Sunday, March 5, 2023 – Day 74
Selamat Pagi, ‘good morning’, from Indonesia!
Indonesia is the 14th largest country in the world by area. It covers 735,358 square miles over 17,000 islands. Its islands would stretch from coast to coast and beyond compared to the US. Over 275 million people live here; over half of those live on the island of Java. We will get to Java, but first, here is how we spent 3 days in Bali.
The 400-foot-tall statue of Visnu can be seen to the left of the frame on top of the hill.
Bali is unique among the islands of Indonesia. It is a primarily Hindu population. While Bahasa Indonesian is the official language of all of Indonesia, most people in Bali speak Balinese. Their religion permeates all areas of their daily lives. Each morning an offering of flowers is presented at their family temple and workplace. In the evening an offering of thanks, fruits & food, is placed at the temple. There are home temples, village temples and large public temples. There are temples and statues portraying the Hindu gods and traditional stories all over town.
It depicts a god and others involved in a scene from the tale.
On our first evening in Bali, we went to a dinner after which we witnessed a traditional religious dance performance. The rhythm for the dance was provided by the men through choreographed movements, claps, clicks, shouts and chants. Beautifully costumed dancers told a familiar (to the Balinese) folk tale with good vs evil, love and tragedy, a bit of a Hindu Romeo and Juliet. But this tale ends with Romeo jumping into real fire multiple times and living to tell the tale! (We aren’t in the States for sure!) Fortunately, we had been given an English version of the story to read before the performance, it was a totally foreign art form for us!
Our second day in Bali was a sensory challenge. We went to a typical marketplace where the people in the area shop. It was housed in a 4-story block & brick building with open walls on the sides, thank heavens! It was very hot inside as what little breeze there was outside barely made it to us inside! On the first floor were all the spices and various fragrant (read super stinky) dried fish, fruits and other food items. Fortunately, I had a couple cinnamon hard candies we let slowly dissolve to cover the smell/taste of our surroundings. Next, we went upstairs to the ‘wet market’ where the fresh fish and fowl and other meats were being sold. Thankfully the odor of the first floor lessened a bit as we went up to the meat market, but those odors mixed with the meat odors… it was a challenge. On the third floor we saw beautiful flowers and on the fourth clothing, both of these floors sold items most often used in the daily offerings and items needed for temple events.
After leaving the market (none too soon) we made our way to a village temple to learn a bit about Hindu beliefs and traditions. It was hot and humid, but it was a vast improvement over the olfactory overload at the market!
Our third day in Bali we visited a beautiful Orchid Garden, a village of craftsmen where we saw a silversmith and a wood carving business. We finished our day at the large Temple you see at the beginning of this post.
but I’ve never seen some of the colors that were growing there!
One of the many challenges of traveling to countries with different practices is finding a bathroom. As we traveled through the village with all the craftsmen, the silversmith location had a restroom… much to our collective relief. However, it isn’t often, that you get to count a new friend/photo op among the things that happen in the restroom. Today was my lucky day… I met this fellow when I shut the door to use the facility. Let’s just say I didn’t linger!
Motorbikes are everywhere! I wasn’t able to get a picture to do it justice, but the primary mode of transportation in Indonesia is still the motorbike. They are practical for the small roads that carry so many people. They are able to squeeze between the buses and cars. They carry whole families, businesses and household goods. I would be terrified to drive one of these here, but men, women and children seem to do just fine!
We bid farewell to Bali as the setting sun turned the sky orange. We did not experience the resort side of Bali and its beautiful beaches, but we got to see how people live their day-to-day lives here. We found beauty in the people, their traditions and the amazing sunsets.
Our next day was a day at sea. For dinner, as we were traveling to Semarang, we were treated to an Indonesian Extravaganza on the open deck. The weather, while still humid, felt perfect after 3 steamy days exploring Bali. The chef and crew set up a beautiful display of local fish, fruits and flowers and served us a sampling of traditional Indonesian dishes. We got to eat some fruits we’d had on a previous visit to Indonesia and were introduced to a new fruit called Salak or snake fruit, it’s skin looks and feels like a snake skin!
It was a beautiful night. Tomorrow, we arrive in Semarang.
Jeff and I have had the privilege of visiting Indonesia twice before, working with a Christian organization that sponsors early childhood education schools and trains Indonesian men and women to go out into communities with the message of Christ. We traveled throughout central Java on those trips, had met people from all over Indonesia and had even been to Semarang! So, we knew a little bit about Indonesia before this visit and knew what to expect. We had already fallen in love with the people of Indonesia.
So, on this visit we took a shuttle into town to explore a bit on our own. The exploring was nice, but the trip was quite an adventure! We are finding that the travel industry is recovering from Covid slowly is some parts of the world and here is no exception. Bus drivers and tour guides are hard to come by. It seems that many had to find other ways to earn a living and didn’t return to tourism. The buses we rode in today were in pretty sad shape and our driver seemed a bit inexperienced. As we were about to go under an overpass, we saw a man in the road gesturing wildly for us to stop! He was warning us that the bus wouldn’t fit under the bridge! Since we were very close to the bridge overpass the bus needed to backup. But… the driver couldn’t get the bus into reverse! He eventually did and then the man ran in front of the bus waving at oncoming traffic as we drove the wrong way down a small road that led to a major road onto which we continued the wrong way until the bus could turn down another road. We arrived at our appointed drop off point safely. We made it back in another well-worn bus, but without incident. Whew!
Thes two men are selling Rambutan a fruit like a lychee.
It looks furry!
Semarang is a busy port of call. The ship in the foreground ran into some trouble!
We will now spend the next three days at sea on our way to Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. We will spend three days exploring this country and learning about a new, to us, culture.