Crazy Bali Life | how to escape

The Sound of Silence – Nyepi, New Year in Bali

March 12, 2013 · 9 Comments

I’m writing this post on Nyepi Eve but I’m scheduling it to post tomorrow, on the day itself. Why not write it tomorrow? The traditions surrounding New Year here are unique to Bali – a day of silence where no one leaves the house, no lights or electricity are used and the island appears abandoned to all but the birds and animals that share it as their home. The TV signal is scrambled but our banjar doesn’t go as far as cutting the electric. However I’m going to try to mark the occasion by taking the opportunity to have a day off my computer until boredom wins out, at least.

I think Nyepi is probaby my favourite ceremony of them all. Hindu or not, nobody gets the chance to ignore Nyepi in Bali. The airport is closed, there are no cars on the roads, tourists are trapped in their hotels and the night is the blackest of black with a million shining stars free of pollution from electric lights and traffic fumes.

There is just something really special about taking a day off from everything and I feel so lucky to be here every time Nyepi rolls around. Another new year (1935 according to the Balinese Saka calendar), another chance for a fresh start. No distant traffic to spoil the silence and a day for the earth to exist naturally. What a great way to start the year, don’t you think?

On Nyepi eve we parade Ogoh Ogoh – effigies of demonic entities around the village and make a lot of noise to scare away any malevolent spirits. The hope is that when they return, there’ll be no sign of human life and they’ll go away to bother someone else.

Maya and Kiran were both very excited by the Ogoh Ogoh this year and have been watching them being made in the village with great excitement for weeks. I left Maya with Made after watching the parade set off and then Kiran and I returned home to bash some pots and pans and get those evil spirits out.

Here’s to another year of life and love in Bali.

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Could I Roll My Eyes any Harder at You?

March 1, 2013 · 6 Comments

One of the things that I find hardest about living in Bali is the differences of opinion when it comes to raising children. Particularly as I live with my in-laws so there’s no opportunity to run off home and do things my way with nobody tutting and looking at me with disapproving eyes.

Kiran was in a mood yesterday. I think he’s teething and he’s got a bit of a cold so fair enough. He was wingeing, crying and I just couldn’t keep him happy. Eventually I just took his clothes off and plonked him down on the bathroom floor so he could ‘help’ me wash the clothes. This he loved, just pouring water with a cup from one bucket to another. After a few minutes Made’s father walked past and gasped seeing his poor defenceless grandchild naked and wet in 30 degree heat and shouted something like “quick Kiran, come here before you get a fever” which we both ignored, obviously.

After another couple of minutes I’d finished the washing and decided to get Kiran dried off despite him still having lots of fun playing in the water. Generally I don’t like to rock the boat and prefer to keep everyone relatively happy and then go and rant about it on facebook later. But Kiran was having none of it – thrashing in in my arms, screaming, flying snot, we’re talking full-on tantrum. And sorry, the happiness of my children trumps ridiculous ideas about what causes illness so I filled him up another bucket of water and let him get on with it. Made returned home 5 minutes later and I could hear my father in law saying something to the tune of “do you know your wife is trying to kill your son?”

This is why I love it when my parents visit as we can set up the paddling pool over at our other house and let them splash and play and frolic to their heart’s content. Guess what? They don’t get sick! Or maybe they do get sick because surprise surprise, kids pick up bugs and get sick sometimes. They get sick if they don’t play in water. They get sick if they do. THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN PLAYING IN WATER AND GETTING SICK.

I grew up in the UK and have fond memories of splashing around in the paddling pool in the summer. My mother is an experienced early years educator and understands the importance of letting young children play with water so they can learn the basic concepts of science, the environment and get sensory stimulation. In fact she’s suggested on a number of occasions that I invest in sand and water table for them to play with. Bali is after all the ideal place to play in water – it’s hot every day, we live outside most of the day so there’s no need to worry about mess and cleaning up spill. Of course my kids are happy playing in water on a hot day.

But oh no, this is Bali where apparently playing in clean water in your own house on a hot day makes you deathly sick. I am wondering if this water is really so dangerous, why are they happy for Maya and Kiran to bathe in it twice a day? And I’m pretty sure it’s a hell of a lot cleaner than the river at the bottom of the street that they all like washing in where everyone washes their clothes, dumps their rubbish etc. Meme came back from the river with Maya early the other day “Oh you’re back so soon?” I say to Maya “yes mama, dead dog in the river” says Maya. Lovely.

I can understand where this fear of playing in water comes from. Yes, contaminated water can harbour typhoid, cholera, parasites and all sorts of other nasty things. But I am not letting my kids play in a dirty puddle on the side of the road. This is CLEAN WATER IN OUR HOME.

I’ve given up on repeating that illness is caused by viruses and not by wind, rain or playing in clean water. I find it ridiculous that the kids are whisked inside at the first drop of rain and yet they’re happy to keep drinking out of the same cup without ever washing it and eating meat that’s been sitting out for a week. I fully accept and appreciate that western methods and ideas are not always correct, or at least not always the most effective. I have experienced first-hand the wonders that a balian (traditional healer) can perform. But please, do me a favour and learn some basic germ theory. Oh and by the way, bundling kids up in big jumpers, blankets and a hat when they have a fever isn’t very helpful either.

There are some parts of Bali life that just continuously frustrate me day after day after day. And I think it might be time to buy that sand and water table.

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Things are Different in Bali

February 20, 2013 · 14 Comments

Recently I’ve been catching up on some of my favourite UK tv on youtube (namely One Born Every Minute) and to my surprise, the adverts are making me long for England in an odd way. I never really get homesick but it’s funny how advertising can make you miss random things – the eccentric British sense of humour (some of those adverts are just downright weird!), online supermarket shopping, Cadbury’s creme eggs, even the dark cold gloomy days before Spring arrives. I’ve also been away long enough that I’m a bit bemused at some things – breakfast biscuits? Is the nation really gullible enough to believe eating biscuits for breakfast is a good idea?

The longer I’m here, the more things which shocked me at first here seem pretty much normal. I’ve written before about the potential dangers around the house, which are pretty much overlooked by everyone but actually there is a whole load of stuff that I actually think is pretty terrible but I’m just used to it now:

Our nextdoor neighbour leaves her 3-year-old alone in the house watching her 1-year-old sister while she shops in the market.
Children stay up late every night playing and watching tv until they fall asleep. Bedtime routines or an actual bedtime are non-existent.
Nobody wears seatbelts in the car. Nobody has baby seats. In fact most people don’t have cars and just stick all their kids (un-helmeted) on the back of the motorbike.
Talking of motorbikes, it’s pretty common to see young kids driving themselves to school on one alone.

Made’s always reminding me that as I live here I should adopt the local customs and practices and stop doing things the way I would do in the UK. Ok that’s fair enough, but I do struggle a bit with some of them. Especially when I think they’re just plain WRONG!

My friend on facebook joked yesterday that I was becoming Indonesian but I think in some ways it’s true!

I dress my kids in long sleeves and trousers if it rains.
I ask Maya if she wants “more nasi” with that.
I’m shocked at seeing tiny babies (belonging to foreigners, never Indonesians!) out and about outside.
I caught myself chasing Kiran around with a bowl of rice the other day, much to my shame

I do feel like my kids are missing out a bit on the British half of their heritage at the moment and I’d love to take them back to the UK for a few months when they’re a little bigger to improve their English. Actually Maya’s vocabulary is a lot larger than I thought it was after quizzing her when we’re reading picture books and she randomly comes out with a little gem like “oopsy baby!” (mishearing oopsy daisy, haha). She also love shouting “Mama stupid!” at the moment when I won’t let her eat another biscuit/crisps/sweet. Sigh.

I’m not sure if I should be doing more to balance out the British half of their heritage or not. We have lots of English books, a decent number of English cartoons and a city of London wooden train set…. Maybe I should be feeding them baked beans or something. Maya quite likes tea – that’s a start. Or maybe I should just go with the flow and let them be Balinese children who happen to have an English mother because this is Bali after all and things are different here…

Photo of random Balinese children by my dad

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Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries – Tradition

February 18, 2013 · 6 Comments

Tradition is everything in Bali. It’s the reason we live with my husband’s parents in a small village, rather than getting a place of our own. It’s the reason my children’s first names are the same as all the other children in Bali – Putu and Made, meaning first and second child. Tradition has governed our lives here in everything from our wedding to the birth of our children.

Every home in Bali has its own family temple and every day offerings are placed around this temple and the family compound. Every day – rain or shine. The normal everyday offerings are simple trays made from palm leaves filled with flowers and a sweet or biscuit. On auspicious days like full moon and new moon or on ceremony days, much more elaborate offerings are carried out.

I first learned to make these simple offerings a few months after our wedding and I did them every day when I was pregnant with Maya. After having children, my ability to carry out tasks like this in solitude was greatly reduced and I tended to leave it to Made’s mother while I rocked and entertained my babies. Recently though, I’ve taken to popping Kiran in a sling and doing the offerings myself in the morning. It’s a lovely meditative way to start the day and fills the compound with the scent of flowers and incense smoke.

The offerings are usually topped with small cookies or crackers and Kiran was rather indignant when I didn’t give him one.

Biscuit in mouth and all is right with the world again!

Today was also a special day for Kiran – in addition to their Otonan ceremony every 210 days, a small blessing ceremony is held for children every month with offerings of fruit and cakes. Kiran could barely contain his excitement at the shiny red apples

One of the places where we make offerings every day are the stones outside the entrance to our home that mark the place where their placentas were buried after birth. These stones receive special treatment during the first few months of life, being washed with the baby’s bath water and given a small sweet or cake offering whenever the baby is taken out of the house. Today Kiran’s stone received special offerings.

Now Kiran is walking everywhere, I don’t know how much longer he’ll be content to be carried around in a sling but I enjoy these little moments while they last.

I wear Kiran in a Sakura Bloom Essential Silk Sling in Aubergine/Fig

This post is part 5 of a 6 part series for the Sakura Bloom Sling Diaries. We are one of 15 families documenting our babywearing experience over a six month period. You can follow the Sling Diaries on Pinterest, Facebook or Tumblr. You can read all my other blog posts for the sling diaries here.

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Home life in Bali

February 11, 2013 · 1 Comment

I should have been in bed a couple of hours ago but as I’m not, here are a few snaps from around the house today

tipat (compressed rice) from the morning offerings for the new moon // preparing offerings for Maya’s otonan tomorrow // drinking water that comes with its own mantra.

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Not For Sale

January 15, 2013 · 4 Comments

One of the first things anyone notices when they come to Ubud is the rice fields. Miles of green, swaying in the breeze, usually with some palm trees in the distance and maybe a farmer or two, waving plastic bags or rattling tin cans to scare away the birds. There’s no better way to spend the hour or so between dusk and sunset than talking a walk in the rice fields or taking a motor bike ride through the small villages and back roads that surround them.

Unfortunately, the very beauty of these fields is also the thing that risks their extinction. Land prices in Bali are rising fast and everyone wants in on a sure investment. Balinese families can’t resist the temptation of selling unused land to tourists and foreign investors when the money they receive in return would be impossible to raise any other way. The average Balinese person makes only a million or so rupiah a month (about 100 USD) and big ceremonies like cremations can easily run into tens of millions.

Some areas of Bali have already become somewhat of a concrete jungle, with only small patches of green in between the 5 star hotels, luxury villas and ubiquitous mini-marts that have sprung up like mushrooms in recent years. Little Ubud, nestled inland is famous for its rice fields but it’s almost at risk of becoming a second Kuta, the way things are going. I’ve been here only 4 years but Ubud has changed and expanded so much with the green space shrinking before my eyes. We rarely even go into central Ubud anymore as the traffic is terrible, and try to stay away as much as possible in the peak tourist season of June to August.

It’s a difficult problem with no solution that’s going to make everybody happy. People choose to settle in Ubud because of the laid back vibe and the beautiful scenery – naturally they choose to build their homes somewhere they can enjoy this scenery daily. But as another villa goes up, and another, and another, soon there is no view at all. Areas like Penestanan are already like mini tourist towns, way overdeveloped with the expats outnumbering the locals by far. Are you really living in paradise when you can hear your next door neighbour singing in the shower every morning; you have to walk down an unlit motorbike path for 10 minutes in the dark every night because it’s so far from the road and your view is of a building site?

We too have been guilty of buying rice field land, but in between existing plots that other houses have been built on. We built our house from wood and alang-alang – the traditional thatching material so it would blend in with the landscape. I made sure the perimeter wall was low painted with natural stone paint to avoid the concrete scar on the landscape that is so common around those awful big boxy houses which seem so popular.

Foreigners technically aren’t allowed to own land in Indonesia but of course there are ways around that, like everything else here, if you have enough money. Not that it stops the rich developers from Jakarta or Surabaya anyway.

Last night at the supermarket I was browsing the noticeboard outside and was shocked to see a very large plot of land for sale on one of the most popular beauty spots in Ubud. Known locally as the Campuan ridge walk or sunset hill and popular with expats and locals alike, this gorgeous footpath rises up out of the village giving panoramic views of the stunning scenery that surrounds it. The advert suggested it would make an excellent location for a hotel.

Another local walk known simply as ‘the rice field walk’, leading to the Sari Organik restaurant and beyond has already been developed beyond recognition in recent years with another new building appearing every time we go there. It makes me really sad that all this natural beauty is disappearing and I really wonder where is the limit? How many more hotels do we need? Most of Ubud was just fields 20 years ago. I dread to think what it may become by the time my children are grown.

The above picture was taken by my friend Lucy when we were driving around looking for a location for my first Sling Diaries shoot. The rice fields in the north of Ubud used to be my favourite place to drive around on the motorbike at sunset, which would never fail to dissolve my stress and clear my mind. In the last couple of years this area has become a development hotspot with new houses appearing all the time. I recently found out this “not for sale” sign is actually an art installlation in protest of the disappearing rice fields, which you can read about here.

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Merry Christmas, Bali Style

December 30, 2012 · 2 Comments

We had a lovely Christmas together and the rain even managed to hold off all day. Starting with the kids opening their stockings in the morning. I thought Maya would be better at this this year, as last year she didn’t really get the concept but she was rather too distracted and wailed every time Kiran pulled something out, forgetting about her own stocking. Toddlers – eesh. My family and the kids cousins then came over for present unwrapping with favourites being a toy parachute and some wooden eggs. I always seem to forget how little it takes to make kids happy – we didn”t even get to the ‘main’ presents until boxing day afternoon. At lunchtime we headed over to my dad’s hotel where we (or rather made’s sister) cooked up a feast of mostly Indonesian food and a giant bowl of sangria. The kids ate first as they were starving and we left them playing and Kiran napped while we were eating. Half way through dinner we were interrupted by all 3 of them crying and screaming and went to find maya had got hold of the hose and was spraying everyone so we had three very wet children. Luckily I’d brought a change of clothes. I think I’ll always miss having a ‘normal’ Christmas back in Europe but our Balinese version with family, friends, sunshine and smoked chicken is pretty good too.

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All is calm, all is bright

December 24, 2012 · 2 Comments

The stockings are stuffed, the presents are wrapped in angry bird wrapping paper (Indonesia is obsessed with angry birds) and my two little monsters are tucked up in bed in their new pyjamas (Gruffalo and pirate). Tomorrow we plan for a day of too many presents, food and fun with friends and family. Fingers crossed that the monsoon rains will hold off for a few hours.

I wish you all a peaceful and beautiful Christmas, wherever you are and whoever you’re with.

p.s. I am guest-blogging today over at Inked in Colour so go check out my post on why this Christmas will be the last year of too many presents and while you’re there check out the rest of Sash’s beautiful words and pictures.

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Rain

December 13, 2012 · Leave a Comment

The rain has finally arrived. Yesterday we went out to visit a waterfall (more on that later) and Ubud was in full flood on the way home with huge sections of the road washed away and lots of overflowing rivers to drive through. I snapped these shots of the first proper downpour of the season a couple of days before my family arrived. Mayas balloon hung sadly upside down in the torrent and my flip flops floated away. As I sat outside snapping away, Kiran woke up from his nap and silently crawled out of bed and sat in the doorway behind me watching the rain – gave me quite a fright when I turned around!

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The Swimming Pool in the Rice Fields

December 12, 2012 · 2 Comments

There’s not much in our little village for a westerner used to city living like me. We have a market, a mini-mart, a handful of tiny family-run warungs. There’s plenty to keep the kids occupied – a river, chickens, dogs, and hundreds of neighbours and family to dote on them any minute of the day. I, on the other hand, would prefer a coffee shop, some nice shops to browse and the opportunity to walk for 5 minutes without being asked where I’m going (sorry, I’m just unsociable, can’t help it!). All these things are available just 10 minutes away in Ubud but as I’ve not yet gathered the courage to learn to drive the motorbike on the crazy roads here, I’m rather stranded in the village unless I can get Made to drop me off.

One thing we do have, which I am very grateful for, and as a bonus is at the end of a 15 minute rice field walk – a swimming pool.

Swimming is Maya’s absolute favourite activity at the moment and although I’ve taken her alone a couple of times, it’s a bit too difficult for me to attempt with both of them while they’re so small. With family visiting though, Maya gets the chance to practise fearlessly jumping in and sticking her head in the water; Kiran gets to splash about and crawl around the pool edge and a fun time is had by all.

On the walk home we had two very tired kids. Maya happily accepted a ride on grandad’s shoulders, while Kiran eventually passed out in the sling and was put straight to bed when we got back.

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