Galungan

A Galungan 'Penjor' ready to be erected.

The past few days have been the lead-up to a Hindu festival in Bali called Galungan.  This happens every 210 days and is one of the more important religious ceremonies here.  It is the time when spirits of relatives who have been cremated return for a visit. People living in the homes where the spirits once lived must be hospitable and give offerings and prayers to the spirits.  After 10 days, the spirits return to wherever they currently live, on the day known here as Kuningan.  I suspect there will be another ceremony then.

Roadside stores are full of the makings for the Penjor poles.

This wasn't even a store.  Just a homeowner cashing
in on the penjor sales

Entrance to a temple we passed.  Too bad about the finger
in the corner of the photo. :-)

The stores get dressed up too

Entrance to a local restaurant - all done up for Galungan

Galungan seems to be a good reason to clean up your home, and the entrance to your home so we saw a lot of garbage being cleaned out of the gutters and the streets.  That was a good thing.  People decorate the entrances to their homes with "penjor", which are very tall bamboo poles that are decorated and have offerings suspended from the tips.  All the decorations and offering boxes outside the home gates are cleaned up and beautified for the occasion.  Many of these are normally wrapped in a 'skirt' of fabric, so new fabrics are put up for the holiday.

This man is decorating his Penjor pole.  For the most part, it
seems to be the men who are in charge of the decorating.
Note the rice hanging off this one.  

A new fabric skirt for the offering box,
in addition to the extra decorations.
The entrances to many homes have these little
boxes set up for daily offerings.

Another Penjor pole almost ready to be raised.  Not sure
what the hanging things are on this one, but I did see many
with similar decorations.

Penjor poles on a street in Ubud.  One in front of every home

Many of the Penjor poles have quite an elaborate
bouquet of leaves set just above head level.

Setting the penjor pole into the side of the driveway

Love how the offerings at the end catch the breezes.

On the day before Galungan, there is a slaughtering of pigs (and apparently turtles).  We live in a little country village, and unfortunately the acoustics of the pig slaughter were horrible.  We weren't sure what it was at first, but it became abundantly clear that an animal was in distress.  Didn't enjoy that part of it so much as it made for lousy dinner music.  Also, on the day before Galungan, the children of the village gather musical instruments and a dragon-type costume and go from house to house playing music and gathering coins from their neighbours.  It was really sweet to witness.  Reminded me of my little gang of girls who went Christmas carolling at Christmas back in Winnipeg.
Unfortunately, I lost most of my pictures of the local kids in a computer crash, but these two were salvaged from a procession I saw in town.

The boy in front is carrying a collection box for people to
donate money.  There are a number of children playing
various instruments, and the child at the front of this
'horse' carries a mask that he waves around as the face of the animal.

One of the larger instruments being carried and played by the kids

The day of Galungan, everyone goes to the temple.  Kadek, who is one of the staff at the villa, is one of the most charming young people I've ever met .  He is so eager to please and give guests here a great experience of Bali.  He invited us to the temple ceremony several days in advance, told us what to wear and picked me up promptly at 8:30 am along with two neighbours, Sadie and Avril, from England who were going as well.  We were required to wear traditional sarongs, and Glen wouldn't go because he would have had to wear a hat like Kadek's and that freaked him out.

Glen with Kadek.  He looks like he's about
ten, but he's in his early twenties.  One
of our favourite people here in Bali

Kadek has all the stuff we'll need for the ceremony.
Incense and a basket of flower petals.

Kadek is explaining the procedures to Sadie and Avril

Myself, Avril and Sadie after the ceremony.  Yes, we know there is
rice on our foreheads.  And on our necks.  And in our hair.

The temples here, like most of the homes, are an open-air affair.  They are an outdoor area surrounded by partial walls that you can look into from the road  There are small platforms with roofs, but most of it is open to the sky, and therefore very HOT from the overhead sun.  We sit down amongst all the beautifully-dressed women and men.  Kadek has a basket of flower petals, and a handful of incense sticks.  First step is to light the incense and put a stick in front of each of us.  Then we waft our hands through the smoke, and pick up a two little flower petals, waft those through the smoke, then place between our two middle fingers and raise our hands to our foreheads to pray.  The flower petals are then placed at the top of the ear.  This is repeated three times.  Then a man or woman comes along and has a pot of water that he dips a brush into and then sprays at us!  After that comes a person with a little silver teapot of water - a small amount is poured into our hands and we are to drink that.  That is repeated three times.  Then along comes someone with a bowl of cooked rice.  We are to stick a few grains on our forehead, some at the base of our neck, and some in our hair.    In between all these motions, there is more raising your hands to your forehead to pray.

We're sitting inside the temple, on the brick pavement.  So colourful.

The entrance to one of the homes on our lane 

Walking to the temple - it's about a 5 minute
walk down this little lane to the temple from
our house

Probably the most elaborate penjor on our street.

Back to the temple!

The guy with the brush and pail is spraying us with
holy water.

Well, I had to do a selfie in a temple . . .

Avril all riced up.  We're moving to the second section of the temple now

The women have a very specific uniform here.  Sarong
for a skirt and a pretty lace jacket up top with a
brightly-coloured scarf for a belt.   Without exception.

The men have their own uniform.  A white jacket
a white or coloured hat-type affair (some are
decorated, some not) and a sarong-type skirt.  The
mens skirts are generally much more muted colours
than the womens.

Kadek with his basket of flower petals and holding
one of our sticks of incense.  Note all the girls
with flowers in their ponytails. 

After all that is done, we get up and move to another section of the temple where the entire ritual is repeated.  There is no 'service' as you would find in a typical western church.  People arrive, do their ritual, and leave at their own convenience.  So it seems to go on most of the day.  There are huge tables of offerings in the temple - most of the little baskets are handmade by the women.  The flies seem quite happy at the banquet that is laid out for them.  Kadek actually offered me a satay stick from one of the offerings . . . number one, I wasn't going to piss off the ancestors by eating an offering, and number two, I had no idea how many flies had already eaten off it.  I politely declined!   Avril and Sadie used being vegetarian as an excuse to turn him down.

One of the many offering tables.  I loved this woman's outfit

These baskets are used to transport the offerings to the temple.

I finally figured out the head-carrying thing.  They
have a little ring they place on their head before
the basket goes on.  You can just see it here.

An offering table with one of the skirted shrines behind it.  Not
sure about the umbrellas.  They don't seem to serve any purpose
other than decoration.

Lots of colourful umbrellas and offerings

We asked Kadek if his parents were there, but he said his mom could not attend temple today because she's menstruating.  I had two reactions - one was surprise at the complete matter-of-factness.  I was never that open with my kids about that, and so I liked that it's treated as day-to-day normal here.  The other was judgment about how a woman is forbidden to do something because of a normal body function, and that got my back up  I don't know if men are not allowed to attend because of any biological reasons, but somehow I doubt it.

Detail on the temple wall

A little offering on one of the gargoyles.  Probably not
a gargoyle, but maybe a god.  I have no idea

A family shrine filled right up with offerings
and completely decked out for the holiday!  The
pole at the right is a penjor pole.

Glen looking down our road

Even the scooters get dressed up!

We walked home and carried on with our day, but there was a sound of musical instruments going in the village for most of the day.  Super interesting day.

This is Wayan, our driver.  He made us some special Galungan
food and brought it over for our lunch.  All wrapped up in
a banana leaf and a plastic bag.  Delicious!

The local statuary gets gussied up for the holidays as well

Offerings are placed on our doorstep daily.  This offering
on the day of Galungan was quite elaborate.

A Walk Through the Rice Paddies & the Monkey Forest

Dec. 10

Today we decided to try the path Wayan had told us about to get to Ubud.  Anything would beat walking on that road - even potentially getting lost in rice fields!  We managed to find the path, after a couple of misses, and it was a beautiful walk.

Glen in the rice paddies.  This is the main
path to Ubud, not a normal trail through the
fields.  An irrigation ditch runs beside it.

Irrigation ditch, walking path, then rice.  

The Rice Field Temple - appropriately placed in the middle of the rice field

The Rice Field Temple from the sidewalk

Tables in the temple.  I think that's where the
offerings go.  

When Wayan took us out here the other day, there were a number of women coming up the path with these large trays of cement material on their heads, and others were doing some repair work on the little irrigation canals.  It’s probably a never-ending job.

The village men and women carry these packages of what appears to
be dirt, which they create a cement mixture from and build little bridges
and the edges of the irrigation ditches.  All by hand.  In the blazing hot sun.

Junction in the irrigation system.  They block off different spots to
direct the water.  It's a complete mystery to me how it all works

I don't know the name of this plant, but Wayan says it's very important.
They use the leaves for the daily offerings.  Mostly they are cut up
into small pieces for the fragrance.  It's got a faint nutty smell

The large green leaf in the background is part of this daily offering.
These are made daily, by hand, usually several for each day.
More on them later.

Today we noticed several scarecrows, (note the one made out of a bag - there are a lot of those), and these crazy noisemakers made from pieces of palm tree and tin cans.  They seem to do the trick as there weren’t a lot of birds to be seen. 

http://youtu.be/Q94Olynmqmk

Scarecrow in the field with noisemakers in the background

Plastic bags, bits of cloth, pieces of palm, tin cans - all these
are part of the arsenal to keep the birds away.  Compare that
to the guns going off all the time in the blueberry fields at home.

Bali Cultural Center at the end of the rice field path.

There is a rice field out back of our villa, but it was recently harvested, so doesn’t look like much.  But these fields are full of rice that’s going to be ready to harvest soon - it’s very pretty and maybe a bit like wheat or barley.

These children are fishing in the irrigation ditch.
They are completely unsupervised by any adults.
No social services in sight.

There are irrigation canals all over the place, and mostly when you’re walking the rice paddies, you’re walking on raised up humps of grass.  This particular path seems to be an elaborate exception.  Watch out for holes in the pathway - you’ll fall into the irrigation ditch and probably break a leg or hip.  I’ve noticed this on the sidewalks in town as well!  Watch where you’re walking, and probably don’t try to walk around at night!

Large holes in sidewalks are the norm here.  The holes are about 3 feet
deep and below this sidewalk is a stream.  You could do some
serious injury to yourself if you're not careful.  Walk with your eyes
on the ground here . . . always!

Pretty tree at the edge of the walk.  Not sure
what the fruit is.  I liked the shape of the
tree and the leaves.

Fence and little offering temple at the Balinese Cultural Center

Love these flowers I saw - Balinese Cultural Center

I honestly have no idea.  One of the colourful
statues at the Bali Cultural Center. 

We walked through town, bought a couple of things, and then walked to the Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary.  I was expecting some ridiculous entrance fee to get in because it’s mentioned in every tourist brochure.  It was a whopping $3.  We splurged and went in - ha!  It was absolutely magnificent . . . walking through Balinese jungle in many spots - there are monkeys all over the place, and they aren’t camera-shy.  There is also a temple in the forest and a holy water river.  Lots of statues and interesting things to look at.

The monkeys will climb right up your body to
get a banana.  I didn't try it, but this brave
tourist did!

 Chubby cheeks - hanging out by the
banana sales stand pays off quickly for
these little guys.

Well, I've never seen a monkey nursing.  So I
took a picture.  Hope the blog doesn't get
censored for this.

Protective mama.

Temple in the monkey forest

Holy water pool in the Monkey Forest Temple.  There are fish in here.

Balinese jungle in the monkey forest.  Tarzan would have
liked these vines - huge!

The river that feeds the holy water pool.  Very pretty

If you look closely at the sign, you will notice
they request you don't wash your feet here!  It
hadn't occurred to me until I saw the sign.  Then
I wanted to :-)

Crazy root system

Very elaborate bridge to the temple.  Notice the banyan behind
Glen - massive.

Just because I thought this was hilarious

After about four hours of walking, we decided to head home for a swim and a game of backgammon.  

We checked our e-mail, and there is some bad news about Glen’s dad.  He’s fallen and broken his hip, so he's back in the hospital.  I guess we’ll wait to see what the doctors say before we make any travel decisions.  For now, we’re hoping he’ll pull through this, and the family back home will see him through it.   And my girlfriend’s son has gone missing in Campbell River - he went for a hike two days ago, and hasn’t been seen since.  It’s challenging being half a world away when there are things happening at home that I’d like to help with.

A more 'rugged' path to get to the main path.
We're almost home

This is the 'bridge' we use to cross the river in the
rice field. 

Harvested rice drying on mats on our street

For now, we’ll keep in touch with home and keep enjoying this beautiful place and weather.  I think we’re starting to like it here!