Bali : the island of the plump gods

I have been a bit lazy with the writing of our English blog…sorry about that, but writing in French is so much easier…

We have stopped our sailing trip in Bali for 1 months, as our captain wanted to go back home for Xmas…A part from heading to Sulawesi for our 2 weeks hike in Tanah Toaraja (see our previous article), we spent 2 weeks in Bali, and loved it!

Unlike TV shows you, Bali is not only a place of beaches, surf, bars and night club where Australian enjoy the night, and which are occasionally blown by bombs…Bali is actually an island the size of Corsica (nothing to do with the bombs!), with some real Indonesian who live, love, eat, go to the market, work, and, above all, worship their gods…

The people in Bali have adapted to their culture the Hinduism that was brought from India thousands of years ago, and this religion is still thriving in their everyday life.

This makes a stay in Bali very spiritual, even without taking part in any of it…but just walking the streets, there is temples at every corner… the houses and temples are built on the same model. When having a look through one of those beautifully ornamented gate, you never know if you are looking into a temple of a house, as in every compound, you can see a quiet courtyard, freshened by trees and perfumed by burning incense.

Courtyard of our Homestay in Denpasar

The people here are making daily offers to their gods : everywhere in the street, in shops, in houses, there is little boxes of weaved lontar (palm), garnished with sweet scented Tiare Flowers, a little food (rice, eggs, sweets, little cakes) and burning incense.

Seeing how many offers are made each day with so much food…this is no surprise that the gods here are so plump!!!…

I fell in love with those little gardians (Pate), who can be found everywhere; posted at the entrance of temples and houses, to prevent evil from entering, but also in parking, at the entrance of bridges, or simply in the street…

Little plump “pate” with the offerings

In Bali, spirituality is everywhere, and there is definitely a difference between the people here and the rest of Indonesia…they are really friendly, but more reserved…

On an other hand, a lot of them are used to seeing many tourists (even if we tried to avoid Kuta and all the turism dedicated places) and all they see is a walking wallet, from which they make a challenge to extract as much money as they can…

This is very tiring and very frustrating for us, especially as we know there is places (like the islands of Nusa Tengara or the back country of Sulawesi), where the white person is a rare object of curiosity, but where the relationship is between 2 human beings and totally disinterested.

Anyway, coming back to bustling Denpasar after our hike in Sulawesi was a bit of a shock, moreover, we were quite tired (flu for me and a bout of turista for Romain)…so we were looking for somewhere quiet and where we wouldn’t be hassled all the time…

Ubud has been a real bless for us…

This city used to be a little country village in the midst of paddy field, north of Denpasar.

In the 50s some occidental artists started to settle down, in order to enjoy the spiritual atmosphere of the place, its beautiful temples and green paddy field, and get some inspiration from the traditional arts that were performed at the time.

More and more occidental people started coming to Ubud, looking for a new life or for a few days of spiritual renewal before going back to their European way of life…The little village has become a city, which caters for those in search of a more balanced life or a new way : yoga lessons, restaurants offering organic food, bookshops (more in the one city than I saw in the whole of Indonesia!!!), Balinese dance and music lessons, shops selling flowery dresses, “african type” pants, massages, spas offering “charka cleansing” or “karma healing”…and a wealth of arts and craft shops, where you can find everything from jewellery to African wood work…because it seems that the new way of life the people are looking for in this town, hasn’t totally forgotten about capitalism…

In this town, where there is so many white people, we could at last enjoy being “anonym”, so long as we avoided the market and main commercial street, where hawkers don’t understand that you don’t want to BUY????

We also treated ourselves to some delicacies (forgotten since Australia and probably until we’re back to Europe…); a glass of wine, some live jazz music, yoghurt, Bolognese pastas…

Ubud is not only a very turistic city…provided that you avoid the main street to wander in the little back streets, or get lost with a bicycle in the little roads amongst the rice field, it is still possible to feel the “little something” that appealed to all the first European that came in search of a spiritual healing…

But you have to look for it in the little village temple in the middle of the rice field and in the courtyard of the family compounds. There, life goes on, flowery, incensed and with that peacefulness the people of this place reached by believing they have achieved the perfect balance, in a life where gods, evil and man can live together in peace, provided they respect each other…and the latter gives the first 2 a lot of flowers and food…;-)

Paddy fields and volcanos…a nice bike ride in the country side.

In one of those back streets, we found the jewel that made our stay a real “pause” in our travel, a home away from home : Praety homestay…a painter and is family rent 2 bedrooms in their house. This family is very welcoming, but more reserved than any homestay we’ve been to (having only 1 adult daughter instead of 8 small kids probably helps!)

Typically built around a quiet courtyard, with a lot of trees and flowers, our room had a nice terrace where we spent most of our time, reading, writing, relaxing, enjoying the atmosphere and the smell of incense coming from the little offering temples on the roof of the house…

We spent many relaxing hours reading, resting, or just enjoying the garden views from our terrace.

The breakfast in this homestay was delicious, with coconut pancake and tropical fruit salad…superbly presented, just like an offering to the gods…In this homestay, we were the plump gods!!!!

We came back from our stay in Ubud rested and ready to face the last bit of our trip : Bali-Sumatra…one month of hard sailing, against the winds and current of the monsoon.

11:42 - 28/01/2007 - Ajouter un commentaire