It will take me two posts to describe the cornucopia of experiences which was Bali. I have been to Hong Kong many times, and I suppose I expected something vaguely similar, but I was quite wrong. This ‘stand alone’ island not too much bigger than Skye was a slow moving, peaceful and happy place and did not resemble the frenzy and bustle of commercial HK in any way at all.
As we left the ship and walked into a thick woolly blanket of heat and humidity we were greeted by a Gamelan orchestra ! The sort of thing that as a school music teacher I taught about for GCSE Music, and it was never anything other than a text book topic. This was beautiful, sensitive and ringingly resonant in the most peaceful way, and full of sunny warmth. I was actually on a ship excursion to the Taro Elephant Reserve so we were being a bit herded and hurried to the bus, but I still insisted on stopping for a few moments to listen and video what I knew would be a once in a lifetime experience. On reaching the outside after a cursory glance from the the smiling customs man, we were by this time already dripping with perspiration - definitely more than a ‘glow’ ! A relentlessly cheerful guide ( somewhat like Gretel really) called Laku greeted us and led us to Brown 1 Bus. He was constantly aware of the heat and asking if we were ok, I found this very reassuring ! The bus was a haven of cool, possibly even cold, which flowed over our hot bodies like manna from heaven. He told us the trip to Taro was about 2 hours long, and under normal excursion circumstances I may have had a small groan, NOT TODAY however, the thought of being in a temperature lower than anywhere on the ship was pure bliss !
Gamelan Orchestra
Balinese dancers
The wonderfully cheery Laku
The drive was so different from anything I had seen before. To many things to describe, but we learnt that in this Hindu country every home had its own temple, hence the saying that this small island is the ‘island of a thousand temples’ in fact it has about 20,000 temples or more. Every home, no matter how rich or how poor there is one, two, three or more temple buildings, larger than the homes themselves many times. Each female in the home makes a small basket of flowers to offer to the God of the temple three times each day. The men worship and offer these gorgeous little bouquets in baskets, but the girls make them, new each day. We had one in the bus as Laku had worshipped for a happy day for us, inside the bus before we boarded. It definitely worked !
Offerings at the temple door
Offerings outside the temple
Bali has stood fast in its Hinduism, against the whole of Indonesia which is a Muslim country. For all it’s peaceful, easygoing ambience it must be resolute in its determination not to bow to Islam. Laku had no problem whatsoever in telling us this fact with pride and certainty.
Tropical forests, terraced paddy fields of rice, ladies offering up flowers in their national costumes of peacock coloured sarongs and sashes, and skyscraper high palm trees, burgeoning with fat green and ripe coconuts flashed by and I tried to take photos.........some were successful and some not ! Outside of the port of Benoa the roads fined down to small winding lanes, supposedly with two way lanes, but in truth a bus spanned from one side of palm trees to another, touching the palm fronds many times. The people almost to a man ride small motorcycles and scooters so I think the two lanes were built for that rather than cars and busses !! There were a couple of near misses with scooters, heavily laden with a driver, a child clinging on to the handle bars, a teenager on the back, two large bags of coconuts and Uncle Tom Cobley and All ! We all winced and squeaked whenever such a two wheeled burden scraped by our bus. Laku told us that the accident rate was very low..........
Paddy fields - rice takes 90 days from sowing to harvest, so three harvests each year !
Coconuts !
I had to stop myself from photographing coconut palm trees ! I was mesmerised by the abundance of them and of lime trees, mango trees and papaya trees. It seemed like a film set of South Pacific, which is clearly very stupid since we are in the Indian Ocean !! You know what I mean.......
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