Bali – Mystery, fantasy and romance at the dangerous ends of the earth

Bedtime, Barongs and Celebrating Bali Culture

By Karen Abrahamson | February 23, 2019

A young peacock dancer at the temple festival. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

It’s February 23 and it’s the day after the birthday of the temple around the corner—thank goodness. I don’t have to go running out for photos of the events. Maybe tonight we can even get a full night’s sleep.

This temple happens to have a congregation of over a thousand families, the largest in the Ubud area. It’s a big deal. For the past five days throngs of people have brought offerings to the temple—think platters and bowls stacked with pineapple, papaya, mangosteen, oranges and even the exotic (to Bali) apple, pear or grape. Flowers, rice, bread, even packaged foods are placed in decorative heaps in beautifully woven, hand painted, gilt and even beaded bowls and carried on women’s heads to the temple where they are stacked until after prayers and then taken home again—where they are eaten by the family who brought them.

The bathing ghats at holy Tirta Empul. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

The processions are a lovely part of Balinese culture, one I’ve already written about here, but there are many more lovely parts of this island. First of all, there are the numerous temples so that there seems to be one around every corner. Some are locked off to foreigners, but many have opened their doors—at least partially. Take for example, the lovely water temple, Tirta Empul, that offers Balinese and foreigner alike the opportunity to cleanse themselves in purified water from holy springs as well as the chance to cleanse their minds in the quiet corners listening to the priest’s bells that act as a focus to prayers.

Offerings at Tirta Empul. In the morning, women place individual baskets at places that are significant to them. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.eremony

Probably the first moment of ceremony that I stumbled over in Bali was a small woven basket with flowers blossoms, a bit of fruit, rice and incense left in a doorway that I literally stumbled over as I went out one morning. These bits of beauty are everywhere, placed there daily usually by a housewife carrying a wicker tray of such things. They stop at shrines or seemingly nondescript places or at gates or doorways and quietly light an incense stick, place it in the basket of blooms and place the whole thing at the doorway. A single exquisite flower bloom held in the point of their fingers as they say a short prayer and then the blossom is placed in the basket, too. And then the woman moves on to the next spot they wish to make offering to. Each day the pavement is littered with flowers and each morning they are swept up and replaced with the same quiet attention to recognizing the precious places around them. It’s a lovely recognition of the sacred in all places.

The birthday of the local temple wasn’t quite so quiet. First came the processions down the street. They are special for this temple because of the stature and age of the temple. Each one is a procession from another temple that has a relationship with this one. Some arrive from close by, but others come by truck from far away and form their procession a few miles away. Each one brings with them their good and evil demons and, more importantly, their holy barong.

A woman’s orchestra at the temple. Apparently they are a newer phenomenon from over the past ten years. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

A barong is an important Bali spirit. My local informants couldn’t really say where the barong came from, though they think the roots could be in the Chinese dragon, but I wonder if it might have a heritage in the now extinct Balinese tiger, because the creatures have fur coats (some striped) and vaguely cat-like features and when they dance, their movements remind me of cats, too. Either way, there is power in the barong and they reside in various temples. Some barong have ancestral relationships with the neighbourhood temple and so they have been brought from very far away.

A barong taking a rest during his dance. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Which brings me to the sleepless nights.

Barongs don’t travel alone and they don’t travel silently. Every barong travels with his own orchestra of flutes and drums and—wait for it—gongs. These are pie plate sized and worn like a xylophone, or two – three feet across and carried by two men, or even three gongs on a cart that is wheeled along with the gong player seated in the middle. It’s a regular cacophony of drums and gongs—lovely to listen to except at 3 am.

Tiny warrior bunnies doing the rabbit dance. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

So the temple ceremonies took place over three days and the barong processions occurred where and when the temple priests decided. That meant traffic havoc for Ubud because the three main roads in the town would have to shut down. Each evening at the temple, there was a performance, the first night of dancers and orchestras, the second of dancers, orchestras and a stage barong (as opposed to the holy temple barong.) Each of these sessions was wonderful, with the dance and the music and I stayed taking photos until 9 or 10 pm, but the performances went on long into the wee hours after I got home and of course sound travels…

Young dancers waiting to perform on the first night of the temple ceremonies. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

The third night was the finale: a public performance of dance and barong dancing using the true temple barong. At 8:30 the first of the dancers danced and then the first barong performed—a halting dance of a great beast cautiously treading through the land. The dance ended and they brought out the second barong who was every bit as cautious.

Okay. I’d seen the holy barong dance.

A lovely temple fan dancer. Apparently performers vie for the right to perform at the temple. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Okay, I’d seen the holy Barong–I thought. But I was tired and the performance was, I must admit, a little underwhelming. So I decided to call it a night and went home. Only to be disturbed as I was falling asleep by the horrible sounds of beast roars and narrated screaming.

Clearly, I had gone home at the wrong time. Clearly the barong had come upon a warrior and the battle had been begun. There was music and more roaring but I must have been very tired because I finally fell asleep—only to be woken a second time at about 3 am by the sound of drums and music in the street.

I tracked it from my bed: Approaching from the temple eastward and drawing even with my guest house gate and then heading westward down the street.

The sound of a vanquished barong headed home.

For all I love the Bali culture, I appreciated that I could finally sleep in peace.

A young dancer preparing for her dance on night two. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

The Lesson of Rice

By Karen Abrahamson | February 20, 2019

The rice fields of Sideman, Bali. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Bali is a place built on rice (and tourism, but we’ll leave the tourism for the moment.) I’m staying in Ubud, one of the main tourist towns in Bali (the one made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love.) It’s a busy place with a perennial traffic jam and stores that run the gamut from a fruit stall on the corner and cheap restaurants in people’s homes, to couture clothing stores, starred eateries that require a reservation, and Starbucks on the corner. It’s also the kind of place that you can come around the corner and find a rice paddy between two rows of houses and where all the tourist maps include trails through the extensive paddies around the town.

A rice field just outside Ubud with a shrine to Dewi Sri. The structure in the distance is one of the increasing number of tourist villas encroaching on the rice fields. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Rice is everywhere: from on your dinner plate, in the innumerable small offerings to the spirits found pretty much everywhere, and even on people’s foreheads when they leave the temple. It comes in colors like white, brown, red and black and I’ve discovered that from amongst that rainbow, I enjoy rice far more here I ever thought I would as I grew up eating the insipid Uncle Ben’s. Yeah, sure, I cook basmati at home, but even basmati is tasteless compared to what I’ve eaten here.

But more than learning to appreciate the nutty flavor of whole red rice, or the sweet goodness of black rice for breakfast, being here has brought me closer to a different understanding of rice in the world. I suppose it’s more of a metaphor.

Bali might be a Hindu island in a Muslim nation, but Bali’s animistic roots are never more evident than in their relationship with rice. Central to the Hindu faith is that God has many manifestations, not just the Trimurti of Vishnu (the creator), Brahma (the maintainer) and Shiva (the destroyer.) God also manifests in the person of Dewi Sri, the rice mother, who receives offerings in shrines built in every rice field. Some shrines are only small wicker platforms built above the rice. Others are more complete structures, but their purpose is the same—to give thanks to the rice mother for the harvest to come. Small offerings of rice, a flower and perhaps incense are left daily to Devi Sri.

Bali’s volcanoes, the abode of all that is good and from whereto water runs to the rice fields. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

I suppose it’s not surprising that the farmers believe they need the help of the spirits/gods in order to have good harvests. Rice farming is back-breaking work. First the rice is planted in a nursery spot, usually at the corner of the field. Preparing the rice paddies involves plowing, loosening of the soil of the flooded paddy, and then flattening of the soil in preparation for planting. Bali has only recently transitioned from bullocks pulling plows to hand-pushed rototiller machines. Talk about back-breaking.

Planting the rice near Ubud. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

When the young plants are old enough, they are manually uprooted, separated, and replanted in the prepared rice paddies. Think of spending days and days under the unrelenting sun planting individual plants exactly a hand-span apart in rows so perfect, you’d think they’d been laid out on a grid. More backbreaking. Gradually, the plants mature, and then the harvest takes place with old fashioned scythes. It’s no wonder that young people want to leave the farms for opportunities in the cities or in places like Ubud.

Fields near the ancient temple/palace of Tirta Ganga. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Walking the rice trails, one is struck first by the intense green color, by the egrets dotting the fields and the calls of smaller song birds that accompany the music of water. There is water everywhere, standing in sky-reflecting paddies, running down ditches between the fields and gushing down channels built to guarantee that all farmers’ fields share in the gift of water. In Bali there is a rice farmers’ water cooperative that manages this sharing. They have a governance structure and their purpose is sharing the wealth nature gives them—so much so that their water system is recognized by Unesco World Heritage. There’s even a museum to rice and the water management system, though when I visited it was rather abandoned looking. The information was there, though, when I looked past the cobwebs.

Paddies near the mountains on Antosari Road. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

All of this has led to my new appreciation of rice. Like life, it is a gift of the gods. It is also the product of heavy labor by many, many people.

As the Balinese do when they place their offerings to Dewi Sri on the bamboo platforms at the edge of the fields, I want to think about the manifestation of the God and the labor it took to provide EVERY SINGLE GRAIN OF RICE on my plate.

And be thankful.

Egret in a still-fallow rice paddy. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

(Yes, I know that in North America big Agro companies provide our rice with little of the labor that I’m seeing in Bali, but from now on I’m going to be more conscious about where my rice comes from. Surely it can only be beneficial to eat food grown with the intention of being in harmony with nature, instead of food grown as a product of genetic manipulation! No wonder North American food is largely tasteless.)

Carrying fodder home from around the rice fields near Tirta Ganga. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Lost in Bali

By Karen Abrahamson | February 16, 2019

At one of our guesthouses. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

We’ve been in Bali ten days now and it has been a wonderful lesson in exploration—both sensory and experiential. For instance, at the moment I’m in my bed listening to a thundering downpour and the quintessential sound of gamelan music played for a Balinese shadow puppet show.

But not every experience has been quite so mesmerizing. At least they haven’t all been quite so easy to enjoy. Take for instance my first experience at my current guesthouse in the tourist mecca of Ubud. Ubud sits on the lower slopes of Bali’s central mountains and is a mecca for artists from around the world. Think wood and stone carving, silver smithing, weaving, painting and just about anything else you can imagine. We arrived at this guesthouse and our host knew of my interest in photography, so he immediately told me that there was a temple ceremony occurring that afternoon at a local community—come see him at three pm and he’d arrange for me to attend.

I showed up with camera in tow and the only way to get there was via motorcycle—him driving and me on the back. Let me just say that my distrust of motorcycles goes way back to my teenaged years and age and wisdom has only confirmed that opinion.

The temple musicians waiting for the ceremony to finish. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

But it was a temple ceremony and I was new to Ubud. Who knew whether I’d get such a chance again. So I slung my leg over the motorbike behind him and drove—sans helmet because he didn’t want to have to carry an extra helmet back—to somewhere in Bali.

And he dropped me off.

Yes, I had his email and phone number on Whatsapp. Yes, I knew the name of the guesthouse and generally where it was in Ubud. But that was all. And oh, yes, I know how to say hello and thank you in Balinese.

But there was this temple ceremony, that it turned out I couldn’t attend because I didn’t have a proper sarong…

Youngsters mesmerized by the musical instruments and the fathers trying to keep them in tow. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

The ceremony gates. So close, yet so far. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

So I hung around outside with the parents with unruly children and the Balinese marching band (think gongs, conches for blowing, and lots and lots of drums.) Luckily, the Balinese are big on processions, because after what sounded from outside the walls like a lovely ceremony, the dignitaries left (would you believe it was the royal family of Ubud?) and were followed by a flood of people.

The procession begins! Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Women with offerings. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

And the men with their offerings. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

And the requisite gongs. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

I ran up the road to get a better view and what followed was a village procession. The photos in this post tell the tale. A non-marching band. Children dressed up like princesses. Women carrying offerings on their heads and men carrying even larger offerings on platforms. And all the people in their finest sarongs and sashes. They marched up the road with so much laughter and friendship that I was swept along—until they reached another temple and I was shut out again.

The procession. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Darned no sarong.

And then I had to figure out how to get home…

From somewhere in Bali.

With offering boxes and flowers in their hair. Photo copyright Karen Abrahamson.

P.S.

(Yes, after realizing that my Whatsapp messages were being routed via North America so there was a time lag, I finally contacted my wonderful host by phone and he sent his son to rescue me. So I am no longer lost.)

‘Salam’, or Bali ‘Hi!’

By Karen Abrahamson | February 7, 2019

The Jimbaran beach at sunset as we enjoyed our meal. Image copyright Karen Abrahamson

We’ve been in Bali since February 4^thand the first word I have learned is ‘Salam’, or ‘hello.’ I swear we are both still recovering from our Indian sojourn, which seems odd to me given basically all our travel arrangements were made for us. But then again, when there are issues the stress can wear you down and our trip through India was not without issues. But that’s another story.

For the moment, we are in Bali and trying to sink into the Balinese culture and balance.

We spent the first few days in a place called Jimbaran that is on the coast, south of the major city of Denpasar and the tourist haven of Kuta. We arrived and both of us were overwhelmed by the beauty of our residence. We had a room with sliding glass doors onto a balcony and small plunge pool overlooking the Balinese beach of Jimbaran. It took us a few days to realize that we were right above the Four Seasons resort at less than a quarter of the cost and we were staying in a heritage building owned by an architect who was committed to maintaining the jewel that he had.

A ten-minute walk downhill had us on the sweeping crescent of Jimbaran Beach where I collected shells and, in the evening, we went to a dinner of barbequed, squid, clams, fish, prawns and lobster for about $30.00 each. The seafood, with the addition of rice and water spinach was to die for and as an added bonus we were treated to a spectacular sunset. I’m told that every sunset is just as good.

Elder braiding the small bracelets that indicate that you’ve been to this holy place. Image copyright Karen Abrahamson.

We visited one of the three key ocean temples in Bali, this one called Ulu Watu. We intended to watch the sunset and the sunset Kacek dance. Unfortunately, you can’t actually do both, or at least you can’t watch the sunset over Ulu Watu because the temple is in the wrong direction from where they hold the dance, so the dance won out. While the dancers wear the ornate costumes that you might associate with Bali, the dance itself is actually quite original—at least at Ulu Watu.

The performance begins with about thirty men who come into the performance area chanting, to settle around a tall, wooden candelabra-type stand that has small flames lit on each of its arms. They chant and then, one by one, the dancers entered telling the story of Rama and Sita out of the Ramayana. The difference I saw in this dance compared to the dancers from the performance I wrote about in Kochi, was that these dancers seemed to move in utter, perfected, slow-motion.

The graceful Sita at Ulu Watu. Image copyright Karen Abrahamson.

Except for Hanuman.

The mischievous white monkey god was up to his tricks from the moment he entered the story, leaping into the story from on top of the gate, and climbing up among the audience, stealing hats and glasses and picking imaginary nits out of people’s hair.

Anyway, the performance was wonderful, Sita was rescued, the evil Ravana was vanquished, and everyone except Ravana lived happily ever after—except for us, because traffic leaving the temple made us endure a trip home that was well over an hour long.

Ulu Watu high above the waves on its clifftop perch at sunset. Image, copyright Karen Abrahamson.

But it was a good introduction to Bali. We’re both impressed, not least of all by the driving. Though there are a lot of cars and motorbikes on the road it’s not the bone-jarring, psyche-scarring, free-for-all we survived in India. Instead, here traffic more or less obeys the traffic lanes and vehicles will actually stop for a pedestrian.

That brings me to the second Balinese word/phase I’m trying to remember: terima kasih, or thank you! Terima kasih for these past few days, Bali.