Bali a Potpourri of Temples, Paddy Fields and Demons!

A year ago (if not two) I bought a large Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook and planned to record my travels in a more orderly and luxurious manner than in my light travel sketchbook. Two things happened, first I was shocked by the whiteness of the thick, very heavy watercolour paper that frightened me so much I couldn't do anything but stroke it and second after having done my opening page I was so relieved I couldn't go on! My blog isn't called Clartyfingers for nothing, I always manage to blot my copybook! Last month however it was time to take a look at Bali. 

 

We visited Bali in 2000, the island is beautiful with thousands of shrines and temples, peaceful, friendly people and amazing terraced paddy fields. Religion plays a great part in daily life with offerings being made to different gods every day, beautiful handmade leaf baskets (Canang Sari, seen in my sketch) decorate family shrines and are placed on steps in the shops (only to be trampled on by tourists!). Frightening demons and figures decorate the facades of the temples, we visited so many and saw the beautifully dressed families carrying the colourful offering boxes on their heads. The women were dressed in multi-coloured transparent lace blouses with jewel-coloured racy bras underneath, (not quite my idea of covering up!) 

 

For a temple visit you have to cover up, blood is considered "unclean", there are signs forbidding visits by menstruating and pregnant woman and spilling blood in a temple requires major ceremonies to re-sanctify the area. My nickname as a child was "Fairy triptoes!" so I was petrified of falling and grazing myself, spilling blood on holy ground thus resulting in a major purification effort (I could imagine the headlines in the local paper! "Stupid tourist sullies ancient temple!" ).Tanah Lot at the top of this page is a tourist "must see" at sunset, however the sea awakes great fear in the Balinese, it hides creatures and demons that they really fear and they may have a point! I nearly drowned at the beach and was left to drift off alone on a scuba dive, maybe I didn't pay enough  tribute to the holy snakes in the caverns below the Tanah Lot temple. 

Culturally, this is a completely different world; babies do not learn to crawl as the earth is unclean, they are also not sat down upon it for the same reason The head is sacred so you don't touch children or anybody for that matter on the head, bodies lie in very shallow graves near parks waiting till their families have enough money to bury them with full rites or share a funeral with someone wealthy. I wondered why the garden of our hotel was only lit by a couple of very dimmed lights; light I was told, attracts demons and therefore is avoided. This was a little bit disconcerting because we had a varan in our hotel garden that could run very fast! 

 

 Beautifully dressed temple dancers moved extremely long metal finger-tips , leaving me feeling like a lumbering lump beside their petite frames and what with my pointy incisors I would definitely not be considered "a beauty". Pointy teeth are a big "No no", they are animalistic and are reminders of your base side, so as a rite of passage they are filed down. There are so many traditions, religious complexities and cultural differences that it is well worth reading up on them all (I was glad I did!) before you barge in patting heads and trampling on offerings! I think the old saying "When in Rom....." really applies here!

Time to switch off the outside lighting, those demon faces still give me the heebie jeebies!