It is not surprising that Indonesia, and perhaps more specifically Bali, does not leave people short of inspiration. After spending a few days in Ubud, I took a bus to a small island called Nusa Lembongan. The water, deep blue or turquoise, broken by the white crests of offshore breaks and small bobbing specks, surfers waiting on their boards. Occasionally, a powerboat or water scooter roars by; a not so subtle reminder of the space you are sharing in the peak of European summer holidays. Island residents, both on the modest board walk and tucked behind the beachfront compounds, comb through rectangles of seaweed of all colors: dark and light green, burgundy, yellow and beige. Every few hours, a boat unceremoniously dumps a new load of tourists onto the white sands.
As I have discovered, you are never alone in Bali. While half expecting the type of solitude you can find in parts of East Africa, even during the peak season, such emptiness does not seem to exist here (or at least it is not easily accessible). At the same time, the Balinese do seem to manage to keep Hinduism, i.e. religion, (but not culture generally) and tourism separate: tourism is to make a living while the temples and the rituals remain sequestered, or at least are kept sacred to some degree. While one can visit these temples – with mandatory plain coloured sarongs tied around anyone baring their legs – it is likely that participating in a ceremony would be a difficult invitation to secure and areas where the ceremonies are actually held are often blocked off.
Religion and faith is clearly all encompassing in Bali. Carefully ritualized beliefs mark every corner. In the morning, women clean up the detritus of old offerings and prepare new ones. At the end of the day, outside each house and business, lie flattened grass stalk baskets still partly filled with flowers, fruits, banana, Styrofoam cuttings, sticky rice. Run over by pedestrians and scooters; blown off balcony railings and out of spirit houses; happily consumed by errand dogs and birds. Incense, a smell still familiar from Salt Spring, persistently lingers.
During a walk around the island, I double a number of women walking to the temples in their elegant sarongs, belts and lace tops with baskets of offerings on their head. These larger baskets are made from the same neatly plaited grass stalks and filled with fruits, rice. The fragrance of fresh cut flowers trailing behind them. The men loitering outside the temples, testing their drums, wearing starched white trousers and shirts with their traditional headdress. Despite all this careful and attractive preparation for a religious ceremony, the cemeteries I pass are strewn with garbage, the only sign of obvious care being – at least to my untrained eye – the colorful umbrella sported by each gravestone.
Tourism economies develop similarities. In Ubud, known as a creative town, there were many shops selling ‘tourist-art’, something I have seen before in Damascus, Uganda, Kenya and Zanzibar. Thin strips depicting naked women carrying baskets on their heads in the African countries and similar images found in Ubud; in Damascus, painted into heavy canvases were old men hunchbacked over cups of thick coffee and smoking cigarettes. The children on the beaches in Zanzibar would appear, their sand covered feet first: “Would you like some shells?” Theirs being the big and boisterous kind you can really hear the sea in. Lining the ramshackle boardwalk on Nusa island, young children – not quite yet of school going age – sit selling their shells: “Do you want my shells? Do you want my shells?” Collected as the sun sets and sold the following day.
Another day was spent biking across Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan Island. They are connected by a rickety yellow suspension bridge, gaping holes between boards that have shifted with time. In the morning, people are harvesting seaweed in the bay between the two islands. Upside down straw bowl hats and baskets in hand. On Nusa Ceningan Island, someone has targeted the bluest cove for construction and developed a jumping site called ‘Blue Lagoon.’ Nothing is free in a tourist economy and three perilous plunges cost $6. Near the Blue Lagoon cove, another cove harbors a singular wave and two early surfers are paddling, catching a slumbering break.
As the sun sets at night, children come out in numbers to fly kites, the sky dotted with modest to ambitious sizes and shapes. The owner of the Lembongan Inn has almost finished his stalking – as he seems to spend most of the day roping in tourists to his Inn, renting out bicycles or organizing snorkeling trips. Done with his duties he tends to his nephew’s broken kite, fixing tears with scotch tape melted with an incense stick.
His mother makes me sweet coffee. Not being able to speak any English, we communicate through miming: she motions towards another guest’s room, imitates retching and points to a Baileys bottle on the fridge. Shaking her head and laughing. As the sun sets, I try and teach their three year old niece how to skip coral. But as the boys begin to swarm the beach with their kites, she is taken away. She emerges a few hours later, the sun having set, to stand boisterously at the entrance of the inn squealing “hello!” at every passing tourist. Clearly drawing immense pleasure from this determined harassment.
