November 25, 2016
It is hard to believe we've been here a week already and in other ways it seems as though we've been here for much longer than that. The routine of our days has settled upon us and life feels very normal.
This morning while Lynda was out for her very early walk, she picked up a Balinese breakfast for us. It consists of a brown paper cone filled with stickier than usual rice and a little selection of condiments ranging from chicken to peanuts and chilies to onion. The condiments are separated from the rice by a piece of banana leaf and once you've mixed them all together it really is quite delicious! Typically a Balinese would eat this right out of the paper cone and with the fingers of their right hand. (More on this later.....). But Ketut took pity on us and so provided us with plates, a fork and a spoon to be able to maneuver a little more easily. He also added our fresh fruit salad into the breakfast mix so once again....we had a delicious breakfast on our little patio. Lynda paid $1 each for the brown paper dishes and there were many Balinese lined up to get their breakfast alongside her this morning.
Now for the "right hand" reference. Like in India, people here use their left hand to wipe their bottom in the bathroom so that hand is never used for anything else. Not to pass anything to anyone (like money to a shopkeeper) or to put food in your mouth.
A couple of other customs that I think are interesting include:
Never touch a Balinese on the head (not even a child). The head is sacred and is their connection with the gods.
Never point your feet at anyone. That is don't sit on the ground with the bottom of your feet pointing at someone. Or never put your feet up on the table or on a foot stool with your feet pointing at another. Actually, just don't put your feet up on anything ever! The reason for this is that the feet are considered to be unclean and connected with the underworld so you wouldn't want to "direct" that unclean or underworld energy toward anyone.
Every day after a Balinese person prays, they put flowers behind their ears and a piece of white rice in the centre of their forehead. The flowers just stay there until they fall apart and disappear and the rice has been dampened with the water that is part of the prayer ceremony so it too just sticks there until it falls away. Those decorations are to show that they've made their prayers for the day and to honour that process.
Prayers, blessings, and offerings are all a part of daily life here. At every turn you find another example of this taking place. Whether it's the girl at the hotel tasked with putting offerings at a wide array of locations on the property or the shopkeeper placing them at the entrance to their store, or every person on their property ensuring that both the upper and the lower realms have received their offering for the day via the temples that are everywhere...it is a way of life for the Balinese. Every property has some kind of a temple that is placed up high (might be a very small temple or it might be something more substantial). This is where the offerings to the gods above goes. The offering to the gods below goes on the floor/ground. Once that offering on the ground has been placed it is not a big deal if someone accidentally steps on it as it has already done it's "job" in that it was offered. Thats not to say that it is okay to intentionally step on the offerings but rather that there is no need to worry if you mistakenly step on one or kick it from where it was placed while you're out walking.
Having these offerings and daily practices of ongoing blessings as part of life....it doesn't take long for the Balinese way to wend its way into your soul and your heart. They are a very generous and happy culture who seem to have an uncanny ability to exist in the present moment - a gift many of us aspire to.
The Balinese people are also very adept with languages. From what I understand they all have at least two languages (even in the villages). They all speak Balinese as well as Bahasa Indonesian. Often Bahasa Indonesian is simply referred to as Bahasa but the word Bahasa really means language so we could say I speak Bahasa English. But for ease, everyone just refers to Indonesian as Bahasa.
When we say Selamat (a greeting) we are speaking Bahasa and if we want to speak Balinese we would say Om swastiestu. Typically the greeting in either language would be accompanied by hands together (like you're praying) and a nod of the head. One interesting thing about the Balinese greeting is that if you break the word down a little you can see it's root. "Om" is a word we're all familiar with in meditation and yoga practice. "Swastiestu" has at the beginning of it the same start as swastika which is an honoured symbol here (and many other places in the world). It was just in recent history when Hitler turned it into something ugly. Here the swastika symbol represents balance and four root philosophies in the Hindu (and Buddhist) faiths. I'm way over my head here in explaining this so I'll stop at this point and encourage any who are interested in more info to do their own research.
Goodday was just here and is heading off to his village which is about one hour away. The "boys" as we've come to call them go home often to see family and/or to do a job that needs to be done. Yesterday Jati went home for a part of his sister's wedding ceremony. There are several different parts to a wedding and this was just one of the blessings that moved her further along the path to marriage. Today Goodday is heading home to put a new house for the fish in the lake that is adjacent to his village. After a little interrogation we were able to discern that the fish house he is putting in the lake today is really some kind of trap to catch the fish as the 25th is the best day in the Balinese calendar to put out a new fish trap. His family sells the fish they catch as part of their income. It seems that income diversification is a way of life in Bali.
Time to pull a card......
LOL! I pulled the card "abundance" which is in perfect harmony with the Balinese fishing philosophy. The 25th is the day for abundance!
Lynda's card today is "gentleness". And no...you're not having deja vu....she did have that same card show up just two days ago. Hmmmmm....opportunity to practice gentleness in a very gentle culture. How nice is that! Or in Lynda's own words, "It's hard not to practice gentleness here!"
Just back from lunch where we were introduced to lemon bintang (which tastes like a really good shandy). So much for the healthy drinks from this point on!! LOL. Hopefully we'll be able to exercise a little restraint and continue with the water etc but boy that bintang was yummy!
Rain has started to fall again. Just lightly today so we are happy to sit under the roof of our patio. Pasek (our host) has just offered to bring us a coffee. This could get to be a habit!
The hu yung continues to fall and we've just finished our coffee with Pasek. Life in Bali seems to be one of minimal planning....more going with the flow. For example, we have a tour booked with Jati tomorrow but as we're here for so long we're able to say "weather dependent". If we wake up to a full day of drizzle we will postpone our tour tomorrow to a day that starts with clear skies and sunshine.
Another thing that I don't think we've mentioned yet is that the door sill we step over to get into our house is a full 14 + inches high. Not 100% sure of the reason for that but if I were to make a guess it might be to ensure no water gets inside during high rains (with winds) and to potentially keep out some of the creatures that might make their way through if it were just a flat surface. The first day we had to step over that sill it felt like doing a high jump but now only after just one week it almost feels easy. What will be really funny is when we're back home in Summerland and high stepping over every door sill we cross! LOL!!
You won't believe what we did tonight! It is Friday night and the rain had just stopped so we thought....hmmmmm....what would be fun to do on a Friday? And voila it came to us.....we could go to a movie and so we did. The Paradiso is a restaurant/bar/movie house where patrons sit on comfy chairs and couches. You can order anything you'd like to drink or eat (the selection is vast) and of course we opted for popcorn. The popcorn was delicious! We chose salty vs sweet and when it arrived it was still warm from being freshly popped. The movie was Danny Collins starring Al Pacino and it was excellent. The other excellent thing about this place is that the cost of your entrance into the movie ($5 each) is credited to your food bill so in our case we had 2 medium popcorns and 2 bottles of water for $2.28 CAD on top of our $10 admission for two. We'll be back to Paradiso for sure!
We made our way to Paradiso on foot which took us along roads and lanes we'd never seen before. One of those lanes is nicknamed "eat street" for the incredible number of eateries found there. Once the movie was finished we made our way back to 'eat street' and located another great little restaurant where the portions were larger than usual and the prices mid range. The food and the atmosphere was fantastic and the place was packed. It was a fun night. Once dinner was over we walked over to another street that runs parallel to Monkey Forest road. It is often called Main Rd and the traffic on that road (cars) is one way just like Monkey Forest runs the other way. Cars have to make a big loop up Monkey Forest and down Main to go pretty much anywhere in Ubud. We hadn't walked too far before a nice young fellow offered us a taxi so we jumped at it as we were still a long way from home and because the lemon bintangs we'd enjoyed with dinner were making us feel a little lethargic.
Back at Rumah Kita now and ready to get into something loose and comfortable. It's not as hot or humid tonight but I'm still pretty sticky so getting out of these clothes and into p.j.'s sounds like a heck of a plan! Eeeek! Something big just made a lot of noise in the trees behind where Lynda is sitting across from me at the table on our patio. It's probably that damn squeaky toy up to no good!
Till next time,
L & L
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