Bali

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  Padang Bay, Bali, Indonesia
Wednesday, February 20, 2008

February 19, Tuesday
Another sea day--and it is a beautiful one! We passed the cyclone yesterday about 200 miles from the eye of the storm. Mom and I spent the morning yesterday playing bridge and spent the afternoon in the spa, so we are both very relaxed and ready for tomorrow in Bali. We can definitely feel a change in the weather as we have moved closer to the equator. We are back in the tropics with very warm and humid days. A lot of the crew are from Indonesia, so there is a lot of excitement on board. The Balinese get first priority (after the passengers, unfortunately) for getting off the ship tomorrow-and then other Indonesians. Since the waters are so shallow, the tenders will be in operation-but when the tide is low, it may be impossible to move between the ship and the shore. So, the crew members have developed elaborate plans for seeing family and friends. Some plan to bring their families onto the ship for the day to ensure that they have more time together-and to let their children see what life is like aboard the ship

Bali in the Early Morning

. The Balinese, of course, hope the tides are in their favor so that they can leave the ship early in the day.
February 20, Wednesday
We visited Bali today and were on a planned excursion, so we were able to get to several interesting places in a short amount of time, despite the heat and the rain. Because the island is surrounded by reefs and access to the island by tender is dependent on the tides, we needed to go in early in the day. As it turned out, we were on the island for 9 hours and got only a small taste of life on Bali. The island is very poor-aside from a few isolated areas-many homes are without running water, and most people rely on subsistence farming to survive. Tourism was a mainstay of Bali's economy until about three years ago when a nightclub was bombed by a terrorist organization. Since that time few tourists from the US, Canada, and Australia, especially, have visited the island, and many hotel workers have been laid off.
The Balinese have a caste system, which also influences the amount of wealth available to families, and a belief in reincarnation that leads them to build elaborate temples-to ensure an improved status in the next life-which may also mean living less well in this life. The Brahmin are of the highest caste, and we saw evidence today of the difference in life styles between those in the lowest caste and those in the highest

Bali in the Mist

. Our guide is a member of the lowest caste. He speaks several languages, is very articulate and fluent in English, and yet could not earn an adequate living as a teacher. He joined a tour company and now works in the larger cities, far from his home. He goes home every two weeks to visit his wife (and take home his earnings since wives have responsibility for the family's finances). His two sons are in their early twenties and are searching for ways to earn a living for themselves. When they marry, the family land will be divided in order to give them a place to live and fields to grow rice.
The house of the Brahmin we visited was on an enormous estate. This person is a famous woodworker, who has set up a production center and gallery where enormous pieces of ebony, mahogany, and teak are being carved by talented artisans. Their work is world-famous-and the estate on which they work is worlds away from their own homes.
Polygamy is also part of the culture in Bali; if a man can afford another wife, he can marry again. Typically, a Brahmin would take a second wife, according to our guide, because they have many responsibilities and more women are needed to help. In such a case, however, each wife would have her own house (to avoid conflict, as our guide put it).
Responsibilities seem well-defined by gender

Kit and Mom Ready for the Day on Bali

. After we saw a woman carrying a bag of sand, our guide noted that it was the woman's role to carry sand and that the man walking next to her would not do a woman's work. The men have responsibility for leveling the rice fields and transplanting the seedlings, for example, not for preparing the soil. Women also have responsibility for cooking and they typically will cook once a day-in the early morning. Whatever is prepared at that time needs to last throughout the day. Our guide told us that when he is at home, he would typically get up in the mornings, have a cup of coffee and go out to work in the fields while his wife did the cooking for the day. When she was finished, she would bring a bit of rice and fish out to him in the fields, and they would eat this meal together. Otherwise, he said, family members do not usually eat together; they come into the kitchen one at a time and check to see who else has eaten so that they know how much food they are able to take.
Bali is certainly a beautiful place. It rises out of the sea in the mist, very lush and green, and it does seem to have a mystical quality. There are temples everywhere and a strong belief in the metaphysical world. But life is not easy for many of the inhabitants. The island is suffering from overpopulation and there are many who are out of work. After a day of riding around the island, I don't know if I could even describe a typical house in Bali. Suffice it to say that most of the places are small and that far more is invested in the local temples than in most homes

Barong Dance Stage

. Most families have chickens that get fed in the morning and then run wild throughout the day, most have pigs, a cow, and fruit trees. Families on the wet side of the island have rice fields-but these are separate from the family compounds since these fields are flooded and many are terraced in the hillsides. Those who do not have rice field are at a distinct disadvantage since rice is their staple food and they need to get rice by buying it or trading for it. Many homes are a mix of concrete and wood-some have tin and plywood attachments. Many do not have running water, as I mentioned, and in these households everyone goes to the river to bathe in the evenings. Those who live near a river may dig a pond a few yards from the river and rely on water from the pond for drinking and cooking.
We attended a Barong Dance performance, an enactment of the struggle between good and evil that is similar to the Noh dramas in Japan in many ways-with beautifully ornate and elaborate costumes and stylized, dramatic movements. Many of the characters had black-and-white-checked cloth somewhere on their costume (showing that good and evil exist together-good cannot exist without evil and vice versa). The Tiger was "good" in the dance and the monster was "evil"-and, luckily, it was very easy to tell good from evil, even without knowing the language, from the music as well as from the actions of the performers. The "stage" entrance was through a set of doors 25 steps above the stage itself (a grassy area at the bottom of the temple steps). There were 6 statues on each of three levels-all bedecked in red and the black and white cloth. They were rarely part of the action-except when the monster needed a hiding place. The musicians sat in a raised area to the left of the stage and signaled the appearance of characters and the progress of the story with cymbals and other percussive instruments.

Barong Dancers and Tiger

We ate lunch in a restaurant that overlooks Mt. Batur, the site of one of the most violent volcanic eruptions on earth, which occurred about 30,000 years ago. The top of the mountain was blown off and a huge crater was created around the mountain as it currently exists-a mere shadow of its former self at about 1000 feet in height.
In the afternoon, we visited a temple built on the site of a natural spring and just below the home of Sukarno, the former President of Indonesia. The temple was made up of a series of squares, one within the other. The outer square was open to all. Once you passed through the gates of good and evil (single file so as not to allow any evil spirits to slip in unnoticed), you could wash yourself in a pool fed by the spring to prepare yourself for prayer. The second square was the gathering place of the community where festivals were planned and preparations were made. An area there was reserved for gamelan players and other areas were reserved for meetings. The spring was visible in this area as well. Inside the next square were areas reserved for prayer-and the area within that was reserved for the priests. Offerings of food in small baskets made of pale banana leaves were along the walls of this area.
February 21, Thursday
We are in the Java Sea today, sailing northwest to Brunei.
We know it is Thursday because there are mats in the elevators that tell us what day it is. We know what time it is if we check the ship's clock, but lots of people don't know what the time really is-I know because I have lived on the eastern side of the dateline before, and I know that several others know because they spend long hours trying to explain to their friends why it is the time that it is-little groups of three or four can always be found in front of the world map while someone explains what time it is in Texas or New York and when we'll catch up again (or when you all will catch up with us!). Right now, we are 16 hours ahead of you. Every time we cross a time zone, we turn our clocks back an hour (so, we have only 13 time zones to go until we reach the east coast). We are nearly to the equator again and are on Day 47.

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Statues all Dressed for the Day	Barong Dance Stage Area	The Musicians	Every Statue Needs to Be Dressed Properly
Mom at the Gate of Good and Evil	In the Community Area of the Temple	Water from the Spring	The Inner and Sacred Area
Would You Be Able to Drive a Bus Here?	Jay! Does This Remind You of Ireland?

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