoh is the purification of the natural environment of any spiritual poisons released from the activities of living beings (especially humans). They are made from wood and bamboo, covered with papier-mâché and Styrofoam. They are then painted with garish colours. Every Banjar (sub village) makes their own Ogoh-Ogoh and we saw them building the statues already 4 weeks ago everywhere along the streets. In the slide show below we show the Ogoh-Ogoh’s we found the most impressive.



We heard a couple of stories about the symbolism of Ogoh-Ogoh and Nyepi. One entails that the people during Ogoh-Ogoh make a big show with a lot of noise from the gamelan, firecrackers and the performance with the statues. This is to please the bad and dark spirits. Before the performance the men also drink arak, the Balinese wine/spirit. Nyepi – the day of silence – is for the people to please the good spirits through silence and meditation.
The second version of the symbolism is that with the performance, music and firecrackers during Ogoh-Ogoh, the bad and dark spirits are scarred away and leave the island. When they return on Nyepi day they will think the island is completely abandoned, because of the silence and empty streets.

For the Ogoh-Ogoh we also joined Janur in her village, like we did with the Melasti ceremony. There were 13 Banjars celebrating together. The statues were first carried in one big parade to a central place within the village, where the Ogoh-Ogoh performances were performed. At the intersections each statue had to be rotated 3 times to confuse the bad spirits. After arriving at the central place the performance started. Each Banjar had chosen a story out of the Balinese mythology. The Ogoh-Ogoh was also built by inspiration of the chosen story. The video below gives an impression of the performances. Each performance was around 20 minutes, meaning we were watching 13 times 20 minutes. The complete evening was impressive, but a bit long for our legs and tummy. Luckily after the performances each Banjar goes back to their own central building to enjoy traditional Balinese food, and we loved it.




Pictures from the Ogoh-Ogoh evening :-)

Nyepi
On our way home from the Ogoh-Ogoh we were sometimes hold up by other Ogoh-Ogoh’s still performing in villages. By the time we came home it was already 1am and we could see and feel that the day of silence was already starting. We almost didn’t recognize our way back home, because everything was totally dark: no traffic lights, no streetlights, no shop signs or headlights were on and it was already silent in our neighbourhood. Very fascinating. But staying outside too long is illegal and can get cost you a fine, so we went inside and stayed the next 30 hours.

The next morning we couldn’t set an alarm, because hey, that makes noise of course, so we could do nothing else but sleep ;-). We love the idea of a day in complete silence, but still I guess our day looked a little bit different than for a Balinese family. Out of respect for the culture and our neighbours we kept to the rituals as much as possible. Although we also made our own special day out of it, which entailed that we didn’t keep all the ‘don’ts’ of the day. We watched several movies on the laptop with earplugs, we used some lights after dark and we used fire to cook our dinner.
Because we never cook our own dinner here (because of the high prices for food compared to eat outside), we enjoyed the fact that we were forced to eat inside. We opened a bottle of red wine left from when we had our families over and we had a nice candlelight dinner ;-)



We unfortunately still kept on to many lights for a while in the evening without really being aware of it. It disturbed our neighbours and they knocked on our door to ask us to turn of the light (Sorry!!). When there is NO light and sound whatsoever on the whole island, you are very sensitive for any light or sound. We were told the stars would be magnificent in the evening and luckily after raining almost the complete day, it dried up and we could see the stars from our small garden.

We are very happy to be able to experience Nyepi here on Bali and all that came with it. Bali has got worldwide recognition for this day of silence, as they want to have a day of silence in the complete world. This is because it saves a lot of energy, which is a great way to make us aware of the environment. And it gives people time and possibility to self-reflection. We would love to see this happen. We think that this is a great signal to all of us wherever we are and no matter how we fill in the day. Just to be aware and use 1 day a year to pull the breaks and do nothing :-)



Here you see the kids in Janur's village with their own selfmade Ogoh Ogoh. They carried it themselves and danced around just like the grownups to the gamelan orchestra before the big parade started. It's a bit similar to the carnival back home, the kids of course LOVE it :-)

Balinese New Year, part I Melasti ceremony

Balinese New Year is called Nyepi and is celebrated every March or April according to the Balinese Saka calendar. It includes several rituals and ends with Nyepi day, a day of silence, fasting and meditation. On Nyepi Day total silence prevails. The airport and harbors shut down, shops close, traffic is forbidden and nobody leaves their compound. It is forbidden to turn on electricity, cook or light fires. Balinese radio and television stop. The Balinese people fast for 24 hours. There are 4 basic restrictions: no fire, no working, no travelling, and no leisure activities. More about Nyepi and how we experienced it in our next blog post.

Melasti ceremony
The Melasti ceremony is performed 3-4 days before Nyepi. Every village in Bali will go to closest temple at preferably the ocean or otherwise a lake. Here they will pay respect to the gods of land and sea by sprinkling water over status (sacred objects) from each family and village temple.

We were invited to join this ceremony with Janur (a colleague of Rino) in her village close to Tabanan. During this ceremony everybody is supposed to wear a white shirt (for men)/kebaya (for women), so we also dressed up as we were supposed to. The ceremony included a 1 hour walk to the beach (Tanah Lot Temple) were all the status were blessed. Several villages joined this parade and in total it included up to 2000 people. We joined the parade to the beach. After taking some pictures Janur already asked us to walk back to her village temple to wait for all the status to come back. After the blessing at the beach the gods are present and will take place inside the bodies of several people she told us. The statues and people have to get back to the village temple as quick as possible. They actually run all the way back!

While waiting for the status to come back a group of young girls danced Legong to welcome the status. Priests were sitting on the street at the entrance of the village temple praying and we were holding our breaths while waiting for what to come. When the status came it all went very fast. Before they entered the temple they were hold up for another offering done by the priests at the entrance. The gods also need food and therefore a small pig was offered and killed. After the final offer it all went very quickly, everybody hurried inside the temple with the status, barongs and the people taken by the gods. Especially the people that were taken over by the gods really made an impression on us. We could see different people suddenly change in appearance and behavior, in different ways. Some looked very peaceful and happy while dancing like in a trance and others had big scary eyes and strange chaotic behavior. All these people were closely watched and guided by others. Janur could tell us that this was because their mind was not in control over their bodies. After receiving holy water this people will become themselves and back to normal again.

It was an impressive, beautiful and sometimes a bit scary experience for us. Hopefully our explanation and the movie and pictures below can give you an idea of what we have experienced.




This video gives an impression of the ceremony when the statues came back and some people that were taken by the gods. (sorry for the quality, we have no edit experience ;-) )