Balinese for a Day

Leaving the temple

"Now you are Balinese," a young Balinese man said to us as we walked home from the semi-annual Galungan festival last evening, dressed in appropriate attire for temple admittance.  Well, we certainly don't feel Balinese because we will never understand all of their complex culture, rituals, and religion; nor could buy into their belief system or ever be completely fluent in the Balinese version of the Indonesian languages.


However, we do feel welcomed into their lifestyle, if only for the short time we are here.  Once you get out of the bigger towns and high-rise tourist resorts, there is nothing plastic about Bali, except for the water bottles and bags choking the rivers and irrigation canals.  The Galungan festivities in our village (and thousands all over Bali)  wasn't staged for us but rather it was an organic event staged by the Balinese for the Balinese.  We were allowed along just for the ride, and what a ride it was!

The excitement started the day before as people started decorating the panjores (see our December 15 post), slaughtering pigs and preparing elaborate offerings.  By yesterday morning, everyone was dressed in their finest temple garb and joyfully heading for the offering ceremony.  It was a sensory overload of color, incense, music, rituals, happy voices and pageantry.

Morning prayers & offerings

After that they got on their motorcycles, sometimes 4-5 on one, and visit friends and relatives, bringing beautiful baskets of food.

We didn't get invited into a home, but we enjoyed seeing families all decked out in their finest on motorbikes as we walked into Ubud for an excellent traditional meal, minus the babi guling (roasted pork).

Food porn!

Later in the afternoon, everyone spontaneous materialized at the temple and the procession through village commenced.  Here's a good clip of the start of the procession.

    

Procession through the village

The barong is a mythical lion-dog in the form of a two-person puppet, like a two-person horse costume.  It stops and does a dance in front of homes that have large offerings, the money in them is used to help finance temple operations.

Barong house call

Texting the Apple God

The gamelan marching band plays loudly the whole time.  After three hours, our ears were ringing from the mesmerizing music, which to our western ears, seems to lack structure and our harmonic scale.

I encourage you to play this short YouTube clip.  The first part shows the amazing virtuosity of the players.  Take note of their left hands, which work harder than the right hands holding the hammer.

spectators

                                We aren't Balinese, but we were for a day, and it sure was fun.