Cambodia and Home

I think I'm finally getting over my massive case of jet lag, so I'm posting some photos from Cambodia. Coming east over the International Date Line threw my system much more than going west over it did, as far as I can recall, although maybe I'm just blocking it out of my mind. (Does anyone know why that happens? I remember it being the same when I went to China with my family a couple of years ago.) Still, I think I'm back on some semblance of a normal sleep pattern, which means you can get a mostly sentient blog post.

Where did I leave off? My parents and I were in Thailand for two days, then flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia, on a terrifying little prop jet. We had four days to explore Angkor Wat and the other temples, so we spent the mornings at the ruins and then spent the afternoons, which were probably ten degrees hotter than they'd been in Bali, in the pool hiding from the heat.

So to start, some pictures of the temples. We started off at Ta Prohm temple, which is notable because the jungle grew into it instead of just around it. As a result, a number of trees are now important structural elements; if they were to be cut down the temple would crumble even more than it already has. (It's also a notable temple because it's where part of the Tomb Raider movie was filmed, but we'll put that aside.)

See what I mean? A tree growing out of the roof of part of the temple.

A closer shot of one of the trees. I don't know if the size comes across: the horizontal root was around the level of my head.

 

After that, we went to a smaller, probably incomplete temple (dedicated to Shiva, I think). Whereas the walls of Ta Prohm were intricately carved, the carving on this one stopped about halfway up. There were some steep stairs still intact, though, so we climbed up to the top (and bought some bracelets from a girl sitting up there who knew more random statistics about the United States than I do).

If you look really closely you should be able to see my dad, in a blue shirt, in the center doorway at the top.

 

And, of course, we went to Angkor Wat. The temple complex there is enormous, and everything is intricately carved with patterns, false windows, and images of apsaras, the traditional dancers.

Carvings!

 

What blog post about Angkor Wat would be complete without the quintessential Angkor Wat photo? The teal fabric is where the temple is being restored.

From the center/top of Angkor Wat, looking out over the west (front) gate. Most Angkor temples are oriented eastward, but Angkor Wat breaks that pattern.

We went to Angkor Thom, as well, which is adorned with huge faces on the towers (of kings, I think? I've forgotten). Outside the temple, they had elephants that you could feed huge quantities of bananas (complete with the peel) for $1. Unfortunately, the photo of that is on my dad's camera, so you don't get that one. Elephants are probably my favorite animal now.

I told you there are big faces carved into Angkor Thom. See?

Siem Reap itself was a neat, if odd, city. Everything is pretty new, since most of the city got rebuilt by NGO's after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. When we were there, it was the end of the dry season; after all the green of Bali it really threw me off to see so much dust and concrete. It was interesting to be someplace that so clearly relied on foreign aid and tourism -- most prices were listed in US dollars, and bikes were a huge mode of transportation. Since we mostly just went to temples, I don't know very much about Cambodia or its political history, but I'd like to know more.

That's kind of a down-note to finish talking about Cambodia, so here's a picture of a tuk-tuk.

After Cambodia, we hopped on another (scary) prop-jet and headed back to Bangkok for a day and a half. In the four days we'd been gone, the city seemed to have picked itself back up. I saw a lot more tourists, and businesses that had been closed were open again. At one point, though, we took the Sky Train past the Siam Center, the building that was burned out. Although all the buildings in its vicinity were clearly functioning, the Siam Center was decidedly charred and empty. People typically referenced the protests as "the big problem" or just "the problem." They never sounded completely convinced that the turmoil is over, although the newspapers seem to insist that it is.

Now, as of Monday night, I'm back home. I've been in Bethesda for a few days, enjoying potable tap water and bread, trying to get over jet lag, and baking up a storm. (If anyone wants a recipe for the awesome pizza I made on Wednesday, let me know. I think I'm making it again tonight, it was that good.) This afternoon I move up to the Philly area, where hopefully I have an internship, although I'll know with more certainty next week.

I've really enjoyed blogging my experiences, and I think I'll keep this space up and running. (Although I suppose I'll have to change the name. Any suggestions?) To start with, I have some Balinese recipes if anyone wants them. I haven't quite decided what I'll write about generally, but no doubt you'll see new things up here occasionally. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see!

Thailand

Specifically, Bangkok. We (my parents and I) got in yesterday afternoon, and spent today basically just being tourists, going to all sorts of temples and to the palace. (Apologies in advance if my captions are not 100% accurate as to where I took the photo -- I don't speak Thai so I have a terrible memory for the names of places here.)

As one might expect, it's rather quiet here given the protests of the past few weeks. There's still a curfew at night (tonight from 11pm-5am) so the government is clearly still a bit concerned, though the protests themselves have disbanded. The newspapers and government seem to be painting a picture of an ended conflict, but some of the people I've talked to here seem to think that nothing's yet fixed. I frankly don't know enough to assess who might be right, but it will be interesting to see what the next month or two brings.

But in the meantime, the internet at this hotel is nice and fast, so you get lots of pictures.

A guardian demon outside the temple of the Emerald Buddha. There were a bunch of these guys, each probably 15-20 feet tall.

One of the pagodas outside the temple of the Emerald Buddha. This one was entirely covered in little pieces of gold-leaf-inlaid glass, which apparently have to be replaced each seven years.

A woman restoring part of an enormous Ramayana mural.

Demons and monkeys (the sad one on the right is a demon; I think the other two are monkeys) support a pagoda.

The reclining Buddha, in the (surprise!) temple of the reclining Buddha. This one is 15m high and 46m long. No big deal.

Chinese porcelain inlaid in the Temple of Dawn.

Another demon(?) supporting the Temple of Dawn.

Dried fish market!

  

So that's the whirlwind tour of Bangkok. Tomorrow, we head to Siem Reap, Cambodia, for four days, then back to Bangkok for another day or two before heading home. Adventures!

On Balinese Tourism and Social Change

For the past week I've been hanging out in Bali with my family, experiencing the tourist perspective rather than the student one I've become accustomed to all semester. In some ways, the two aren't terribly different: tourism by far accounts for the majority of the Balinese economy, and it's difficult to be a foreigner living on the island without being perceived as a tourist. A lot of what we did during the semester -- visiting temples, climbing Batur, etc. -- could be classified as tourism, although we were generally studying the religious or social structure in more depth while at the sights. In any case, this week I've felt much more like a tourist, largely because I've been staying at this lovely hotel rather than in a home stay and we've been doing more guided tours and such things. I think I've spent more time reading my guide book in the last week than I did all semester.

All of this reiterates a question that I've been thinking about for a long time: how is cultural tourism beneficial for the Balinese, and in what ways is it detracting from the culture and from the Balinese position in the global economy?

First, the benefits. Given that tourism in one form or another accounts for the majority of Balinese incomes and constitutes the majority of the island's economy, it follows that people are receiving economic benefits. Although the rural villages in, for example, Tabanan regency are still heavily reliant on agriculture (mostly rice production) for their livelihoods, most people in larger towns are somehow connected with tourism. For example, in my homestay family, of the six people who have jobs, three work in a hotel, one works in a tourist-driven woodcarving shop, and one has a shop outside of a tourist site that sells sarongs and little gifts. The only working member of the family who is not directly involved in tourism is my host grandmother, who is in her nineties and runs a little snack stall outside their family compound. (This is, of course, anecdotal evidence, but it's what I've got.) Other host families, from what I can tell, had a similar breakdown, as did friends of my host family. So obviously some of the money pouring in from tourism is benefiting many Balinese people.

In addition, tourism ensures that some form of Balinese traditions remain alive. As Michel Picard points out in this article, "the very fact of qualifying tourism as 'cultural' bestows it with the attributes of culture," thus insuring that to some extent the customs (non-Balinese) people come to observe will remain alive. And it's true: whereas in numerous cultures that I've studied in my anthropology classes it's common for a younger generation to move away from "traditions," here it seems that the younger generation places importance on continuing traditions. Every year the universities celebrate Saraswati Day, a religious festival celebrating the goddess of wisdom, and all of the students my age that I've met take part in day-to-day rituals as well. Perhaps it is not as high a priority for them as for the older generation -- my host mother sometimes complained that her daughter-in-law devoted less time to making offerings than she (my host mother) did -- but it is still certainly a priority. Tourism is also keeping alive traditional music, dance forms, and art, although there is the question of whether it is secularizing religious dances.

But on the other hand, tourism seems in some ways to be a more damaging force. While some of the money coming in from cultural tourism does, as I discussed above, go to the Balinese people, most of the significant capital goes to "outsiders," that is, Javanese and non-Indonesians. Most of the hotels, to my knowledge, are owned by foreigners, and most of the people in shops and restaurants in Ubud have told me that their stores are owned by non-Balinese. (Studio Perak, a silver shop in Ubud, is owned by a Canadian, and my host sister worked in a shop in Gianyar owned by a Dutch man. Indus, Casa Luna, and Bar Luna, three of Ubud's major restaurants, are owned by a woman who I'm fairly certain is Australian. Often these people are married to Balinese individuals, but the businesses are nevertheless owned and run by non-Balinese.) While the stores and restaurants are typically staffed by Balinese individuals who do benefit from their salaries, most of the profit bypasses them. If the owner is married to a Balinese person, some of this money will be funneled back into the banjar (neighborhood), but that's not always the case.¹

So why does this happen? A lot of it has to do with the banjar and with religion, both of which demand huge amounts of time. From the time he is married onward, a Balinese man is expected to put in work for his banjar, activities that can range from fixing buildings and roads to preparing for temple festivals. Comparatively, women are responsible for creating the offerings that are used both daily and for major festivals. Both of these are major time sucks, and since they are major priorities, they detract from the time a person can devote to, say, running a business. They also cost a lot of money, so some of the capital that might be used to start up a business instead gets funneled back into these other avenues. I haven't been able to find a statistic backing this up, but I've heard it said that Balinese people often spend more money on offerings than on education; it may be an exaggeration but it's at least representative of the mindset. In my host family, only my brother and his sister-in-law had been to college (my two other host siblings and their spouses had not), and my host family is fairly well-off by local standards. There seemed to be a sense that higher education was a fairly low priority.

But that raises a tricky issue. Is it valid to tell people that in order to take more ownership of their own province's economy, they have to put their culture and daily lives on a back-burner? It's not exactly clear-cut. On the one hand, by making their religion and neighborhood unit less of a priority, Balinese people would be able to devote more time and energy to jobs and businesses and therefore would be able to have more agency in the tourism economy. On the other hand, if people want religion and their social network to be their highest priority, and that makes them happy, who's to say that's inherently problematic?

What tips me toward the first hand is that if the general trend continues, the Balinese will lose a lot of their cultural agency. If the industry continues to be dominated at the top by non-Balinese, it won't be the Balinese guiding the culture that's presented to visitors. They will receive fewer of the benefits brought in by tourism and they'll have less control over the industry itself.

The other issue there is that there's a lot of lamentation over how tourism changes Balinese culture and resulting claims that that's terrible. In some ways, yes, I see the problems in the "Westernization" (a troubling but convenient term so I'm using it anyway) brought in by tourism. But, of course, culture is supposed to evolve: think of American culture today versus thirty years ago. So it's not necessarily problematic that change is coming to Balinese culture. The larger issue is where the change is coming from, and whether or not the Balinese have agency over their own culture. What's tricky, also, is that tourism relies on Balinese culture being recognizable as "Balinese culture." If the culture here evolves too much in a different direction, it may lose the tourism that is supporting its economy and guiding the cultural changes.

So how does one reconcile these issues? The short answer, although somewhat of a cop-out, is that I don't really know. What I do know is that education is going to be a key aspect if Balinese people are going to take ownership over tourism. It's clear that a balance needs to be found between religion/social structure and business, but I don't think it's a balance that can be dictated by an outside source. My inclination would be to say to dial back on offerings and rituals (which have in fact increased in recent years largely as a result of tourism) and place more emphasis on taking control of the tourist industry, but I've grown up in a society that typically places emphasis in that manner. Who am I to say that rituals shouldn't take top priority, if they make people happy?

So what do you think? Is there a more obvious answer that I'm missing? Am I being too American, too capitalist, when I see these issues? Or is it as important as I think it is for the Balinese to have maximum agency in the tourist economy?



¹ An interesting but somewhat unrelated parallel exists with the food stalls and carts around the island, the majority of which are owned by Javanese, who have a history of a landless class and come to Bali to make a living. Most of their food stalls end up being more successful, partially because their food is halal and will be eaten by Muslims on the island, and partially because, as some Hindu Balinese people have told me, the food is often "lebih enak," more delicious.

From School to Vacation

My family got here on Saturday, so for the last few days I've been showing them around the island. I've been able to revisit some of the places I went during my semester, plus go to some new ones. It's a bit of a strange sensation to be vacationing where I was previously studying: for example, when a tour guide today offered up simplified information about family compounds, I almost felt compelled to correct him. It's also a bit odd because while I realize each time I explain something to my family just how much I've learned this semester, I rarely felt "stressed out" the same way I do at Williams. It's almost surprising to be on a vacation now. 


I've also been realizing just how much Indonesian I've learned. I've been pretty consistently bartering with people and setting things up for my family, which is something I thought I might have trouble with. Not the case, though; rarely do I have no idea what someone is saying to me. (There was one incident when I was talking to someone on the phone. The guy I was talking to very rapidly expressed surprise that I was speaking Indonesian, at which point I promptly asked him to slow down. I realized a few steps later in the conversation what he'd said. Whoops.)


We've mostly been doing vacationy things, exploring Ubud and going to the beach. We (my family and I) went to Kuta, where we (the SIT students) weren't allowed to go during the semester, since it's where the bombings were a few years back (though it's now safe), and I can't say I'm sad to have missed it during the semester. The beach was busy and crowded, and we were constantly at risk of being surfed on top of, which was a bit of a bummer. (Steven and Casey went to Sanur the next day and said it was lovely.) Then today we biked from Kintamani, the volcano caldera, to Pejeng, the town next to where I lived all semester. Here are some pictures:

Scarecrow in a rice field somewhere along the way. Usually people just use big cloth banners, but this guy was way more elaborate -- someone even sacrificed a soccer ball to use for his head.

I get the feeling I haven't yet posted a picture of a banyan tree, so here's one. Most of them (if not all) are considered sacred, and they're absolutely enormous. This wasn't my best picture, but I figured Michael in the corner would help give an idea of the size.

 

Rice being sorted from the husks. People plant and harvest the rice by hand, and we passed a bunch of women working on the harvest on our way down.

That's all for now. Apologies for the slightly scattered post; I'm bouncing back and forth between this and helping everyone choose plans for tomorrow.

Last Days of the Semester: Galungan and Bedulu

It's a bit surreal to realize that as I'm writing this, my semester abroad is officially over. Last night, we had our final party with the host families, ISP advisers, and some of the students from Udayana University who came to Munduk Pakel with us back in March. Then this morning we signed off and said our goodbyes. Most of us are either sticking around in Bali for a few days or traveling throughout Southeast Asia, so I might run into some of the other students in the next week (and I did about an hour ago) but still, the semester is done. Odd.

For the last few days we've been back in Bedulu, finishing things up for the semester. Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were Galungan, which some Balinese people have described to me as their version of Christmas, but I'm not sure I see the connection. (I think it's mostly because they hang decorations that kind of look like Christmas trees, in a very vague sense.) Everyone's description of the "purpose" of Galungan varies, but from what I understand, it's mostly a time to honor ancestors and make lots of offerings. (Balinese Hinduism is, to massively oversimplify, sort of a combination of Indian Hinduism, traditional ancestor worship, and a little bit of animism.) For the first day, people stay home and make offerings in their own family temple -- each family compound has their own temple/shrine -- and on the second day, people visit their friends and extended family.

The alleyway by my house. If you blow the picture up, you should be able to see the things that are "like Christmas trees" -- they're the palm leaf arches over the road.

Oh, of course I'd forget this sort of thing: on Galungan and the holiday ten days after it, Kuningan, lots of pigs get sacrificed to make babi guling (roast suckling pig) and lawar (a dish made of vegetables, coconut, and pig blood).

 This is not a roasting pig. It is, in fact, a dog eating offerings (which isn't considered bad -- once the offerings are out they're fair game for animals to eat). As soon as I tried to take a picture of her eating them, she started barking at me angrily. See why I say the dogs here are mean?

(I should also point out that right now there are a bunch of kids playing gamelan outside the cafe I'm sitting in, and two of the kids are dressed in a very elaborate boar costume and dancing. I wish I had my camera!)

Now to jump forward in time: I have a day to kill in Ubud, and then tomorrow my family comes to Bali! For a little over a week I'll get to play tour guide, and then after that we head to Thailand (assuming the political situation is stable enough, touch wood). So I'll have more adventures to post about there, and then I'm home May 31st. Excitement!

Nusa Lembongan Roundup

On Thursday, we all presented our Independent Study Projects, which marked the last bit of work for the semester. (I got to read one of my stories to everyone, which was fun.) After that, we had a quick trip to Immigration to get our visas renewed for the last time, which also involved getting fingerprinted. Kind of creepy, but we were assured that it's standard procedure for anyone staying in Indonesia over a couple of months (there's a precise time limit, but I forget what it is).

Once that was all accomplished, it was off to Nusa Lembongan, one of the three small islands off the coast of Bali (still part of the Bali province), for our last excursion. Unlike the other excursions we've taken, where we had classes and lectures to attend, this one was pure vacation, a final hurrah for the group. (The semester ends on the 14th, and has gone by amazingly quickly.) We stayed right on the beach, at a small hotel with fantastic curry.

 The view from the hotel.

Since most of the coast is used for seaweed farming, each day we took another, smaller boat about ten minutes away to a beach better for swimming. Two of the guys and I found a beach even better for swimming that required crawling through a hole in the rock, timing it carefully so we didn't get squished by incoming waves. (Of course, Ary and Yudi then proceeded to find a path over the cliff. Not as fun, though.)

On Saturday morning, we went snorkeling. I found a huge fish with a big protrusion coming out of his forehead that the boat driver said was called a "jacket fish," although I'm not sure why. (Upon a Google search, I think that's wrong. I'm pretty sure it was a "unicorn fish," which is even cooler.)

The next day, we rented bikes and went all around the island. It's not a very big island, and the trip took us maybe three hours, a significant proportion of which was spent hanging out and swimming around in a mangrove...grove (forest? copse?). After the mangroves, we continued on, heading up a huge, endless hill and then down its equally steep side with our questionable rental bike breaks.

 Mangroves!

Aside from the snorkeling and biking, we spent a lot of time swimming and playing scrabble and cards. Then, this morning we returned to Bali, where we're back with our homestay families. Tomorrow and Wednesday are Galungan, a holiday to celebrate each family's ancestors. Almost everyone roasts a pig to celebrate -- not sure what I'll end up eating!

On Being Queer Abroad

There's not much (read: nothing) by way of LGBT community here as far as I can tell, so I hadn't given this topic much thought before today. I've been emailing with one of my friends (hi, Jack) about it lately, though, so I thought I'd throw some thoughts out there (how's that for alliteration) for consideration.

Being in Bali has, in some ways, been a little bit like being back in the closet. During orientation, I asked a bit about Balinese responses to queerness¹ and Pak Tom explained that people here don't have any particular problems with it, but the older generation is completely unfamiliar with it. So, as a result, I didn't tell my host family that I have a girlfriend or that I consider myself queer. Bahasa Indonesia facilitates that, since there aren't any gender pronouns. When someone asks me if I "sudah punya pacar," they're technically asking if I already have a significant other, since "pacar" is gender neutral. I can say yes, and since there's only one pronoun that encompasses both he and she, I can have an entire conversation without divulging her gender (sorry, J). (There are slang terms for girlfriend and boyfriend, "cewek" and "cowok," respectively, but it's easy to answer "sudah punya cowok" with "ya, saya sudah punya pacar di Amerika," yes, I already have a significant other in America.) So I'm in an odd in-between: I'm not quite in the closet, but nor am I particularly out.

But that raises the question of why I'm not out to them. Part of it, I think, is language: I'm not sure how to explain LGBT issues in Indonesian, and if I were to declare myself queer to my host family I'd probably need to explain it. I am out to the other students on my program, the program directors, and the language teachers (both of whom are Balinese), without much issue. (There's been a little bit of homophobia on the part of one of the students, but I won't go into that.) Interestingly, I've had no problem with the language staff; I've actually had a couple of conversations with Mirah, one of my teachers, about it because she wanted to know more. So if I haven't felt judged or ostracized by them, why my hesitancy toward telling my family?

Part of it, I think, was that I was afraid of making them uncomfortable with me before they got to know me, which is a fallacy I've fallen into in the past and that I think a lot of LGBT people find themselves worrying about. Because we queer folk are made to think that there's something wrong with us, there's a tendency to assume that everyone will automatically feel that way. So I assumed my host family would be somehow offended, and held back. (At this point, it feels like coming out would be a little bit odd, since I've only got roughly another week with them. But maybe I'm still just making excuses. Who knows?)

At the same time, I do question Pak Tom's assertion that people are completely unfamiliar with queerness. A month or so ago, I was watching a game show on TV with my ibu, and while I'm not sure what exactly was going on, I do know that two of the contestants were drag queens. (I don't think they were transgendered, but that's my own ignorance showing through.) My ibu didn't seem particularly offended; if anything she was amused. (In fact, she described them as "aneh," weird, but conceded that the particularly fabulous one was "cantik," beautiful, when I called them both that.) When I asked her about them, she said that crossdressing is fairly common in Java (the show was presumably from Jakarta) but that "they didn't have them in Bali." That's probably true; most queer people in Bali either move to Kuta, the big beach & nightclub city, or to Jakarta, or they stay closeted and eventually get married to someone of the opposite sex, since children are so important here. Still, it highlighted to me the fact that, at least in terms of crossdressing and transgenderism (transgenderness? someone correct me please?), there's a bit of a "not in my backyard" mentality. There's certainly no sense that a crossdresser would be in any danger here, just that he or she wouldn't be particularly accepted.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of all of this. A large part of me does wish that I'd come out earlier so that I could have talked with my ibu about it, but I'm also not sure what I could have said, since my Indonesian vocabulary doesn't extend very far into the realm of love and relationships. Still, it's important to lay a groundwork. I wish I were a little more familiar with queer rights and visibility here, but I suppose there's no better time to start than now.


¹ I know that "queer" means a lot of different things to different people, so I'll clarify. When I say queer, I'm generally referring to the entire Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender continuum. I do this for two reasons. First, I think that saying LGBT is kind of clunky and it's easier to just say queer. Second, I don't like to declare myself as bisexual because of all of the baggage that comes along with that (people's assumptions that I'm either indecisive or promiscuous, neither of which is particularly accurate) so I find that queer works as a general "not straight" label. Feel free to ask questions if that's not clear.

Mystery solved

For a while now, I've been having mild stomach aches nearly every day. I didn't give it much thought, since I'm no stranger to random stomach pain; I had it a lot before I figured out I'm casein-intolerant and even after that, so I tend to just ignore it and/or pin it on the fact that I have a rather sensitive stomach. Especially since I'm living abroad, I figured I'd just eaten something that my stomach was unfamiliar with.

Turns out, I'm pretty sure, it's the water.

My homestay family compound has three kitchens, one for each nuclear family (my host parents, and each host brother and his wife and child), which is pretty standard around here. Usually I refill my water bottle from my host brother's kitchen, since it's closest to my room. He and his wife keep their water in one of the big water bottles, the sort you flip upside-down to attach to water coolers. It's always the same bottle and it just kind of magically refills (which is to say I've never seen them refill it), but I assumed, since it was water they give me, that it's not regular tap water.

An explanation, for a moment, as to why the distinction is even relevant: Balinese tap water isn't particularly potable. People who have grown up on the island all their lives drink it, but when we students showed up we were warned repeatedly not to drink plain tap water, only to drink bottled water or tap water that's been boiled. We were told it wasn't even a good idea to brush our teeth with tap water.

So this morning, the magic water container was empty. I went to find my ibu, who took my water bottle from me and said she'd refill it and bring it back to me. (This is pretty standard: my host family still considers me pretty much a guest around here, so they don't like letting me help around the house. It makes me a little uncomfortable, since I'm used to doing my own dishes and being self-reliant, but they do it all despite my protests, so I've more or less given in.) Instead, I followed her to the kitchen, thinking it was silly for her to have to bring the bottle back to me when I could just as easily carry it myself. I arrived in the kitchen just as she was finishing filling my water from the spigot.

At first I thought she was just rinsing it, but she put the cap back on and handed me the bottle. "That's tap water, though," I said, a little hesitantly. She nodded in the way that one does when someone's made an obvious statement. I shrugged, then carried the bottle back to my room.

So, presumably the magic water bottle is indeed also tap water, which would explain a lot: how it never gets swapped out for a different one, how it never takes long to refill it, how I'm always a little sick. I haven't quite figured out how to deal with the situation yet, but I'm going to do my best to switch back to bottled water, even though I hate how much plastic I go through as a result. Given all the warnings about tap water, I'm pretty certain at this point I should consider myself lucky for only having gotten really sick once (knock on wood) this semester, and I'd rather not court that happening again.

I don't mean for this post to be a rant about how I'm a delicate foreigner living abroad or anything like that. Generally speaking, these sorts of things aren't a problem, and they're vastly outweighed by the cool parts of living abroad. But it is an interesting example of how something so benign as tap water can be two completely different things to people who have grown up in different situations. To my host family, it's normal everyday hydration, whereas to me it's a potential hazard. It's also one of those times where I'm not really sure how to address the issue with my host family. I don't want to make a big deal or insult them, since they've been wonderful, I like them a lot, and I appreciate all that they've done for me. But at the same time, I really don't want to get another horrible stomach bug.

There are a thousand things I'm going to miss about Bali when I go home; I've no doubt of that. But I am definitely going to have a new-found appreciation for potable tap water.

Social Justice Generation?

Two days ago I was walking around Ubud with one of the other students from my program, talking about our summer plans. I mentioned something about an NGO and she stopped me and asked what an NGO is. It threw me off, and I spent a couple of minutes trying to come up with a suitable definition, NGO's being a sort of nebulous concept.

Her confusion was the same that I remember feeling when I first learned about them (in high school, maybe?): can't "non-governmental organization" refer to almost anything? So that part of it didn't surprise me quite as much; it was more that she, a twenty-year-old American college student, had no idea what I was talking about. For me, NGO's are a huge part of what I do at school. The Africa relief club I was part of freshman year works closely with them, and so does the Women's Center and QSU. Most of my friends work with them during the school year and get internships with NGO's in the summer. A few of my friends have plans to start their own after graduation. So I find myself wondering if maybe it's just the crowd I hang out with at school. Are the majority of students in my generation unfamiliar with NGO's and what they do?

If yes, what does that indicate, if anything? I know that my generation is sometimes pointed to as the generation who sits on our hands instead of going out and protesting or being activists. That, of course, is something I'll argue any day; most of us just have a different approach to problem-solving than our parents' generation. But does this student's unfamiliarity with NGO's demonstrate that there is a section of my generation who fits that description? If so, what will that mean for the future?

(Of course, there's also the question of whether NGO's and other humanitarian organizations are the way to fix things. Maybe more on that question later, but I took a whole course on that last semester and still don't have answers.)

I'm not sure how many people are regularly reading the blog at this point, but I'd love to hear any and all opinions you guys have about this.

I Guess I'll Actually Update This Thing

Sorry for the lull between posts. I've mostly been focusing on my ISP, so there's not all that much to report from the last few weeks. There is, however, a big festival going on at Pura Samuan Tiga, not far from my host family's house (really only a few blocks). My ibu has been spending all of her free time putting together offerings for it, and this morning she went to the market around 5 in the morning (or so she told me last night; I wasn't awake to confirm her departure) to buy fruit for offerings. The volleyball field (court?) near the temple, down the street from our program center, has been converted to sort of a tent city of warungs. Since people come from all over the area for the temple festival (which goes on for something like two weeks), locals set up food stalls to make a little extra profit. Perhaps later some pictures -- I keep forgetting to take my camera with me when I go places.

What else? I did end up switching my ISP topic just before the ISP period began. Instead of researching and writing about folktales, I've been writing stories of my own. One of them is loosely based on a popular Balinese folktale/legend, the story of Jayaprana and Layonsari. I won't recount it in full here, but Jessie has described it as a combination of King David from the Old Testament and Romeo and Juliet. (Admittedly, I remember next to nothing about King David -- is he the one from David & Goliath? -- so I can't quite vouch for the accuracy of that statement. Sorry, Dad.) My second story is based on things my ibu has told me about her life growing up and with her children, and the third is about topeng and sort of about Balinese Hinduism. All in all, I've written over 50 pages of fiction this month -- so you can understand why I haven't been up to much else.

That's about it for now, but sometime in the next couple of days I'll try to get out and take some more pictures. I'd like to get take some pictures of Bedulu, so that you all might be able to get a better sense of daily life. More later!

The trick is to get lost.

Not too far from my homestay in Bedulu is Goa Gajah, the elephant cave. It's one of those tourist traps that would pretty firmly fall into the Tour De Crap category (sorry, Dad), and everyone I've talked to about it has told me it's boring. It's where my ibu has her tourist stuff shop, and if she didn't work there I probably wouldn't ever have gone to check it out. Still, there's a vegetarian warung across the street, so yesterday I headed over there for lunch and my Tourist Moment of the week.


That's the mouth of the cave. The European guy whose name I forget who renamed the place Goa Gajah thought it was a carving of an elephant. He was wrong. I'm pretty sure it's one of the major spirits in the Balinese arcana, though I forget the exact details. Inside the cave, there's a statue of Ganesh and a couple of other carvings. Like people had told me, not terribly interesting.

I'd heard there was another cave somewhere in the vicinity, so I went exploring. After heading across a rice field and down some stairs, the concrete pathway branched. To my right, it continued, probably to a temple. To my left, it was a dirt path with a sign that said "Jungle Temple." I decided I was reasonably intrigued, and followed it.

After a couple of minutes of walking, I ran into a guy whose job it was to take donations. I looked at the register -- everyone had donated 15,000-20,000rp ($1.50-$2.00) -- and I decided I was too cheap to go see what the fuss was about. I told the guy I didn't have enough money, but I'd come back another day since I live in Bedulu. Either he was a really nice guy or happy that I spoke bahasa Indonesia with him, because he let me through without paying. I meant to pay him a bit on my way out, but for reasons that will soon become clear, I never got the chance.

I kept walking down the path, a couple of times running into women selling water, fruit, etc. Finally, I ran into a woman who chatted with me for a few minutes, asking me where I was staying and why I spoke Indonesian. She showed me a path down to the river, saying I could go swimming (I opted not to), or cross a bridge, see some meditation caves, and make my way back to the parking lot across the river. As I was following her, I slipped -- Birkenstocks aren't great for hiking -- and landed pretty hard on my knee. It's fine (only a colorful bump), but I should have taken it as a sign to turn around.

After I gave her some money, she left me on the path. I continued down the slope to the river, all the while dodging enormous troupes of ants that wanted to climb up my legs.

Then I saw the bridge. Picture the quintessential rickety southeast Asian bridge: four big bamboo trunks lashed together and stuck above the river, held there by what looked mostly like sheer willpower. I don't know how I convinced myself to cross it. I basically ran-walked across it, scurrying as fast a I could without slipping. It probably wouldn't have been horrible if I'd fallen -- it was only a ten foot drop or so into reasonably calm water -- but I had my camera and didn't much feel like taking it for a swim.

When I got to the other side, I realized there probably wouldn't be a way to get back over the river and scrambled back over the bridge. I tried to climb up to the path by another route, but my way was blocked by wet, slick rocks and a couple of terrifyingly large spiders. I don't know why I didn't try to go up the way I'd originally come down. By this time, it had started to rain -- maybe I thought it would be too slippery.

So, I crossed the bridge again, and miraculously it held my weight once more. I checked out the caves -- which were, admittedly, pretty cool -- and then followed a path upriver, the direction from which I'd come. Then the path dead-ended. It looked like it might continue up the slope, so I followed it, figuring that at the top of the ravine there would probably be people (at this point I was pretty sure I knew vaguely where I was.) After a muddy scramble, I made it to the top. Sure enough, I emerged onto a back road.

I asked two guys siting on a bale (sort of like a big veranda/pagoda/porch thing) where I was. They replied with the banjar (neighborhood) name, which wasn't much help, so I asked how to get to Bedulu. (A few minutes later I realized I'd asked them how to get to "the biggest road" rather than "a bigger road." No wonder they were confused at first.) They pointed me in the right direction. I set off down the back road, avoiding some frighteningly mean dogs, and asking people every once in a while how to get to Bedulu. They were all helpful, if a little weirded out by my muddy attire. Ultimately, I ended up on the slightly-less-back road that I took home from Mas when I was learning to make masks. I was incredibly relieved to know exactly where I was.

I headed back to Goa Gajah, it being on the way home, to tell Ibu that I wasn't lost or dead or anything. It had been less than an hour all told, so she wasn't too worried, but she laughed at my story. She gave me some water and sent me home to shower. Later that night, she made fun of me some more.

So yeah, Goa Gajah the tourist attraction was pretty dull. But if you do it right, it's pretty fun. The trick, of course, is to get lost.

So That's Why They Call It the Rainy Season

I had just finished lunch in Ubud and was en route to finding a new cafe with wifi, when it started to rain. I ducked into the market to buy an umbrella (usually I wouldn't mind getting wet but my computer was in my backpack), at which point it started pouring. Now, I'm not talking "slightly above a drizzle" pouring. Nope -- after about twenty minutes, the streets looked like rivers, current and little rapids included. A very nice group of Balinese people let me sit in their pottery stall for a couple of minutes, until I got bored and ventured out. I wish I'd had my camera with me. It really was amazing.

Anyway. The French tourist story.

A couple of weeks ago (I think; my comprehension of the passage of time is a little wonky at this point), my Ibu and Bapak informed me that two French tourists would be staying in the spare bedroom across from mine for two nights. (By across I mean in the building next to mine, the one with the bathroom I use. I think I've explained that Balinese houses tend to be a collection of small buildings rather than one big one. If I haven't, well, then, there you go.) Apparently this sort of thing happens with some frequency; as long as my host family has spare bedrooms, they figure they may as well use them.

That evening, I was sitting on my porch reading when an enormous tour bus pulled onto our street. We live on a fairly major street in Bedulu, but it's not the main road that goes through town and to see a tour bus there was bizarre. I had assumed it was just going to be two random tourists; instead, it turned out, it was a whole group.

So these two ladies came into the yard accompanied by one of the group guides and my Bapak. I tried very hard not to judge them by the enormousness of their suitcases (which really were bigger than mine, and I've been here for two and a half months. Ah well.) Bapak showed them the room, and hardly a moment passed when there was a shriek. Ibu and I looked in that direction, and caught something about a lizard. They had seen a tokek, the bigger of two varieties of gecko commonly found in Bali. Now, if you piss off a tokek (i.e. by chasing it or trying to catch it), it might bite you, which'll probably hurt. But short of that, they're totally harmless. I'm pretty sure one lives behind my closet. Still, they refused to go back into the room until the guide came out with a dead lizard in hand, which he did.

While this was going on, my ibu and kakak (older brother) and I were cracking up, teasing them in Indonesian. My ibu asked me if I was afraid of lizards, and I laughed, telling her that they're everywhere and there's no sense in being afraid. I didn't have the heart (or the language skills) to explain to the two Frenchwomen that another tokek would probably find its way into the room later.

Things were pretty uneventful until the next night, when Bapak came to get them to go to some dance performance their group had planned. As they were leaving, one of the women pointed at the painting that hangs outside my kakak's door. "I bought one just like that!" she said. "Only bigger."

So my bapak promptly started trying to sell it to her. He explained to them that he and Ibu own a painting shop, which is kind of true, in that my Ibu owns a tourist tchotchke store outside of Goa Gajah which sells some paintings, among other things. Then he named a fairly ridiculous price.
She declined, but said, "maybe we got it at the same place!"

At this point, my bapak feigned being upset. "No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "I painted it myself."

Up to this point, my ibu and I had been watching the exchange with interest, giggling occasionally, but at this point we completely lost it. My bapak is a very talented man, and he makes awesome woodcarvings (that being his job), but he definitely doesn't paint. Without thinking, I said to him, "bohong!" which means liar. For a moment, I panicked, not sure if it was really bad to tease one's elder. Fortunately, when I said it my ibu laughed even harder and repeated it to him.

The French women didn't buy the painting. Still, it was a pretty entertaining thing to watch.



In other news, to answer Ryan's question about whether auspicious days are spontaneous:

So, the Balinese have several calendars. There's the lunar calendar, which determines when things like Nyepi fall. Then there's a seven-day calendar, based on the Gregorian calendar and used for things like school calendars and general day-to-day business, since it matches internationally. It's also the basis for the 210-day Balinese year, since the calendar is made up of 30 seven-day wuku, or weeks. That determines when a temple's odalan, or temple birthday, falls. Then there's a five-day calendar and a three-day calendar, both based off of traditional market days (one Javanese and one Balinese, though I can never remember which is which). Then there's also a calendar that works something like 1-day week, 2-day week, 3-day week, etc etc, but that one is completely over my head so I won't even try to explain it.

The point is, when you look at a Balinese calendar, it's got all sorts of writing on it. Each day will have the Gregorian date, the Gregorian day of the week, and then what day of the five-day, three-day, bizarre cycle I don't understand, and lunar week it is. Also, all of the wukus have their own name, so that's on there, too.

As far as I can tell, in terms of religious offerings, the five-day and three-day week are most important (although the wuku is important for odalans). Each week has its "most auspicious day," and the intersection of those days, Kaja-Kliwon, is the most auspicious day of all. A lot of rituals go on on that day. Days that are just Kaja or just Kliwon are also reasonably auspicious, and I think some of the other intersections are too. Some of them are not auspicious at all, but I don't know which particular days those are.

So to make a long story short, yes, people absolutely know about these events in advance. They take a ton of planning, especially for something like the enormous odalan at Besakih. In the days before a festival, women are making various offerings out of palm leaves and flowers, and the men are doing the cooking necessary for sacrifices and offerings. Also, the temples are decorated, and I imagine the high priests are also doing a whole bunch of things to prepare (though I can't say with certainty what they are).

But this stuff also goes on on a daily basis, too, since every day people make offerings, usually in the mornings and the evenings, part of whatever they've cooked that day. It's actually kind of problematic: a generation or two ago, people made offerings less frequently, but as tourism and other forces have emphasized Balinese Hinduism, there has been pressure to make more offerings. In and of itself, that's not necessarily problematic, except for the fact that daily offerings require both a lot of money and a lot of time. As a result, some Balinese families put more effort into offerings than things like education.

Still, it is pretty cool to watch the whole community come together in preparation for the big festivals. Everyone gets really excited, and the temples really do look spectacular. Plus, it's a lot of fun to get to go to them.

Woosh!

That's the sound of time passing quickly. I didn't realize it'd been so long since I'd last posted!

The last few weeks have been pretty laid-back. We're prepping for our independent study period (ISP), so we've had a bunch of papers due and we have exams next week. After that, classes are over and we have a month to explore the topic of our choice. I'll be studying satua, traditional folktales, most of which are animal fables. I'm going to be going around Bedulu (some people are going elsewhere on the island, but I like Bedulu and I really like hanging out with my host family) getting as many people to tell me stories as possible. Then I'm going to try to figure out why the stories aren't told as commonly now as they were before (my hypothesis: electricity, TV, and public education). Then I'm going to attempt to deduce whether there's a correllation between people not telling the stories as much and changing cultural values.

Basically, it's all an excuse to get people to tell me stories.

Prep for ISP -- meeting with my advisor, writing up the proposal, etc. -- has been taking a lot of my free time, but last night I went with my host parents to two huge temple festivals. Now, I can only understand some of what my host family says to me (and I think because they know that they never give me fully comprehensive explanations of what's going on), so I had been under the impression that at six o'clock, we would ride a bus to Besakih, the biggest and most important temple in Bali, then go to the festival, eat dinner, and head home.

Technically, all those things happened. At 6, we piled into the car and drove toward Mas, where my bapak works. We met up with his boss and some people he works with, then sat around on the bale (sort of a porch/gazebo-ish structure) for a while waiting for more people to show up. Then we piled onto a big bus (the kind they use for tours), at which point my ibu informed me it would be a two-hour ride. Roughly an hour and a half later, we arrived at Pura Ulun Batur, the second biggest/most important temple in Bali. I figured maybe I had misheard my host parents. We prayed for ten minutes (the big festivals are a pretty quick in-and-out affair, because there are so many people who want to make offerings and pray), then walked back to the bus.

"Next we'll go to Besakih," my ibu said. That would take another hour to get to, and by this point it was around nine pm. I snacked on some of the fruit my ibu had bought, and napped. When we got there, I was floored. Besakih is huge -- my ibu said that there are 1000 temples within the complex, but I think that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but only a little bit -- and the whole thing was fully adorned with brightly colored fabric, gold, offerings, flowers, and fruit.

We first walked up the stairs (the temple is on a hillside) to a relatively smaller temple to pray. My bapak said that there are different temples for different castes; because the family follows the patriarch's caste, we were in the ksatriya temple. (Quick review: there are three high castes. First is brahmana, the priestly caste. Second highest is ksatriya, the warrior/ruling class. Third, I believe, is wesya, the merchant class. After those castes come the sudra, the commoners. Caste in Bali isn't nearly as important as it is in India, but it does determine things like where in a village someone lives and where one goes to pray.) After that, we went to the main courtyard, which was enormous. The ground was covered in offerings that others had made and left. We knelt, waited for the high priest to begin instruction (which basically involves when to pray, who to pray to, and when to stop), then followed his instructions. After that, we were finished, and walked down the stairs of the temple.

At this point, it was roughly 11:30pm. My bapak went to buy us fish sate, and we sat on a wall alongside the road and ate it with rice and fruit that my ibu had bought. When we finished, it was time to head home, and we piled onto the bus again. We got home around 1:15am, and I headed to bed.

The temple festival at Besakih lasts for 15 days, in order to accomodate all of the people who want to come. Later in the week, my brothers and their wives will go. I'm not sure if they'll go to Ulun Batur, too, but it wouldn't surprise me if that festival also lasts for a long time. To an outsider, it appears that these festivals just kind of pop up without reason, but usually it's because it's an especially auspicious day. I'm pretty sure these festivals were odalan, which is sort of like a temple birthday and happens twice a year (because the relevant Balinese calendar has 210 days).

Picture post!

Here are the photos that I didn't have time to put up in the last post.

First, some ogoh-ogoh:

This one is Hanuman, the monkey god, fighting against two naga (dragons).
I think it was somewhere between 15 and 20 feet tall. Later that night, they carried it around.

This guy is Ravana, the king of the Rakshasas (demons), and the villain from the Ramayana.
He was even taller than Hanuman -- note the people standing next to it.

From Gunung (Mount) Batur:

The view from the top! You're actually looking at two mountains. The one in the front is Mt.
Abang,and behind it (you can only see a tiny bit directly behind the first peak) is Mt. Agung.



Also the view from the top. In the left is Lake Batur, and behind it is the Kintamani ridge.
This whole area is one big caldera from an eruption waaaaay in the past.

Prepare yourselves for an incredibly long post.

It feels like ages since I've written a blog post. We've been on an extended excursion for the past nine or so days, but somehow it feels like I've been away longer. Bedulu is starting to feel more like home. When I got back to my homestay, my Ibu gave me a big hug and everyone asked about my trip (and then let me go have time to myself, since I've been up since 3:30 in the morning -- more on that later). After many nights in various hotels, it's a bit of a relief to be back in a familiar room that I can call my own for the time being.

I'm typing this up starting on Sunday night. I've done so much recently that I want to start to get it down before I forget, and I'll most likely not be able to post this until Wednesday. Tuesday is Nyepi, which is sort-of-kind-of the Balinese new year celebration, and the day before is a huge celebration. On the evening before Nyepi, the streets turn into a sort of raucous party, and people parade around ogoh-ogoh that the boys have spent the last month or so making (I think I explained them in a bit more detail last post). During the day, they make offerings to the demons (Balinese believe in a balance between good and evil, and bad spirits must also be respected). The day after (which is Nyepi), the opposite happens. In order to convince the demons that Bali is uninhabited and therefore uninteresting, the entire island shuts down (and I mean entire: even the airport is closed). People can't leave their houses, drive, work, or use electricity. (Although people fudge the rules here and there -- last year, my teacher Mirah went to her neighbor's house to hang out for half an hour or so, something that's technically forbidden.) So basically, with all the hubbub, I won't be getting to an internet cafe anytime in the next couple of days.

Back to the beginning of the excursion. Two Saturdays ago, we met up with a handful of students from Udayana University in Denpasar who major in English, and headed to Ary's (the academic director) village in Tabanan. On the way, we stopped at a semi-organic (it aims to be organic but is still in the transition phase) farm in Batukaru. Unfortunately, the lecture there wasn't very good because a lot got lost in translation (which is a frequent problem), but the farm was beautiful and we got an amazing lunch.

After the farm, we headed to Desa Munduk Pakel, the village. We were going to stop driving partway there and walk the rest of the way through the sawah (rice fields), but before we had a chance it started raining buckets and thundering, so we drove the whole way there. By the time we arrived, the rain had decreased to a little more than a drizzle. When it finally stopped, we hiked up to the sawah to check it out. Then it was back for dinner and to meet our homestay families. Mine apparently was the family of Ary's first husband -- scandalous! (No, really, divorce is quite uncommon in Bali.) We also got to play gamelan that evening.

The sawah near Ary's village.

A lot of the villagers ride their motorbikes up to where the road stops,
then walk the rest of the way. This was around sunrise.

The next day, we headed into the sawah to get our hands dirty and to help Ary's father in their fields. We spent an hour or so hoeing the flooded sawah that will be planted sometime in the future, breaking up dirt and grass clods and smoothing it out. To smooth it out, you walk on the mud you've already hoed, so within minutes we were all pretty dirty. Then Ary's father declared that we'd done enough, and our work ethic clearly devolved. Within about ten minutes, most of us (some of the Balinese girls, and a couple of the guys, ran away) were covered head to toe in mud that we had slung at one another. (I unfortunately don't have pictures of this, but hopefully Ary will post some soon and I can direct you to them -- it was pretty ridiculous.) Once we tired of throwing mud, which is to say once being hit with mud no longer made a person any dirtier, we started racing. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to race through water or snow, but it was kind of like that, only harder -- the bottom of the sawah is slick with mud and if you're at all tired, you'll face plant. After the races, we got to drink and eat some young coconut and then go bathe in the river, something we did every day after that. Then we had some class, ate dinner, and played more gamelan. I eventually figured out the smaller bronze instrument (it looks sort of like a xylophone), but I'm still not coordinated enough to play the faster parts.

The next day -- I think it was Monday -- we went on sort of a salad walk through the forest. We started out in the village garden, picking ginger root, galangal, a sour fruit (the name of which I've forgotten), and coffee beans. Then we walked through the forest, finding all sorts of things. I don't remember all of what we picked, but a few that I recall are turmeric, water spinach, lemongrass, and plant called bongkot that looks like really big lemongrass and tastes kind of like artichoke. When we finished, we went back to Ary's house and made the most amazing sambal (sort of a spread/relish of chopped vegetables, usually mostly chilies) I've ever eaten. (And I have the recipe, so if you remind me when I'm home I'll make you some!) After lunch, we learned how to make bowls from coconuts. After that, we had free time, and I conducted my first field interview with a man who told me a folktale and answered all sorts of questions about it. (He also seemed a little confused about why I was asking him to tell me a children's story.)

On our last full day in the village, some people went hunting with Putu, Ary's son. (I passed. Everyone should be surprised.) Then, in the afternoon, we got to watch a cockfight, which was at the same time fascinating and horrible. The older men in the village run it, and they're all these totally laid-back guys who pass the time between fights gambling on dominoes. The cockfights are designed to be bloody -- cockfights are illegal except for ritual purpose, and the ritual purpose is to spill blood in sacrifice -- and the men tie knives to the rooster's foot before the fight begins. (Sometimes one bird will get two knives, one on each foot, if the owners of both birds agree beforehand that it's otherwise at a disadvantage, i.e. because of size.) Then the fight goes on until one of the birds can't stand anymore. The losing bird becomes food, and the winning bird earns its owner a fair sum of money.

That day had somewhat of a theme to it, since in the evening we went eel hunting in the sawah. It ended up being more of a "follow the guy with the giant eel-catching-pliers and the bucket through the mud and try not to fall in" excursion, since there was only one set of eel-catching pliers and there weren't that many eels. Some of the guys went off to try to catch them with their hands and managed to catch one, which impressed the villager we were hunting with. The eels looked kind of like giant worms, and the next day they were fried up for lunch. Apparently, with the introduction of pesticides (which are used with abandon, since the government originally gave them to farmers for free), eels are rarer. It's problematic, because they used to be an important source of food.

On Wednesday, we parted ways with the Udayana students (which was sad -- they were really cool) and headed to Lovina, on the north coast, for our "spring break." Lovina is right on the beach, and it's near Singaraja, which was a major port town under the Dutch. Because it's easier to get to than the ports of south Bali, there's much more multiculturalism. There's a larger Muslim community there, and also a large number of Chinese people and Chinese descendants. That evening, we went to one of the major Buddhist temples in Bali. A few monks still live there, but not as many as there once were.

The next morning, we went to Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha (UnDikSha), the university in Singaraja. We met with the English majors there and had a discussion on interfaith dialogue, since there are communities in the Singaraja area that have both Hindu and Muslim families, something you see more rarely in the south. It was refreshing to have a discussion instead of a lecture, and also interesting to hear the differences in religious dialogue there. In Indonesia, everyone must declare a religion -- it's on your identity card -- so it's pretty central to daily life. In the mixed communities, usually Hindu people go to the big Muslim ceremonies, and vice versa.

That afternoon, we went to a Bugis village on the coast. The Bugis are Muslim fisherman, and so their customs are fairly different from those of the Hindu Balinese. (They also are the origin of the Boogeyman -- back in the day they were also pretty fearsome pirates and colonizers used to tell their kids they'd give them to the Bugimen. These people definitely didn't fit that description, though.) It's become a tradition that when the SIT students visit the village, they play music and we dance with the kids. I don't think I've ever met such cool kids. They were reluctant at first, but once we got going, they practically wouldn't let us stop. They also loved our cameras, and insisted we take tons of pictures of them and then show them. After we danced, we got to see their mosque, which they renovated just last year.

SIT students dancing with awesome Bugis kids.

On Friday morning, we went with the UnDikSha students to Gitgit waterfall, near Lovina. The waterfall was huge, and afterward we (just the SIT students and Ary's son) took turns jumping off some rocks into a swimming hole of cold water. After that, we went to a Chinese temple, Klenteng, and then to lunch with the UnDikSha students.

The next day (sorry, have I bored you to bits yet?), we left Lovina for Kintamani, on the edge of Lake Batur. On our way, we stopped at Pura Ulun Batur, which is a temple that serves as the starting point of all of the irrigation networks and coordinates it all. Once we got to Kintamani, we had time to rest up before our early wake-up call the next morning.

At 3:30 on Sunday morning, we woke and got ready for our hike up Gunung Batur (gunung means mountain). On our way up, we met up with some Indian guys who were studying in Singapore, and hiked around with them. We got to the top just before sunrise, and had a breakfast of coffee and volcano-steamed eggs and banana sandwiches. (Yes, there is a small warung on top of the mountain.) After sunrise, we hiked around the caldera, then headed down. We were back at our hotel by 9 am, then had some down-time before we left to return to Bedulu.

So that's the round-Bali excursion. While I'm on my writing streak (it's now Tuesday), I figure I'll say a little more about Nyepi, which I am currently experiencing. Yesterday, in the middle of the day, there were big offerings in the street (with chicken sate as sacrifices -- depending on the village, the sacrifice can be as small as a chicken or as big as a cow). In the evening, the boys paraded around all the ogoh-ogoh in the center of the town, while a guy on a loudspeaker cracked jokes about them all. That went on until around 10 or 11 at night.

Today (which is to say Tuesday) is Nyepi, and theoretically everything's supposed to be quiet. It's been a kind of confusing day, though. There are four rules: no fire/lights, no work, no entertainment, and no traveling. When I walked into the bathroom this morning to shower, the light was on. Later, my Ibu was sweeping, and she told me I could wash my clothes (my teachers yesterday had told me I wasn't allowed to). I've been reading all day, and earlier my host sister-in-law was playing guitar to her baby. This morning, my Ibu told me I was welcome to do anything around the house, I just couldn't leave, and at night there couldn't be any lights on. Still, around 4:30 kids spilled into the streets and played for about an hour. When I asked my host sister-in-law why that was okay, she shrugged and said maybe they were bored. My Ibu added that I could go join them if I wanted to, I just had to be back inside in an hour. And now, I've learned that in my room, I can have my light on, I just have to have the shades drawn.

Definitely a holiday of contradictions. But a nice one at that -- I've spent the day reading, lying around, and getting some work done. After the flurry of activity that was the last week and a half, it was nice to have some time to myself with no real agenda.

Things I See on My Walk Home from Mas

People. Many of whom want to know my name, where I’m going (home to Bedulu), where I’m coming from (learning mask-making), and why I’m walking so far when I could just flag down a motorcycle. Others want me to get out of their way on the street, and still more just want to know how I’ll respond when they say “hello.” Others — and this is one of the smallest categories — ignore me. A few, like the guy who shook my hand and then firmly gripped my wrist, want to sell me things or give me a ride. Those people, though, are few and far between, and I generally feel remarkably safe walking alone. Most people just want to know why I, a bule (slang for white person or tourist), am walking by, such a long way from home.

Rice, although not as much as I would expect, given that agriculture is Bali’s second-largest source of income. Along my five- or six-kilometer walk, the fields are concentrated in three or four spots. Mas is in the greater Ubud area, a huge tourist destination, so most people make a living carving masks and other things. For some reason, ducks are an especially popular subject.

Temples, at least four of them. Temples are hugely important here — just three nights ago I went to a temple festival that will last for ten nights to accommodate all the people who want to attend. I should point out that the four in my tally doesn’t include each family’s personal shrine, which would bring the count up to several hundred.

Offerings. Usually small, just a canang sari (a small square palm leaf basket filled with flowers) and a stick of incense, but frequently placed, in front of almost every house or shop. Today, though, as far as I can tell, is a holy day, and the offerings stand in small spires, honoring one god or another.

Chickens. Even when they aren’t growing rice, Balinese people pretty much always have a few chickens on hand. The chickens have free range of the yard, street, and generally the neighborhood. I still am unsure of how everyone identifies their own. They’re everywhere, and sometimes this doesn’t work out so well for them: yesterday, I passed a hen in the street, lying on her back and feebly flapping her wings after being hit by a car or motorcycle. Surprisingly, though, these chickens apparently aren’t all as dumb as they look. For the most part, very little harm comes to them.

Trash. Up until fairly recently, all Balinese trash was organic, so people just chucked it in a pile and waited for it to turn into compost. The Indonesian infrastructure doesn’t seem to have kept up with the introduction of plastics, so the trash just keeps stacking up. There’s not such thing as a dump, as far as I can tell — just piles by the road. Despite the heat, they don’t smell, probably due to the masses of chickens picking them over for food. Occasionally I also see smoke, from people burning what of their trash that they can. (Sometimes this includes what wouldn’t normally be considered “burnable” and the smell of melting plastic fills the air.)

An addendum to people: naked people. For the last stretch of the back road, before I hit the main road that runs from Ubud to Gianyar, people bathe in the canal that runs alongside it. This leads to the awkward situation of me wanting to return the greetings of the kids who shout “hello” to me, but not wanting to offend anyway by invading their privacy. Mostly, I just keep my eyes down and try to wave at the right (read: clothed) people.

Dogs. Mangy-looking ones. It’s hard to tell between the strays and the pets, because there’s a different concept of pet care here. I’m not usually afraid of dogs, but I am in Bali, because rabies is endemic and I just generally don’t trust things that growl menacingly at me. Usually, they ignore me if I ignore them, but yesterday I must have looked at one mother dog wrong, because she started chasing after me. It wasn’t until I turned around and yelled “stop!” that she did, leaving me to walk on with shaking legs and a pounding heart.

Ogoh-ogoh. This year, Nyepi (sort of the Balinese New Year) will occur in mid-March. For one day, all of Bali will fall silent to trick the demons into believing the island is uninhabited. The day before Nyepi, people make as much noise as they can, and parade around giant puppets of mythical figures, demons, and deities fighting. These puppets are ogoh-ogoh. They're huge, usually significantly larger than life-size. The neighborhood boys make them, starting a month or two before Nyepi. They weave the figure out of palm leaf, then cover it with newspaper strips and styrofoam and paint it. In the afternoon until late at night, a horde of boys gathers to work on it. Yesterday, one bunch asked for a donation, so I swapped 1000 rupiah (roughly ten cents) for a chance to paint a few stripes of white across the ogoh-ogoh’s chest.

Explosions. Some of the kids building ogoh-ogoh also build makeshift canons — basically large PVC tubes with gasoline poured into them. They shoot them off randomly, starting mid-afternoon. Yesterday, one of the older kids was nice enough to order the younger ones to hold fire while I walked by. Still, once I had passed, I steeled myself for the imminent bang. I guess even in Bali, given half the chance, kids still just like to blow shit up.

So yeah -- just a few notes about everyday life here in Bali and the things I see on a regular basis. I'm still terrified of the dogs, but hopefully I'll manage to avoid getting hit by an ogoh-ogoh-cannon.