My future retirement home (part 2)

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Bali is an anomaly in the entire Southeast Asian region, let alone just Indonesia, by being a society in which Hinduism is the dominant religion. Hinduism came to Bali more than 2,000 years ago and has developed in an independent fashion ever since, assimilating aspects of Buddhism, animism, and ancestor worship. One of the interesting aspects of Balinese Hinduism (according to Wikipedia) is that it emphasises the propitiation of umpteen local spirits via aesthetically pleasing rituals - this is perhaps why the island has over 11,000 temples and pretty much every day there is a festival at one or more of them.

Balinese culture, like many cultures throughout the world, has been informed and shaped by religion. And Balinese culture is perhaps best represented by Ubud (I read that Javanese culture is best represented by Yogyakarta, which I sincerely hope was a typo). The slew of temples throughout the town and the numerous shrines here and there are testament to the depth of religious feeling, which is further reflected in the daily offerings mentioned in my previous blog entry and occasional street processions to celebrate some event or other. There seemed to be an emphasis on the frightening and grotesque in many of the temple statues, with the demon queen Rangda's fearsome scowl, pendulous breasts, and belt of skulls featuring prominently. The cultural side of this, though obviously artificially boosted by tourism, can be seen in the number of dance performances being staged (at least 1 per night) as well as regular musical recitals. It was a rare evening indeed where the wind chime-like sound of a gamelan didn't float through the streets and over the houses.

We attended a performance of a dance called kecak, also known as the Monkey Dance, held in the grounds of a temple. Given the once-a-week nature of the performance and the number of performers involved, the total audience of maybe 25 was surprisingly low - perhaps due to a rival troupe performing closer to town. The show started with 70-80 men, all wearing just a sarong in a check pattern and with 1 or 2 flowers in their hair, issuing out onto a flat area in front of the temple entrance, all chanting "Cak" together and waving their hands around. They then took up positions on the floor, sitting in radial lines facing inward to a small area that would be the scene of most of the subsequent action, with an elaborate candelabra at its centre. They continued chanting, with a couple of "soloists" throwing in whoops and more musical interjections, all the while shaking their heads and arms.

The story was a potted version of part of the Ramayana, in which the monkeys help Prince Rama defeat the demon king Ravanna, with the main characters played by actors/dancers in considerably more detailed costumes. The women all moved around with graceful motions you might think of when you think of Southeast Asian dancing, fingers splayed and curved. When stationary, you'd still see their forefingers moving sideways in the same plane as the hand, as though being totally still just wasn't allowed. The male characters were more animated and jerky, with exaggerated movements and facial expressions as well as odd bits of shouting. It was all entertaining and only lasted for about an hour too.

A company in Ubud called Threads of Life is sponsoring a program to encourage villagers in Indonesia to continue cloth manufacture using traditional labour-intensive weaving techniques rather than adopting modern technology. In this way, a small part of the cuture can be retained. We attended a presentation that not only described the lifestyle of a visiting group of weavers from Sulawesi but also showed off some of the clothes they weave and some of the dances and songs that have arisen from the art of weaving. Though the differences between cloth produced using their weaving/dying techniques and what you could buy on the tat stalls in the market were rather lost on me, I can read a $100 price tag versus a $5 one as well as anyone. So Threads of Life are giving these people a forum in which to sell their goods and hence increase the likelihood of the traditional techniques being preserved, but the average tourist may find the prices a little much to bear - one for the textile experts only.

Artistically speaking, there has been some significant Western influence on the development of Balinese painting, in particular from Dutch artists. We visited 2 museums that had extensive collections of art by expats as well as locals. I found the finely-detailed depictions of gods and festivals that are considered to be classical Balinese art to be fascinating and it was a source of some frustration that I was unable to buy one anywhere at a decent price. Not surprisingly, all the paintings of half-naked Balinese maidens came from the paintbrushes of Western artists (apparently a campaign to promote tourism in Bali in the 1950s had used a hook on the lines of "The Land of Bare Breasts", until the government decided this was unlikely to help preserve traditional Balinese culture).

It would have been very easy to stay in Ubud for a long time. With its appealing climate, surfeit of cultural stimulation, laid-back atmosphere, and occasional reminders of home (2 bars showing Premiership football, availability of fish and chips, etc), I was already having visions of it being where I'll retire to. But there were reasons to move on, with the most prosaic being that our visas were running out and could not be extended. Also the Internet connections were dire and effectively prevented us from doing any research. But there's also a threshold on just how long you can stay in one place when the travel itch hasn't been fully scratched, especially when you suspect you're going to come back in the future.

The final push was that world events had managed to filter through to our idyll. Ex-President Estrada of the Philippines had been convicted on a charge of plunder, a major first in a country that seemingly had had no appetite for punishing the iniquities of any of its former rulers. Nuon Chea, Pol Pot's Number 2, had finally been arrested and formally charged by a tribunal consisting of Cambodian and UN officials in connection with his role in the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Again, this in a country where disturbing the ghosts of the past has been done painfully slowly (perhaps due to the country's Prime Minister being an ex-Khmer Rouge member, or certain influential members of the UN having supported the Khmer Rouge regime). And within days of the Indonesian Supreme Court awarding an enormous libel sum to ex-President Suharto on the basis of a defamatory magazine article, a decision that sparked outrage, the UN fingered Suharto as being at the top of its list of state asset-stealing officials.

Things were happening in the world. It was time for us to move too.

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Photos

Naked silver woman suspended from a tree
Surely this doesn't need explaining?

Garuda
Neka Museum