Bali Temples

I spent Christmas Eve 2010 on a tour of Hindu Temples in Bali.  Our tour guide was another Wayan.  I must digress for a moment to explain the name system of Bali's lowest caste.  Boy or girl, children are named based on birth order.  The names go like this:  1st born = Wayan (pronounced Wyen), 2nd born = Made (pronounced Mahday), 3rd born = Nyoman (pronounced like yeoman with an N in front), and 4th born = Katuse (pronounced Katoos).  They are given an individual name after that.  For example, the family who took care of us at the house; the father is a Wayan, but we called him Wayan Nesa (or just Nesa), Nesa being his given name.  But that is only done when you are familiar with someone.  For the most part, you call anyone from the working class by their birth order name.  Needless to say, there are many Wayans.

So back to the tour.  This Wayan, kind and helpful though he was, drove us crazy.  First of all, he wore so much cologne that I had a headache the entire day.  In his defense, I did come to realize later that I only had one contact in all day - still not sure how that happened.  Second of all, his English was not very good.  Actually, he knew all of the words, but his pronunciation was so poor that we could not understand him.  Obviously this is not his fault, but it can be extremely difficult to spend 10 hours with a tour guide you struggle to understand.  Finally, though he couldn't speak English very well, he loved to talk, and he would just chatter away in the car while we had no idea what he was saying.  It was a long day.

Luckily, the sights we saw were worth the language barrier.  Throughout our 10 hour tour, we drove to 3 of the main temples in Central/Southwestern Bali.  Horrible as it is, I can't remember the name of the 1st temple.  The 2nd temple was Pura Ulundanu located on a beautiful lake next to Mount Batur.  The last temple we saw was Tanah Lot, the most photographed of all temples on Bali.

Bali is 92% Hindu.  The people are extremely devoted to their faith and nearly every action of their lives is performed with their spiritual beliefs in mind.  They are also incredibly superstitious and nothing is done without bringing offerings and prayers to the gods beforehand.  Every family compound (everyone lives in a walled in compound, from the very poorest to the very richest) has its own temple located in the Northern corner of the property.  There are altars, offerings, incense, statues, and icons everywhere, both in the home and in town.  Each village, town, or city then has its own communal temple.  These communal temples are usually dedicated one of the gods of the trinity:  Brahma, Vishnu, or Shiva.  Though a few are dedicated to their wives:  Sariswata, Lakshmi, and Parvati.  It is this Hindu culture that makes Bali so vastly different from other island destinations.  It truly is a step into another world, at least for us Westerners.

Entrance to temple #1 (can't remember name)

Two women making offerings at the temple

Here's a completed offering.  They are very beautiful and you see them everywhere:  dashboards of cars, entrances to shops, on your dinner table, in the bathroom, in the middle of the street, everywhere!

I just found this interesting

After temple #1, we went to Pura Ulundanu which was even more beautiful than the first because it is on a mountain lake.  It was also much more crowded with Muslim tourists from Java.

Pura Ulundanu

These girls' moms wanted us to be in a picture with their girls.  It's the blond hair and fair skin.

After Pura Ulundanu, we had lunch, saw some gorgeous rice fields, and stopped to feed some monkeys.  Here's what happened when I tried to feed a monkey:

He wouldn't jump up and grab it, so I decided to sit down next to him and hold it over my head so he'd climb up me.

Once I sat down and started to put the banana over my head, he grabbed it.  Which was fine.  But then I sat there and stared at him, at which point his bared his teeth, hissed, and took a whack at my head.  I had pretty quick reflexes and so he just scratched my forehead.  It didn't hurt, and he then sat there happily eating his banana, but I felt like and idiot.

Finally we made it to Tanah Lot, which was by far the most stunning of all the temples.  In addition to this temple on the sea, there is also a freshwater spring located under a massive rock that can only be reached during low tide.  People believe this to be sacred water, and so they flock there to make offerings and collect holy water.  It was quite an amazing sight.

Wayan took this picture of Cathleen, Olaf and me.  That little mini island behind us is where the fresh water spring is.  It was low tide at the time, but it was rising as we left.

Tanah Lot temple is located on the other side of the little land bridge.  Gorgeous!

Nearly sunset

The droves of people come to make offerings and gather sacred water

I thought this little guy was adorable

 

People playing on the rocky shore

I thought this was interesting:  east meets west

Another family intrigued by our blond hair and fair skin.  To be honest, I don't think the woman in the back was too thrilled about me being in the picture.  She seemed okay with Cathleen, most likely because her shoulders weren't showing.  I, on the other hand, probably looked like a dirty whore to her.  I had a similar experience in KL.  These people were from Sumatra, a much more Muslim island in Indonesia.

View from the temple

View to the other side from the temple

Tanah Lot was certainly the highlight to the trip.  In the end, we were glad to say goodbye to smelly Wayan and go home to a Christmas Eve dinner prepared by the family taking care of us.  We had tofu, tempe (yum!), hard boiled eggs in some really yummy sauce, rice, and veggies.  But the best part was when we walked in the front door to find this: