Our hotel is built in rice fields outside of Ubud; this picture was taken from our lunch table. As you can see, it’s not always sunny in paradise, which is probably related to how incredibly green much of the island is. Note that while in other parts of Bali we’ve seen the rice is young and green, here it’s ripe and in fact being harvested while we’re here.
Yes, today is New Year’s Day here in Bali, the start of 1936 to be precise. Strangely, this is our fourth New Year celebration (Hmong, Western, Chinese, and now Balinese) since November.
We stopped to buy wine and I was amused by this sign. Awfully picky, don’t you think?
Fortunately, though, “outside” seems to be defined as “outside the hotel compound,” since we are allowed to roam the grounds, go to the swimming pool, and so on. Still, it’s all pretty strange. The restaurant, for instance, closes at 6:00 PM; after that – and we don’t eat dinner before 6:00 PM – we can only get room service.
Perhaps even more strange than the day of “complete and utter inactivity and silence” is the ogoh-ogoh parade the night before. Ogoh-ogoh are huge paper maché monster dolls, Hindu agents that are meant to purify nature from spiritual pollutants emitted by humans. As you can guess, they have quite a big job. And as you can see here, they are pretty scary.
These are big and scary dolls
Monsters are prepared to catch anyone who’s out and about on Nyepi
It seems that Balinese children aren’t prohibited from seeing breasts
Finally, night comes and the parade begins. Here are two of the ogoh-ogoh being carried through the streets of Bali.