6.02 am. We are woken by Zach and the sound of someone sweeping up the leaves outside, a twice daily chore. As usual, I stumble sleepily out of bed and over to the kitchen to make two mugs of Bali coffee (sweet, black and grainy) and fill our Thermos so that we have hot water for the day. I prepare a bread and cheese breakfast, luxuries we found the day before in a tourist area. Everyone else has rice and pork fried six different ways. Offerings for Galungan are still being made in the kitchen and in the long barn.
8.10am. We have been invited to visit temples to pray today, a comparatively recent tradition which younger members of the family follow. So we are all now appropriately dressed to do so in pakaian adat (traditional attire), and I am wearing my new kebaya (a white cotton top with embroidered flowers). While we wait to start, we sit and chat with our host. One of his daughters goes to pray at a temple to which her mother’s family is connected. His eldest son arrives with his wife back from making offerings at a small shrine (she has been up since 4am), and we are ready to go.
8.30 am With the ladies sitting side saddle on the backs of our motorbikes because of our outfits, we set off with the eldest son and his wife to three local shrines/temples with which the family is associated. Offerings are taken to each, then incense is lit and we kneel with our hands folded in prayer, palms together, either empty or with flowers in between. We are sprinkled with and drink holy water, put rice on our foreheads, and go on to our next stop. Everyone is smiling and there is a festive feel to the air.
9.39am We return to the house, are plied with food, then pile into a car to make offerings and pray at local temples a little further afield: the Purah Puseh, the Pura Desa and the Pura Dalem. Zach is miraculously well behaved. A tourist performance is in full swing in the amphitheater of the Purah Puseh but temple life continues unfazed.
11.43 am Back at home again, we have another quick meal, this time of rice, lawar (raw meat mixed with spices) fried pork, fried onions and soup with the family. We agree to regroup at 2pm to go to Tanah Lot, an amazingly atmospheric temple surrounded by waves at high tide which our host’s son visits each year.
3.08pm Our party arrives at Tanah Lot, crowded with tourists enjoying its photogenic charms, and with Balinese making offerings. Both kinds of visitor are able to visit the holy spring located at the bottom of the rock on which the temple is built, and receive the blessings of the priests there. Only those with offerings and in pakaian adat can continue up to the temple itself, however, and this turns out to be an unexpectedly extraordinary experience.
4.40pm On the way back we pass up the chance of being photographed with a python, but buy ice cream, drinks, and Balinese sweet cakes made of rice flour with coconut and sugar which we eat on the way home. Despite the ice cream, or perhaps because of it, Zach morphs into Raving Banshee Zach. Next time I must make sure my prayer for peace specifically includes our car.
Macam Bali Blog 