People

The Balinese are just one of Indonesia’s 250 ethnic groups. Like most Indonesians they are a blend of races, with the accent on the deutero-Malayan race of Central and East Java, with traces of Polynesian and Melanesian blood, as well as Indian and Chinese. This genetic background explains the variety of racial types seen on the island. Most Balinese are small, handsome people with round, delicate features, thick black hair, long sweeping eyelashes, heart-shaped lips, and warm brown complexions, Others are darker-skinned and straight-haired like Pacific islanders, or curly-haired with flat noses like Papuans.

The Balinese are an extraordinarily creative people with a highly sensual, theatrical culture. Their cults, customs, and worship of god and nature are animist, their music warm-blooded, and their art as extravagant as their nature. By Western material standards most Balinese are poor, though their poverty is masked by their exuberance, their outdoor-oriented, picturesque ritual life, and their personal openness and congeniality. Culturally, the Javanese lean more toward refinement and modesty, keeping themselves in check in life and art, while the Balinese prefer the headier, flashier sensations-laughs, terror, spicier and sweeter foods. They’re more lavish and baroque in their colors and decorations; they like explosive music and fast, jerky dancing.

Life in Bali is very communal with the organization of villages, farming and even the creative arts the being decided by the community. Although the local government is responsible for schools, clinics, hospital and roads, all other aspects of life are placed in the hands of two traditional committees, whose roots in Balinese culture stretch back centuries.

Demographics
The vast majority of the rural population practices the syncretic Bali-Hindu religion, known officially as Agama Hindu or Hindu Dharma. There’s also a sprinkling of Muslims in the coastal towns, a Bugis settlement on Serangan Island, Buddhists in the mountains, and Christians everywhere. Several thousand Arabs and Indians, many shop owners dealing in textiles, gold, silver, etc., live in Denpasar.

Ten thousand Chinese are found in the main trading centers of Denpasar, Singaraja, and Amlapura, running the majority of the businesses. Relative to the rest of Indonesia, the number of Chinese on Bali is very small.

There are also around 25,000 Western expatriates-clothes designers, exporters, artists, aid workers, consultants, English teachers. Many Western jewelry and garment makers have intermarried with the Balinese-it seems every other fashion boutique or restaurant in Kuta and Legian has an Italian or Australian somewhere in the family tree.

Population
Bali is a spectacular example of an island favored by nature. Able to sustain a total population of 2.7 million, it has easily the carrying capacity of neighboring Java. With a population density of nearly 500 persons per square kilometer, Bali is Indonesia’s second most densely populated island after Java. In some of Bali’s southern districts the density is even higher, as much as 1,100 per square kilometer. If the population density of the 48 contiguous United States were as great as Bali’s, the U.S.A. would boast 3.6 billion people.

Present estimates are that Bali’s population will increase to 4.5 million by the year 2000. The Indonesian government’s answer to mounting population pressure is to move tens of thousands of Balinese to the Outer Islands in massive transmigration programs. Complete Balinese communities – with temples, ‘banjar’, and ‘subak’ – now exist in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Sumatra.

In addition, Bali’s modern family-planning practices, implemented through 150 clinics in villages and hamlets all over the island, have resulted in the “Miracle of Bali”-a birth rate down from 2.3% in 1970 to 1.6% today. Road posters everywhere encourage families to produce only two children. Under the slogan “Catur Warga” (“Four Citizens”), posters show a smiling, well-fed, and transparently well-off family of mother, father, and two children, obviously thoroughly convinced of the advantages of family planning.

Most people live in the coastal areas in the South, and the island’s largest town and administrative center is fast growing Denpasar with a population of now over 300,000. Kuta (including Jimbaran, Tuban, and Legian, Seminyak, Basangkasa, etc), Sanur and Nusa Dua are spreading rapidly in all directions, and before long the whole area from Sanur in the East to Berawa/Canggu in the West and Nusa Dua in the South will be urbanized.

This is where most jobs are to be found, either in the hotel and tourist industry, the textile and garment industry, or in many small home industries producing handicrafts, souvenirs, etc. Important agricultural products besides rice are tea, coffee, tobacco, cacao, copra, vanilla, soybeans, chilies, fruit, and vegetable (there are now even vineyards near the northwest coast). Bali’s fishing industry and seaweed farming provide other products, which are important exports.

The Bali Aga
As you climb into upland Bali the people become harder looking, their faces less expressive, less likely to smile, reflecting the harshness of their lives. On Bali there’s still a distinction between the Wong Majapahit, descendants of 16th-century migrants of East Java’s fallen Majapahit Empire, and the Bali Aga, the original inhabitants of the island who retreated into the mountains where they’re found to this day, indifferent to outsiders. The Bali Aga never came under the religious and despotic influence of the Javanese nobility, and thus still reflects the true, republican nature of original Balinese society. In their reclusive communities they constitute a nation within a nation.

As a people, the Bali Aga are woefully understudied, their archaic dialect dying, many of their rituals abandoned. They are known for their great austere temples – striking examples in Taro and Trunyan – and the peculiar social divisions of their communities.

There has long been an unfavorable social stigma attached to the Bali Aga; they’re looked down upon by lowlanders. But as time wears on, education, intermarriage, interdependent economies, and the Indonesian language work to blur the distinctions between the Bali Aga and Wong Majapahit Balinese.

Cycle of Life
Hindus believe that every soul is subjected to a transmigration process (samara). Each incarnation binds the soul in a “hellish” condition. It is this body and during that time the soul hellishness that strives to interrupt and achieve the ultimate level of enlightenment or ‘moksa’. This state allows the body and soul to join their cosmic equivalents for good. Failure to achieve ‘moksa’ upon death means that the soul is still bound to the chain of incarnations.

These cosmic notions are manifested in the rites, which accompany the soul during its journey through the cycle of life. The rites involved in the passage of birth to death are an important part of Balinese ritual. They make up the human life rites (manusa yadnya) and the rites of the dead (pitra yadnya). There are a further three rites which are those of the gods, mainly temple rites (dewa yadnya), rites of demonic forces (buta yadnya) and ordainment rites (rsi yadnya).

The Balinese believe that are Holy Place the mountains. The gods and defied ancestors live there and descend for occasional visits during temple ceremonies to be richly fed and entertained. The souls, which did not achieve ‘moksa’, also live there temporarily, waiting to reincarnate on earth. Ancestral souls, which are reincarnating are said to come straight out of the mouth of hell-or from its abode above the mountain.

The incarnation of the human soul is seen as a human and a cosmic process, starting from love. The union of a man and a woman is that of ‘purusa’ and ‘pradana’, the male and female principle respectively, and the cosmic energy of Asmara the god of love and Ratih the goddess of the moon. In their sexual love unite the red and white elements of desire (kamabang/kama petak), symbols of male sperm and female ovule. The eventual merging of the two ‘kamas’ begets what is often called “The Godly Fetus” or ‘sanghyang Jabang Bayi’, as the soul originates from the heavenly world. A child is called “Dewa” or little god during their first years of life.

All the phases of existence, from pregnancy to birth and then from birth to death will be paralleled by ritual stages. The purpose of these rituals are as follows: to fasten the soul in its body, before birth, to welcome it into the world, to take it harmoniously along the various stages of life and finally upon death, to help it cast away all earthly bonds and rejoin the old country of its origins. Here it can merge with the sublime soul of the world, ‘paramatma’ of God.

Gender Roles
Although sex discrimination in daily activities is unknown in Balinese society, men’s and women’s tasks and roles are clearly defined and quite separate. There’s certain hardiness in Balinese women and softness in Balinese men that seem to reflect an ease with their sexuality and gender role. Men and women both play male and female roles in Balinese dance. Both sexes wear sarong skirts. Though once the exclusive preserves of men, women are now becoming more involved in painting, sculpture, and woodcarving. There’s an acclaimed woman’s ‘gamelan’ orchestra in Peliatan and women’s art gallery in Ubud.

Women often have independent incomes and are in charge of raising pigs and cultivating the fields. They also prepare for all the milestones in family life considered important or magical: birth, the first cutting of nails and hair, filing of teeth, the piercing of earlobes, marriage, and death.

Women prepare temple offerings and are responsible for the main work of festivals. They perform much of the backbreaking labor in the building industry.

Walking upright and graceful as queens, Balinese women can carry 30 kilogram loads that stand up to 1.5 meters tall on their heads, while men take up the rear cradling their ‘parang’. A young Balinese girl can train herself to carry 40 coconuts, stacks of fruit, or great water jars on her head-all this while riding a bicycle down a bumpy country road.

Men make most of the family and village decisions. Men also look after the fields and do all the chopping and food preparation at festivals. While women care for most of the animals, the handling of cocks and cockfights is the exclusive domain of men. The market is almost solely a woman’s environment, a place of abundant female energy and initiative where females derive most of their earnings. Buying and selling cattle is the province of men.

The Balinese are extraordinarily welcoming, inviting visitors to take part in village life. They expect guests to adhere to their rules and customs. If you live in a village, you learn how to live communally. You know you’re accepted when the villagers don’t hesitate to ask for favors.

Menstrual
As in many traditional Indonesian societies, strict taboos used to govern menstruation. Women could not prepare food, enter a temple or kitchen, make offerings, or attend feasts. In aristocratic families menstruating women were even sent out of the home to board in a special house or compound.

A Balinese man believed if menstrual blood ever touched his scalp he would become impotent for the rest of his life and follow his wife around like a dog. If a woman’s menstrual blood fell into the hands of an enemy it could be used as a powerful weapon by practitioners of black magic. Today such practices and beliefs are on the wane.

Dress and Grooming
Most older Balinese women wear a ‘kain’ or ‘sarung’ and ‘kebaya’ wrapped artfully around their slim bodies. Men wear bright ‘sarung’ as well. Among the young girls, jeans and T-shirt are the latter day ‘sarung’ or ‘kebaya’. Ceremonial dress is elaborate and employs a number of precious textiles: hip cloths (kamben) extending from waist to ankle, ribbon-like belts (sabuk), and tightly bound chest cloths (anteng). Shoulder cloths (selendang) are only worn in the Old Balinese villages of Tenganan and Trunyan.

The custom of appearing topless was discouraged when Europeans began arriving in numbers in the 1930s. Formerly, women were always naked to the waist in public-only prostitutes wore blouses. In the 1950s, with Indonesia’s newfound revolutionary fervor, tourists were forbidden to snap photos of bare breasts, cameras and film were confiscated, the women themselves fined. Today Balinese women wear bras like Western women wear bikini tops.

Women have long, silky, black hair, which they tie in a number of ways around the head, without use of hairpins, or interweave with scarves. Unmarried women often sport a loose lock of hair hanging down the back over one shoulder with a ‘gonjer’ (flower) dangling in it. Hair can also be rolled inside itself in a great puff, held in place by a few separated strands.

Many Balinese women had their ears pierced when they were children. Women delouse each other and their children as a social pastime and an affirmation of familial love.

Occasionally, you see children with the traditional clipped short hair but for a single lock hanging down in front; the Balinese believe the child will become ill if this lock is cut.

Language
Balinese language is a completely different vocabulary and grammar and much more complex rules for its use. Balinese is greatly complicated by its caste influences. There are four different Balinese languages; each used by a distinct social class, each with a vocabulary of its own. Although each level shares numerous common nouns, many verbs referring to human activities and nouns designating human body parts differ.

The language of the Sudra caste is of ancient Malayo-Austronesian-Polynesian origin, utilizing many vernacular words from the aboriginal dialects of the eastern islands, particularly Lombok and Sumbawa. This coarse, low Balinese is the oldest language on the island; traces can still be found on the isolated island of Nusa Penida.

The high Balinese dialects of the Triwangsa classes are largely Javanese in origin, using a great many Sanskrit words derived from the court languages spoken widely on Java from the 10th century. This highly refined sub-language (basa alus) of about 1,000 words consists almost entirely of honorific levels of speech. Reflecting the rigid Hindu caste system once in force here, another form, ‘basa singgih’, is used when speaking to high priests or when alluding to sacred objects or ceremonies.

A person of lower caste must use a posh high language – ‘basa madia’, the “Language of Courtesy” when speaking to a member of a higher caste, although today not many Sudra are conversant in this high Balinese. The lower caste individual should, in turn, be replied to in low Balinese ‘basa sor’, the rough everyday tongue spoken in the marketplace. If a conversation begins in low Balinese and one later finds that the person addressed is of higher caste, acute embarrassment can occur. This is why Balinese initiate a conversation in the highest form of Balinese when speaking to strangers whose caste they do not know.

In time, a Balinese will ask, “Where do you sit?” (I.e., “What is your caste?”) So s/he can adjust to the level of speech appropriate to the rank of the person addressed.

Common Balinese (basa lumrah) is used when speaking to people of the same level, as well as friends and family. There is also a sacred Sanskrit vocabulary employed only by high Balinese priests in their rituals, mantras, and formulas, as well as other vocabularies used in anger, to insult someone, or when referring to animals.

Customs
Since tourism began, Bali has been in contact with the West. Its Hindu culture and customs have remained intact in spite of western influences and being part of a largely Moslem country. The Indonesians as a whole are very proud of their traditions and customs and they usually stick to strict codes of conduct. The visitor should try to accept the differences and try to adapt to them, when appropriate.

Balinese society has a number of different levels and some would even say like all Asian societies. It is highly stratified. There is an underlying respect for elders and for people of a higher caste of greater wealth and social status. Balinese also differs when speaking to people of different standing. The safest way for visitors when addressing people, except for children, is to use Ibu for women, which means Mrs., madam or mother and, to use Bapak Mr., Sir or father for men.

Greeting someone for the first and subsequent time has taken on a western trait, that of shaking hands. The traditional salutation however, is the Asian “sembah” with fingers joined and hands clasped together at chest level. It is practiced on Hindu festivals and one can say “Om Swastyastu,” may peace be with you. There is also the Balinese wink for informal greetings between the best of friends. Love emotions are never displayed in public, except the occasional hand holding of young lovers. Never kiss or hug anyone except the very best of friends and only on rare occasions.

Smiling is a universal way of communicating or at least breaking the ice. For the Balinese it is no different. In Bali it is always the group that matters not the individual, so be sure to smile broadly and widely. Balinese women are as eager to smile as the men but do not mistake the smile of friendliness for something it is not.

Etiquette
Social etiquette plays an important part in the Balinese’s daily life and willingness to conform to their traditional manners is always respected. Like in any other countries, there are cultural pitfall however, mainly social and religious taboos, the breaking of which may cause social and religious offence.

It is considered rude to point with your toes at a person or object and it is not acceptable to walk in front of praying people. For those who do not know each other well, it is considered impolite to touch some one’s head since head is regarded to be the most significant part of the human body. It is totally unacceptable to take picture of women or men bathing in public bathing place or river.

Visitors wishing to see a temple festival are always welcomed. But they should follow basic rules of etiquette, for the Balinese appreciate those who show respect for their customs. Bathe first and then dress in Balinese style or at least decently in clean clothes – no shorts, unsleeved shirt or skirts above the knees. A sash must always be worn above the waist. Entrance is forbidden to women who are menstruating or who recently gave birth, and to anyone with a bleeding wound or who had a recent death of a close family member.

Do not climb structures, even walls, to take photos. If making a close-up, ask the person’s permission or show your intent. Avoid using a flash. Do not stand in front of anyone praying or bringing offerings. Do not bring outside food and drink into the temple. Be on good behavior and avoid sudden actions, which may be disrupting, for this is an important event and visitors are welcomed only if they make themselves properly welcomed.

When meeting Balinese, the formal greeting is done by clasping the palms of your hands, place them in front of your chest, the finger tips under the chain, and say: Om Swasti Astu (praying for safety and health). When you leave say: Om Cantih, Cantih, Cantih (peace, peace, peace).

Spatial Orientation
Geographically, Bali is divided by its chain of mountains into two halves, Bali Selatan (“South Bali”) and Bali Utara (“North Bali”). The Balinese of North Bali call South Bali “Bali Tengah” (literally, “Central Bali”), which refers to all the regencies in Bali except Buleleng.

Among the chain of volcanic mountains traversing the island from west to east is Gunung Agung (elev. 3,014 meters), Gunung Batukau (2,276 meters), Gunung Abang (2,152 meters), and Gunung Batur (1,717 meters). Legend tells of Shiva dividing the sacred Hindu mountain Mahameru and placing the two halves on Bali: Gunung Batur to symbolize the female element, towering Gunung Agung symbolizing the male.

These lofty mountains play an important role in the lives of the Balinese and are accorded awesome respect and veneration. On top of the peaks dwell the divine spirits who bring prosperity and good fortune to the people; the mountain lakes and rivers are the source of the land’s fertility; and their eruptions, though often destructive, have enriched the soil immeasurably.

The Balinese have even devised their own mountain-oriented system of spatial orientation. Directions are given either toward the mountains (kaja) or toward the sea (kelod). Kaja is usually associated with holiness, the source of life-giving water. The highest of the island’s mountains, sacred Gunung Agung, is known as the “Navel of the World,” the focal point from whence the world springs. Since their sacred mountains are “north” and the sea “south,” these are the cardinal points for the Balinese. Their villages, their houses and even their beds are aligned in these directions. Temples are oriented on the same axis, with the most sacred courtyards and shrines in the kaja end of the temple. In the family compound the orientation persists: the kelod end of the home is where the pigs are kept and garbage is thrown; the kaja end lies closest the mountains.

Even for the people who actually live north of the mountains, the direction toward the mountains is kaja. Many villages, such as Sayan west of Ubud, are divided into two sections, a “north” Sayan (or Sayan Kaja) closest to the mountains and a south” Sayan (Sayan Kelod) closest to the sea.

You cannot translate kelod and kaja into English or Bahasa Indonesia. People in the north and south who say “kaja” will point in opposite directions. But in Bahasa Indonesia or in English, those saying “utara” (north) or “selatan” (south) will point in the same direction. It’s said the Balinese are one of the few island peoples who don’t turn their eyes toward the sea, but gaze instead upward toward the mountains. They believe everything high and mighty like the mountains is magical, healthy, and divine, whereas the ocean is the domain of the underworld, the source of threatening, impure, and harmful forces: fanged demons, monsters, sharks, poisonous sea snakes. The Balinese are thus very cautious when they’re around or in the sea. Few Balinese know how to swim.

Only during low tide do small children venture from shore to catch tropical fish trapped in shallow tidepools. Balinese women may sometimes wade a short distance out but they always come splashing fearfully back to shore, holding up their sarong before the incoming tide. Not surprisingly, the Balinese dwell in the intermediary region-the rich farmlands between the mountains and the sea-between, as it were, heaven and hell.

The Balinese seem to have an innate and infallible sense of direction. No matter where they are-even in California-they always sleep with their heads facing toward Bali’s mountains. The impure, baser parts of the body, such as the feet, face kelod, toward the sea. To do otherwise would offend the gods.

If s/he is unable to achieve proper orientation, a Balinese will feel uncomfortable and out of balance. S/he will almost invariably turn a map so the top is oriented toward kaja, facing the mountains, which afford the most obvious landmark. When giving directions, a Balinese will not say, “left” or “right” but “kauh” or “kangin,” as in “the ‘banjar’ is fifty meters to the kauh of the marketplace.” If you ask a ‘bemo’ driver where he’s going, he’ll say “toward the kelod” (south, toward the sea). Because this system of orientation only has relevance on Bali, a Balinese can easily become lost when abroad or on another Indonesian island.

Children

The Balinese have a love affair with kids. Having come recently from the other world, a baby is looked upon as a god. The smaller the child, the closer s/he is to heaven. At home a child is seldom disciplined, but rather cajoled into obedience as an equal. A child is given responsibilities, which contribute to self-sufficiency and maturity. Children are never beaten: it’s believed such treatment will damage or drive the soul from the body.

Rarely are Balinese infants left alone, nor are they allowed to cry. If you’re pushing a crying child in a stroller down the street, Balinese will stop you to inform you your child is crying, and you’ll be expected to do something about it immediately.

Balinese children always seem happy, though calm. They have an innate gentility, and are quite well behaved. In the most frenetic village festivals seldom do you hear a child cry, or see children squabble, fight, or throw tantrums. Nothing is hidden from children; they listen attentively to adult conversations.

A boy, especially the first son, usually takes up the trade of his father, whether it be caring for cattle or running a souvenir or electronics shop. There’s lots of pressure on boys and men to make money. Daughters are very important to the family-for ceremonies, cleaning house, for carrying offerings. Small girls learn from their mothers how to make offerings, weave, cook, and thresh rice, and never question their many religious duties.

Why do you see so many Balinese kids who look like they’re ditching school? Balinese children attend classes in three separate shifts – 0700-1000, 1000-1300, and 1300-1600. White and gray uniforms are worn by high school students, white and dark blue by secondary school students, white and red by those in primary school.

Naming
The full name of every Balinese not only indicates his or her caste but also his or her sequence of birth. The first born is called Wayan (Gede or Putu in the upper castes), the second child Made (or Nengah or Kadek), then Nyoman, and the fourth Ketut. With a fifth child the rotation starts over again. Today, with Bali’s vigorous family-planning program, one meets fewer and fewer Nyomans and Ketuts.

Children also receive a formal, personal name. Thus, a Balinese called Cokorda Made Sita is the second-born son in the Sita family, belonging to the Ksatriya caste.

To make the naming system more complicated, parents’ names change at the birth of each child. Identifying people by their descendants rather than by their ancestors reflects the direction of time flow from the present to the future rather than the past to the present.

Transitional Events
Throughout a child’s life various rituals are performed on propitious dates chosen with great care. Some life-cycle ceremonies take place even before birth: for example, a ceremony is held to appease evil spirits as soon as it’s learned a woman is pregnant. This is designed to ensure the child’s good health and well-being. A father may be prohibited from killing animals or cutting his hair until the child is safely born.

When the umbilical cord falls off, another purification ceremony takes place, and yet a third when the child is named three months after birth. The latter ceremony is called ‘nelubulanin’. A puppet shadow play may be staged, and at the end of the performance the child sprinkled with holy water and the name announced by the ‘dalang’.

The afterbirth (ari-ari), which protects a person from sickness throughout entire life, is buried by the doorway of the house in a coconut shell. For 42 days after birth the mother is considered unclean (kesebelan) and ritual actions must be undertaken to purify her. Twelve days after birth, offerings are made at home; additional offerings are taken to a ‘balian’, consulted to determine who’s been reincarnated in the new infant. Preferably the ‘balian’ is unknown to the family, avoiding the possibility of cheating with foreknowledge of family history. The ‘balian’ goes into trance and speaks with the voice (or voices) of the person(s) who inhabit the infant. The spirits state why they’ve chosen to come back and announce any conditions attached.

The birth of boy and girl twins is considered a calamity, an evil omen. It’s thought the twins have committed incest in the womb, and rigorous purification ceremonies are required. Traditionally, they should be separated at birth, brought up by different families, and married to one another when they come of age.

Since the Balinese detest actions characteristic of animals, children are not allowed to crawl. An infant may not even touch the impure soil until the age of three months, carried everywhere on the hip of a parent or older brother or sister. It is believed the earth is too strong to risk the vulnerable infant coming into contact with it.

At 105 days old, the child is bedecked with gold and silver bracelets on wrists and ankles, and an elaborate ceremony is performed as the infant first makes contact with the earth. At this time, the personalities of the previous owners of the child’s soul are supposed to remove themselves to allow the new being to continue life unencumbered by memories of what went before.

For a child’s first birthday-at 210 days, the length of a Balinese year-a small banquet is arranged and a Brahman priest blesses the child, rings bells, sprinkles holy water, recites Kawi litanies, and places small offerings before Sanghyang Rare Kumara, the god of small children. This rite is considered so critical to the child’s future well-being that poorer families often pitch in to share the high costs. At this time, the child receives a magic name, held secret from the personal name uttered in daily use. From then on, the child is considered an adult.

Once able to walk, a child falls into the care of other children, allowed to roam freely through the village in small, self-sufficient kid republics. A girl’s first menstruation (nyacal) is an important rite of passage. Since she is believed unclean (sebel), she enters into partial seclusion until the day when her period is at an end, emerging in gold brocades, jewels, and flowers. A ‘pedanda’ performs the purification blessing and recites magic prayers (maweda).

Only one major ritual remains, the filing of teeth – a sort of Balinese bar mitzvah, the passage into puberty-celebrated by both males and females.

Balinese Food

It isn’t easy to find genuine Balinese food. Sure, the hotel restaurants have a token ‘babi guling’ on their menus but the dish is so modified to suit sensitive Western palates as to render it unrecognizable. Though Balinese food ranks behind Java’s in subtlety, variety, and creativity, it is still an unusual and respectable Asian cuisine. Unfortunately, it doesn’t travel well. In the entire length and breadth of Jakarta there is not a single Balinese restaurant. Even on such important ritual occasions as weddings or family rites of passage, the Balinese themselves serve a majority of Javanese or Chinese dishes and not Balinese.

Since dining out is not a social custom on Bali, the visitor is not likely to experience real Balinese cooking unless invited into a Balinese home. About the only place to consistently experience the real thing are the night markets and ‘warung’. In your homestay, talk your way into your hostess’s kitchen and sample some homemade Balinese meals. Every household prepares dishes in different ways. The most delectable, subtle foods – even banquet foods – are prepared with two burners, one wok, and a steamer pot.

Balinese food is so hard to find because it’s usually only prepared for hundreds of people on special occasions. Since coconut oil goes bad very quickly and refrigeration is limited, preparations for such perishable, difficult feast dishes as ‘mebat’ and ‘lawar’ are begun early in the morning, labored on through the dawn, and eaten fresh later in the morning.

The two or three meals the Balinese eat each day are almost identical – lots of boiled white rice supplemented by tiny fish, vegetables, peanuts, cucumbers, chilies, and minute portions of spiced meat, egg, or ‘tempe’. In inland areas, dried and salted fish is more common. In poorer areas, the rice is mixed with corn, cassava, or sweet potatoes. There are no courses. In a sense, there are no mealtimes. Food is prepared when hunger comes in the morning and is left in pots under protective baskets on the kitchen table to partake of whenever desired. Except during ceremonial feasting, the Balinese are very modest eaters. A glass of warm water or tea accompanies the frugal meal, which is often eaten cold.

Balinese cuisine is to be eaten with the fingers so that none of the delectably spicy flavors are compromised by the taste of aluminum. The Balinese always eat with the right hand, taking three fingers full of rice, dabbing it into spiced side condiments like ‘sambal’, then popping it into their mouth with a quick flex of the thumb. Eating is almost the only activity the Balinese prefer to do alone. It’s bad manners to speak to a Balinese while he’s eating. Having helped himself to some rice, and mixing it all up with his fingers on a banana leaf or a plate, a Balinese will go off by himself and sit in silence and with great haste scarf his food, gulp a glass of water, and then after a cooling ‘kretek’ cigarette be on his way.

For those who would like to learn more about Balinese cooking, the 120-page The Food of Bali (Periplus Editions), edited by Wendy Hutton with recipes and photographs by Master Chef Heinz von Holzen, contains such recipes as suckling pig, ‘lawar’, various ‘sate’, ‘sambal’, leaf-wrapped fish, and rice desserts. The book costs Rp30,000 at hotel bookstores.

Ingredients
The Balinese will eat almost anything that crawls, flies, swims or walks: worms, frogs, flying foxes, snakes, porcupines, anteaters, lizards, wild boars, centipedes, grubs, crickets, flying ants, bee larvae, birds (bones and all), crayfish. Dog is reputed to be an aphrodisiac rendering a man hot and strong through the night. It’s also believed that dog meat is good for asthma. A Balinese kid will take you dragonfly-catching using a long thin wand (tempilan) with a sticky end that catches the gossamer wings. After catching them, they take the wings off, fry the bodies in coconut oil until crispy, and then eat them with spices and vegetables. Dragonfly larvae (belauk) are harvested in footprints in the rice fields, then fried, boiled, or grilled wrapped in banana leaves and eaten with rice and ‘sambal’.

A Balinese family will smoke live bees out of a beehive, break the hive up, then soak it in water for about an hour. A mild spicy sauce is then stirred in and the resulting pulpy mass, complete with grubs, is parceled out in banana leaves and grilled. Very tasty. Rice field eels (belut), which look like baby snakes, are caught at night, usually by feeling them with bare toes squirming in the mud. After cleaning, they’re cooked over glowing embers and the next day served up crisp and salty. They’re eaten whole, head and all-a bit chewy but good. Frogs are another source of protein from the flooded rice fields, caught by young children at night in a special hourglass-shaped bamboo trap.

Rice
All traditional Balinese food is designed to complement or be complemented by rice, a plentiful crop grown on the country’s terraced paddies. Rice is so important to the Balinese that their word for “to eat” and “to eat rice” is the same (ngajengan). The Balinese ardently worship a rice-goddess Dewi Sri of pre-Hindu origin and a complex series of rituals accompany each of the plant’s growing cycles, just as if the rice were people. There are dozens of words to describe the various stages of growth of rice and the variety of ways it’s cooked.

Ordinary uncooked white rice is called ‘beras’. Steamed rice is ‘nasi kuskus’, steamed in a special cone-shaped bamboo cooker called a ‘pengukusan’ (which tourists often mistake for field hats). Rice is cooked just once daily, in the mornings. As it sours quickly in the tropical climate, what has not been eaten by nightfall is fed to the pigs. For the Balinese, the whiter the uncooked rice, the tastier it is when cooked (although all the nutrients have been taken out). Turmeric (kunyit) is often added in the cooking to give rice a yellow coloring. Not only is rice the basic ingredient of every meal, but it’s used to make rice wine (brem) and a giddy variety of colorful sweet cakes (jajan) used in temple offerings.

There are a number of varieties of rice grown on Bali. When buying white rice (beras putih), try the old-fashioned, short-grained paddy rice, ‘beras asli’ or ‘beras bali’, which is considered more flavorful than the newer long-grained rice and other “improved” dwarf varieties. One can easily distinguish ‘beras bali’ from the new high-tech rice. Its grains are oval-shaped, while the dwarf grains are long and needle-like. ‘Beras bali’ is also three times more expensive. Red rice (gaga) and black glutinous rice (injin) are also grown, but are scarcer and more expensive.

Vegetables and Greens
Bali’s abundant vegetation and relatively few edible animals have led its inhabitants to adopt a semi-vegetarian diet. Bali is blessed with over 100 vegetables (jukut), including such exotics as acacia leaves (tuwi), bean pods (buah pete), spinach-like greens (bayem), edible ferns (paku), sweet potato leaves (kesela pohon), tasty banana plant flowers (pusuh biu), and tender shoots of banana leaves (kekalan). Leaves of bamboo, mangoes, peanut (daun kacang), and papaya (daun gedang) are also used in cooking. Raw greens, as in our green salads, are seldom eaten. When the housewife needs instant vegetables or herbs to round out her dinner, she forages leaves from plants, shrubs, or trees in her backyard, washes and then boils them up with grated coconut and such spices as MSG and ‘basa genep’.

Periodically, rice fields are dried out for a season, and other crops such as sweet potatoes (ubi), peanuts (kacang tanah), maize (jagung), lima beans (kekare), sugarcane (tubu), and various types of beans (kacang) are planted. Cassava (ubi kayu) is grown on the dry Bukit Peninsula. ‘Bengkuwang’, a root vegetable similar in texture to the Chinese water chestnut, is eaten raw or with ‘rujak’. The Balinese leek, ‘bawang pere’, is a frequent ingredient in the Chinese dish ‘capcay’. The onion family is also well represented. ‘Tuwung butuh’ is a solanaceous vegetable, which means, “bull testicles.”

Because of its climate, the mountains around Bedugul on Lake Bratan grow the island’s widest variety of temperate-zone type vegetables-cabbages, tomatoes, string beans, mustard leaf, cauliflowers, peppers, white potato, eggplants, avocados, carrots, celery, cabbage. Visit Bedugul’s market at Candi Kuning to behold great piles of giant European vegetables.

Spices and Condiments
The Balinese consider Western food flat and tasteless. Their own food tends to be peppery and served with such potent spices as mashed onions, garlic, fermented fish paste, and scalding red peppers. The most ramshackle ‘warung’ can bring forth an array of exquisite dishes with flavors, textures, and aromas that you never dreamed existed: tingling ginger sautés, rich and creamy peanut sauces, and spice-laden chili ‘sambal’ toppings that will fire the palate. Surprisingly, one seldom comes across the spices-nutmeg, pepper, mace, and cloves-that gave the “Spice Islands” their name and spurred Columbus to accidentally discover America.

The job of having the proper spices on hand is made easier for the Balinese housewife with the purchase of a bag of ‘basa genep’, mixed spices, which contains a good portion of the 40 or so spices used in Balinese cooking. Spices are ground into a paste in back of the family compound, using a black stone mortar (batu basa) and cone-shaped pestle (cantok); buy a set in Denpasar’s market for Rp10,000.

A crucial spice in Balinese cooking is ‘sra’, a ground and putrid shrimp paste, which has been dried and mixed with seawater, then allowed to ferment for months. Having the consistency of toothpaste, ‘sra’ is fried first to bring out its flavor; a pea-sized amount is enough to give a racy, briny dimension to a whole dish. ‘Sra’ has no substitute. Some standard spices include a gritty sea salt (uyah), black (mica selem) and white (mica putih) pepper, candlenuts (tingkih), tiny, mild, pear-shaped red onions (bawang barak), ginger (jahe), coriander seeds (ketumbar), sour tamarind (celagi), and garlic (kesuna). Aromatic roots and leaves, MSG (monosodium glutamate, or ‘pitsin’ in Balinese), and citrus juice (lemon) are added for extra flavoring. ‘Laos’ powder (isen) is another exotic Indonesian spice. Bright orange-yellow turmeric (kunyit), a root of the ginger family that resembles a small carrot, is frequently used in Balinese festival dishes to produce yellow-colored rice.

Coconuts (nyuh), an essential ingredient in Balinese cooking, add richness to many native recipes, especially curries and sauces. Frying is done exclusively in coconut oil. At least 12 varieties of ‘nyuh’, either green or yellow are found on Bali. When they are old and dried out, they turn gray. Able to produce fruit for 50 years, the coconut provides the Balinese with vessels, clothing, soap, cosmetics, housing materials, food, and drink. Coconut milk is made by shredding the meat of the old coconut, kneading, sieving, then blending it with water. As it cooks, the coconut milk thickens; with the addition of flour or cornstarch it becomes a thick, white, rich cream (santan). Balinese-style sate is often kneaded into coconut cream. The sweet, creamy content of the young coconut (kuwud) also makes a refreshing drink. Any boy or man can shape a spout and spoon of the coconut husk to allow you to drink from the nut or scrape out the pulpy meat.

Chilies (tabia), the elongated pods of the Capsicum pepper family, turn from green to red when ripe. Usually the larger the size, the milder the chili. The largest sizes are used principally to decorate offerings, but the smallest (tabia kerinyi) are highly flammable! Chili bushes grow easily inside the family ‘kampung’, and chilies are plucked as needed. Chilies are de rigueur in any kind of ‘sambal’, and thin slices of chili go into the spicy-hot, salty, and popular Balinese soybean sauce called ‘kecap’ (pronounced “KECH-ap”) which has nothing to do with tomato-based catsup as we know it. In restaurants there are almost always two kinds of ‘kecap’, sweet (kecap manis) and sour (kecap asin). Indonesian-made Western-style tomato ketchup is only available in Bali’s restaurants.

There are many kinds of hot chili sauces (sambal) and spiced chili pastes. Almost every dish has its own kind of ‘sambal’, and every Balinese family makes its own a little differently. But don’t get the idea that all Balinese food is hot. Many dishes are quite palatable to the Westerner. Peanut sauces made with chilies and unsweetened coconut cream top the Indonesian delicacies most enjoyed by Westerners. When in doubt as to whether the dish is spicy hot or not, ask “Pedas atau tidak?” (“Hot or not?”). If the dish is too hot, don’t try to douse the fire with a glass of cold water, cold beer, or a carbonated drink, which only exacerbates the problem. Instead, eat some boiled rice, cucumber, a banana, or some bread. To make a dish less fiery hot, squeeze a little lemon with some salt over it. Or drink hot tea or warm water which will sting at first, then bring relief.

Typical Balinese Dishes
In virtually every hotel – from majestic to humble – you can order a “Balinese Special Feast” with only 24 hours notice. Though a Westernized, toned down version, it will give you a taste of Balinese/Indonesian food. ‘Tum’ is ground beef and spices wrapped in banana leaf and steamed. ‘Betambus’ is boiled fish served with a thick spicy sauce and sliced tomatoes. Above all, don’t miss roast steamed duck (bebek betutu) stuffed with spices and vegetables, wrapped in banana or betel nut leaf, then smoked to perfection for three or four hours in a ground oven or rice steamer. Though ‘bebek betutu’ is a big hit with most Westerners, some complain it has too many bones. The Balinese like to snap all the tiny bones off at the end and suck out the succulent marrow (sum-sum). The best-steamed duck is cooked in Peliatan.

Most of Indonesia is Muslim, and the eating of pork is forbidden by the Islamic religion. Thus pigs are absent on Java but run all over Hindu Bali where they are bred and cooked magnificently. Bali’s famous delicacy, ‘babi guling’, is a whole pig stuffed with tapioca leaves, red chilies and onions, garlic, green peppers, turmeric, ginger, aromatic leaves, candlenuts, and whole peppercorns. The pig (weighing four to six kg) is then stitched together, skewered, and roasted (guling means “to turn”) very slowly on a spit over a low coal fire for three hours. Brushed with crushed turmeric, the flesh turns juicy and tender, and the skin brittle and covered with a golden-brown glaze.

Although tourists are told it’s roast suckling pig, the pig is usually way past the suckling stage. If your homestay does the cooking, one small pig serves four or five. Although a ceremonial meal, you can find ‘babi guling’ in many markets and specialty street stalls at any time of the year. Sample it in the traditional way with rice, spicy sausage made from the innards, stuffing, crackling, pork ‘lawar’, boiled jackfruit, and vegetables.

Very possibly the best ‘babi guling’ in Bali is served in several crowded ‘warung’ on the main road to Candidasa in the Banjar Tegas compound next to Terminal Gianyar in Gianyar Town. These ‘warung’, which don’t normally open before 1000 or 1100, roast more than a dozen animals a day and the food is always fresh and delicious. Try a glass of the refreshing native brew, ‘tuak’, while you’re at it.

Warung and Roadside Stalls
Along Bali’s roadsides are small eating stalls-consisting of a dirt floor or bamboo platform, a palm-leaf or plastic canopy, and a bench or two-which dispense quick meals as cheap and nutritious as anywhere in the world. These roadside foodstalls and cafes offer a mixed fare of coffee, tea, cakes, biscuits, rice cakes, peanuts, and homemade spirits. They may even serve complete meals, usually served cold on a banana leaf. ‘Warung’ that serve only coffee (kopi) and biscuits (kue) cater particularly to the men-folk who stop there to gossip, read the newspaper, or listen to the radio before returning home. Sit with the farmers and sip a glass of foaming ‘tuak’ while sampling some rice treats wrapped in banana leaf (nasi bungkus). If you want a dish served heated, say “Yang masih panas.”

Temple festivals and village markets are the best places to find these flimsy, makeshift eateries. At these places you can sample such truly native Balinese snacks and treats as ‘rujak’, ‘babi guling’, original paddy rice, fruits, vegetable mixes, spicy sauces, boiled corn-on-the-cob, roasted and steamed bean pods, crunchy baby peanuts which look like corn kernels, and high-protein sweet potatoes served with coconut, palm sugar and ‘kecap’.

Serving as meeting places for young and old, ‘warung’ also make excellent language labs for learning Indonesian. These coffee shops also sell domestic supplies such as kerosene, lamps, batteries, cigarettes, needles, buttons, medicine, dried fish, and salt. Even the smallest country villages have five or six ‘warung’. At night the ‘warung’ could be the only well-lit place in the whole village.

Pushcarts and Mobile Kitchens
The Balinese snack at all hours of the night and day. Even the streets of the tourist centers (except Nusa Dua) are filled with vendors selling cheap food for the thousands of Indonesians working in the shops, cleaning hotels and restaurants, and driving taxis. Food is prepared from the freshest ingredients right before your eyes at one-quarter the price you’d pay in a restaurant. Just sit on the curb to eat and join in conversation with the Indonesians beside you. As they push their carts along, these vendors make distinctive sounds with their voices or with implements that signal their specialty: noodle soups, ‘nasi’ and ‘mie goreng’, ‘bakso’ (beef meatball), sate, Arabian pancakes (martabak), ‘tahu gunting’, ‘rujak’, poisonous-looking iced syrups, steamed sweetmeats, beans, sticky cakes, fruits, peanuts.

Whole kitchens also dangle from shoulder poles. These sellers set up at street corners and even along the beaches dispensing leaf or newspaper cones full of soggy, newly steamed peanuts, boiled peanuts (kacang cina malablab), peanuts fried in oil (kacang cina magoreng), fried without the skin (kacang cina kapri), or roasted (kacang cina manyanyah). The Balinese are addicted to small, green beans called kacang ijo, which are also available around the clock, fried, boiled, or roasted.

Balinese Festival Foods
Balinese banquet food is as sophisticated as any of the world’s great cuisine. Women cook the daily meal, but only men may prepare the festival dishes. Great banquet chefs admired all over Bali are in demand at the more important feasts. On these occasions the assembled guests sit in long rows while members of the ‘banjar’ weave amongst them, setting before each a small square banana leaf on which they place all the principal dishes: a pyramid of pure white rice topped with fried beans (botor), crushed peanuts, crispy baked grated coconut, dried ‘kunyit’, and various delicacies. Five principal banquet delicacies are prepared on special family occasions and important religious holidays like Galungan.

‘Mebat’ centers on turtle; for even a small amount of ‘mebat’, one wild sea turtle must be killed-in inland areas, they use pork instead. ‘Lawar’, one of the dishes that make up a ‘mebat’ ritual feast, is a mixture of uncooked grated coconut, young jackfruit, tree leaves, sauce, long slivers of meat, and the obligatory spices, all of which is pounded and chopped to the consistency of lawnmower mulch. Pig’s blood is mixed with ‘lawar’ only if requested because it goes bad in an hour. Ask for either the “red” (mixed with blood) or the “white” (not yet mixed with blood).

The best and cheapest ‘lawar’ is sold at open-air ‘warung’ set up at festivals, cockfights, and other village events. ‘Sayur urap’, similar to ‘lawar’, is vegetables, corn, and beans mixed with tamarind leaves (celagi) and grated coconut to create a creamed vegetable dish (best in Klungkung). Sate, another ritual food, is made from pork, chicken, duck, or turtle. Savory ‘leklat’ (or ‘sate lembat’) is diced turtle meat with a spiced paste kneaded in ‘santan’, then roasted until crisp over coals.

Sea turtle (penyu) is a specialty of the Denpasar area. Turtle meat spoils easily, so a meal containing turtle meat must be cooked and eaten within 24 hours. Sacrificed in the wee hours of the morning, the shell, flippers, and head are severed from the body and for some hours afterwards the jaws snap hideously and the entrails twitch violently on the beach. The blood of the turtle is collected and diluted with limejuice to prevent coagulation. The skin and meat are chopped very finely and prepared with spices, coconut, and even raw blood (in dishes like ‘kiman’, ‘lawar’ and ‘gecok’). At the rate these endangered wild creatures are being slaughtered, turtle-based dishes will soon disappear. To see how depressing it can get, visit Pegok, a suburb of Denpasar. Tourists shouldn’t contribute to the slaughter.

Communal meals for a family or village feast often take at least a full day of preparation, sometimes starting late at night and carrying on until morning. If you really want to experience the old Balinese way of presenting a royal banquet, attend Puri Kerambitan’s “Puri Night” in the village of Kerambitan in Tabanan Regency.

Variation in texture is an integral aspect of the classical meal-mushiness (lawar) and juiciness (pork) is always accompanied by crunchiness (pigskin) and dryness (krupuk). To guarantee the freshness of the meat and sauces in Bali’s tropical climate, the men are awakened in the middle of the night to slaughter the turtles and pigs. Food containing coconut, a central ingredient of so many Balinese dishes, must be eaten the same day. At about 0400 on the morning of the ceremony the men will gather, each carrying a large heavy chopping knife (berang). While sitting cross-legged on bamboo mats on the floor of the ‘bale banjar’, the men are busy cooking, scraping coconuts, chopping meat, stirring big black pots, preparing mountains of spices, and constructing altars and sheds. The women make offerings, carry water, and cut out ‘lamak’ decorations. The many chefs return home soon after dawn to their families carrying their portions, which are immediately devoured with relish by all.

Architecture of Bali

History
Traditional architecture in Bali originates from two sources. One is the great Hindu radiation brought to Bali from India via Java. The second is an indigenous architecture pre-dating the Hindu epic and in many ways reminiscent of Polynesian building. Even the Balinese temple, it has been noted, is surrounded by a stone wall dividing its sacred precincts from the village very much like Hawaiian and Tahitian places of worship.

A world of order and harmony
If, instead of walking, we look at Balinese villages from above the impression of order is no less extraordinary. Houses are all identical and strikingly parallel in layout with family temples, kitchens and rooms occupying the same relative position in the walled compound. Large temples, likewise, all have the same structure with their main shrines occupying the same ‘kaja kangin’ (east-mountain ward) corner and villages, all with the same banyan tree, in the vicinity of the similarly located princely mansion. And, all around this orderly world, the greenness of the trees and the glitter of rice fields. More than any of the so-called tourism “objects” vaunted by the industry, it is in this harmonious integration of Man and Nature that the genuine charm of Bali can be found.

Religion & Architecture
This Balinese sense of order and harmony, beside the peculiar constraints of an agrarian tradition, are based on principles of the Hindu-Balinese religion, and in particular its emphasis on balance between Man, God and Nature.

Depicted as a microcosm -Bhwana Alit or ” Small World”-, Man is expected to exist in his natural environment in a way, which conforms to the macrocosmic order of things -the Bhwana Agung or literally Larger World. In other words he reshapes his environment on the dual model of himself and the Macrocosm. As formulated in the Asta Kosala Kosali manuscripts all architectural structures or elements of urban planning should reproduce the tripartite order of both the world and the human body, which are each divided into upper (utama), middle (madia) and lower (nista) parts. Every building, compound and territorial unit should thus have a head, a body and a lower body, respectively corresponding to the upper world of the gods (Swah), the middle world of humans (Bhwah) and the lower world of demons (Bhur). To practically apply these cosmological principles, a system of orientation is also needed. It is determined by the crossing of two natural axis, that of the rising and setting sun on the one hand, and that of ‘kaja-kelod’ mountain-sea or, more precisely, that defined by the upstream-downstream axis (ulu-teben) on the other.

Balinese Temples
Balinese temples are divided into three parts; one inevitably passes through a split gate or ‘Candi Bentar’ to enter the first courtyard. Then a second gate rising high with the grinning face of a guardian demon leads to the second division. Inside there are numerous pavilions used for various purposes. In the final courtyard one may find the ‘meru’ pagoda which may have as many as eleven roofs if the owner or temple is important enough. The black thatch is from the sugar palm and can only be used in temples. There will also stand numerous ‘sanggah’ or spirit houses and pedestals, which will be full of offerings on ritual days. Everywhere carving in brick, volcanic stone and wood will be apparent. Walls ring all. The Balinese have always spent a great deal of energy and money on their temples for it is the duty to repay the ancestors for the prosperity.

Royal Palaces
Balinese royalty has always felt it imperative that they demonstrate their prosperity and standing by building magnificent palaces. The carved wooden doors of these palaces are especially famous for their beauty. The teak doors of the main palace of Denpasar were so large that they required forty porters to carry them. In the palaces bright colors and gold leaf abound for the display of opulence in even the smallest and most insignificant of details is deemed proof of nobility. Unlike Europe, Balinese palaces are not single huge buildings but rather a collection of numerous structures each with a special function such as the ‘bale gede’, an open pavilion of 12 columns, where the oldest male of the family sleeps. During important ceremonies like tooth filing this will serve a place to commune with the ancestors and gods who descend from heavens to partake of the many offerings placed on the beds. As in the temple the four directions of the Balinese compass are critical in determining the layout and positioning of buildings.

The Balinese Compound
Let’s take a look at the typical Balinese commoners “house” or compound. First, it should be emphasized that the Balinese do not live in a “house” in the Western sense of the word. Their living quarters are large compounds of 600 to 900 m2 comprising a number of separate buildings, most of them with verandahs, which are the counterpart of rooms in the Western house. Outward rather than inward-oriented, this architectural concept is devised so as to blend Man within his environment: people spend most of their time “outside”, in the yard (natah), or on the open verandahs of the main buildings. The only closed spaces are the parent’s room in the ‘bale dauh’ – to the west (dauh) of the central part of the compound -’ at the youth and children’s sleeping quarters, the ‘bale daja’, to the upstream-west part of the compound. The kitchen (paon) is located downstream and west of the compound, with the granary (jineng) to its east. Old people usually spend their days in the ‘dangin’ pavilion, located in the central-eastern part of the house, while, just “above” it, the gods “reside” in a smaller walled yard located in the eastern mountain-ward part of the compound called the ‘sanggah’ or ‘merajan’.

The occupation of the various buildings by the members of the family corresponds to the phases of incarnated life: the young live in the ‘bale daja’, the building nearest to the mountain from which they “recently” incarnated; with adulthood, they move to the middle-western pavilion (bale dauh); then, with old age, to the eastern ‘bale dangin’, the pavilion nearest to the family temple (sanggah or merajan) where their soul will be enshrined after death.

As explained above, the structure of the compound is tripartite and based on cosmic concepts: “houses” are seen as duplicates, both of the world and of the human body. Corresponding to the abode of the gods, the compound has a head: the family temple; corresponding to the middle world, it has a torso: the yard, complete with its arms: the various buildings of residence, and its navel: the Indra shrine in the center of the yard; and, finally, corresponding to the lower world, it has respectively bowels, here the kitchen, genitals, here the gate, and even an anus, here the backyard refuse, situated “downstream” from the kitchen.

There is a developed Balinese science of geomancy written in the ancient palm leaf manuscripts. This is known as ‘Kosala-kosali’. Through it we can determine the best place to locate a kitchen for instance. Oftentimes when a family is suffering bad luck or misfortune, the first place the ‘balian’ or witch doctor will look for is any unwitting violations of the Balinese laws of building. The science of building is held to be a sacred knowledge and traditional Balinese architects who might also be rice farmers were known by the distinguished title of ‘undagi’.

Another large and important structure is the ‘wantilan’ or so called cock-fighting arena. It is called this because at one time cockfights were frequently held here. It is found near the palace and central market in every traditional village. Nearby stands a ‘kulkul’ or slit drum tower to call the members of the village together for meetings. The ‘wantilan’ is also commonly used for performances. Once built entirely of wood most are made of re-enforced concrete today. The traditional ‘wantilan’ has also inspired the shapes and forms of many hotels and houses as the Amandari Hotel.

Modern Influences
Using such natural materials as thatch roofing, bamboo poles, woven bamboo, coconut wood, mud and stone they are organic statements in complete harmony with the environment. Many of these are temporary such as the offering houses set up before harvest in the rice fields. Others use trees that will actually keep on growing as the bamboo rots and returns to the mother earth. The Balinese have always been particularly adept using the bamboo and behind every Balinese house one can find at least one stand of bamboo.

The introduction of cement and other modern materials and the rapid growth of hotels, galleries and new homes have produced mixed results. The opulence and ornamentation of many new hotels are often breath taking. Nowhere else in the world would such woodcarvings and stone work be possible. Still the line between kitsch and a good taste is narrow and too often people have failed to appreciate the essence of Balinese architecture that in many cases has become an amazing parody of itself. One hopes that in the future more attention will be paid to resorts like the Amandari and Four Seasons Resort in Jimbaran, who have modified traditional Balinese architecture without tainting its integrity.

For those truly interested in Balinese architecture, a visit to the Bali Museum in Denpasar is a must. There you will not only find many old traditional buildings but also information as to the local styles, of which there are many. Also if you would like to take a piece of tradition back with you there are numerous traditional rice barns, the original knock down building, available for sale for extremely reasonable prices.

Balinese Social Council

Banjar
As one of provinces in Indonesia, Bali consist of 8 regencies and orchad (desa) that organized by one or more banjar. There are around 4,200 banjar in Bali. Banjar is a group who manage and as the basic view of daily society life. Banjar is the main organization/council in society. There are many specification of banjar.

Banjar adat
As a social unity according to territorial view, banjar devide to be banjar adat and banjar dinas. ‘banjar adat is a coordinating institution of many activities that cloesely related with custom and religion, like death, ‘ngaben’, marriage, etc. And the leader of banjar adat call ‘kelian adat’.

Banjar dinas
‘Banjar dinas’ is mostly manage the administration case, and the leader call ‘kelian dinas.

Banjar traditional & modern
‘Banjar traditional’has to do the role (‘awig-awig’) and traditional custom, meeting, law, and ceremonial, even the other thing that rlated to job, dance, music, and other kind of arts. ‘Banjar modern’, is commonly in the town, the social functions is less than banjar traditional in orchad.

Subak
Subak is the irrigation organization in Bali that is managed by a unity og irigation territorial in agronomy as the main aspect. The membership of the ‘subak’ are all the farmers who are lead by ‘kelian subak’ (‘pekaseh’) and structurally beneath ‘sedahan agung’. ‘Subak’ is also based on ‘Tri Hita Karana’ conception that is expressed in ‘pura subak’ irigation territory and ‘warga subak’. Bali’s well-defined dry season makes irrigation necessary, but the island’s mountainous nature makes it difficult. Since a farmer is unable to build and maintain elaborate irrigation systems, only through cooperation with neighbors have the Balinese become famed as Indonesia’s most efficient rice-growers. The ‘subak’ is a communal association consisting of growers, tenants, and sharecroppers who work adjacent holdings averaging 50-100 hectares. Acting as a sort of local “water board,” this intra-village civil engineering organization’s main function is to control the distribution of irrigation water and organize joint work projects to build and maintain dams, canals, tunnels, aqueducts, and waterlocks.

In existence in Bali since at least A.D. 896, there are today around 1,200 of these irrigation cooperatives, each with several hundred members. All must abide by the same rules. Each member is allotted work in proportion to the amount of water s/he receives; a ‘pekaseh’ arbitrates any disputes. All government programs to improve rice production are channeled through the ‘subak’ by a staff of field agents who live right in the main rice-growing areas.

Sekeha
‘Sekeha’ is social organization of voluntary that is tied together with goal and special role that have been agreed. There are many kinds of sekeha in Bali, such as Sekeha memula, sekeha manyi (sekeha of agronomy aspect), sekeha arja, sekeha topeng, sekeha gong (sekeha of arts aspect, sekeha kidung, sekeha patus ( sekeha of religion aspect), sekeha ukir, sekeha togog (sekeha of art & craft aspect), etc.

Government

Bali is one of the 27 provinces of Indonesia. Within Bali there are eight ‘kabupatens’ or districts, which under the Dutch were known as regencies. They are: District Badung, its capital is Denpasar; District Bangli, its capital is Bangli; District Buleleng, its capital is Singaraja; District Gianyar, its capital is Gianyar; District Jembrana, its capital is Negara; District Karangasem, its capital is Amlapura; District Klungkung, its capital is Semarapura; District Tabanan, its capital is Tabanan. Badung in the south is the most populous district.

On Bali, all traditional political concepts are based on Hinduism. Each of Bali’s regencies is headed by a ‘bupati’, and each is separated into smaller ‘kecamatan’ headed by a ‘camat’, the executive officer of the ‘bupati’. Under the ‘camat’ are the village headmen, ‘perbekel’, who govern an area comprising several small communities.

There are 564 incorporated villages under a ‘perbekel’, as well as 1,456 ‘desa adat’ (common villages). The smallest political unit is the ‘banjar’, an individual community ward consisting of 200-300 male householders and administered by a ‘klian’ (banjar head). The sprawling seacoast village of Sanur, for example, has 22 banjar.

Gotong Royong
‘Gotong royong’ means joint responsibility and mutual cooperation of the whole community, all working together to achieve common ends. With origins in much earlier times, this is an all-important institution in Indonesian village life. Bali consists of hundreds of villages, and the tradition of ‘gotong royong’ is the real grassroots base of political rule.

Whenever fire, flood, earthquake, or volcanic eruption strikes, when pipelines break down or a dam needs building or repairing, the principle of ‘gotong royong’ goes into effect. If a rice field must be harvested, all have a right and duty to help, receiving a share of the crop as compensation. If a temple is to be built, all villagers will join in building it, or else contribute money in lieu of labor. Men usually work with their own tools and without pay. Sometimes neighboring villagers are expected to help. If a village follows this communal organization, no household will be without land to farm, work to subsist, and food to eat. Anyone in trouble will receive help.

A number of ancient Balinese customs – three-day cycling markets, ‘subak’ organizations, unpaid labor required by feudal lords – have their origins in an Indianized Bali preceding Javanese contact, so the practice of mutual cooperation and ritual corvée was already well established on Bali before ‘gotong royong’ became an all-important principle in modern Indonesian political life. ‘Gotong royong’ as it works on Bali revolves around thousands of ‘perbekel’ and ‘klian’ who coordinate ‘gotong royong’ programs and carry out government policies. ‘Perbekel’ rules by assigning friends and assistants to task, a sort of administration by relationships. Loyalties to family, village, and friends are more important than self-advancement. The central government greatly stresses this village socialism – it makes the government’s job much easier, enabling the country to almost run itself.

When the local government feels it can bring economic benefits to an area, it sends men out to the villages to explain the advantages, asking the help of the local ‘banjar’. In this way, with the villagers supplying the labor and the government the equipment and materials, real progress and a higher standard of living can be achieved.

By channeling agricultural production campaigns through the local ‘subak’ and ‘banjar’, the government can ensure that the nine regencies of Bali develop harmoniously in all sectors. Under government supervision, vineyards are planted along the arid northwest coast, old coconut and coffee trees are replaced with more productive varieties, high-yield rice strains are promoted, fisheries and other small marine industries are established, and tourism and transportation infrastructures are constantly improved upon.

Business in Bali

Usually people visit Bali for its landscapes, festivals and petite dancers. There is another aspect to modern Bali though: business. Balinese religious symbolism and the use of offerings in all rituals have sreated a workforce exceptionally adepth in the production of art and handycraft.

Starting in the seventies, when backpackers and hippies started trading in Balinese art and craft to finance their stay in the island of the gods, businese in garment and textiles, jewelry, carving, furniture, antiques, and other items had been growing at a rate even outpacing that of the tourism industry. As a result, the home-industry producing handycrafts and garment has become the most dynamic sector of the Balinese economy. Though it is difficult to know real figures as many exports are classified as souvenirs taken home by ‘tourists’, it is estimated that as musch as US$400 millions per annum, or a fifth of the regional annual income, are raked in by these home-industry businesses. Bali is also currently an important international production center for beach-style fashion and designer items.

The most dynamic sectors of this export business belong to the undeclared economy. Bali has a small semi-resident community of several thousand expatriates who every year spent four to eight months on the island to make designs, order products, control quality, organize their marketing networks abroad and, of course, have good time. These expatriates usually reside in the Legian-Seminyak area, although smaller communities are also found in Sanur and Ubud. They control many of the fashion and designers’ shops lining the main streets of Kuta, Legian, Sanur and Ubud, often indirectly through a local business partner or spouse. Their legal status is hazy: most of them stay in Bali with a tourist or ‘business’ visa and go to Singapore for a few days whenever their visa expire. The way they work is simple: most place direct or indirect orders to individuals or small groups of specialized craftsmen from the hinterland villages; all they do is provide the designs and control the quality. There are also a few large workshops working on order from foreign companies, but they lack the suppleness of the local expatriates, who have a better hunch for finding local talents and creating new designs.

The semi-legal way of doing business in the Balinese handicraft and garment industry is regularly criticized in the Indonesian press. Local competitors complain that the expatriates enjoy undue advantage by not paying taxes; there is also little legal protection for the local business partners and the workers: everything is relied on trust and cheating is not uncommon. There is no hiding the fact though that this semi-legal expatriate community, and the business it runs, plays a positive role in Balinese economy and society. That is why it is tolerated by the Indonesian authorities. Numerous honterland villages, particularly in the Gianyar Regency, literally live from handicraft exports, usually through such expatriate intermediaries. One has to admit that they have a positive impact on the local job market and, even indirectly, on the stability of Balinese village life and culture: the youths who remain at home are more active in dance and music than ever.

Furthermore, owing to the global exposure and international markets created for them, Balinese handicraft products have increased in high quality and have gained international recognition. In fact, both Balinese and non-Balinese carvings are now found in sophiscated boutiques the world over, often having lost, for the sake of their winning new markets, their ethnic Balinese features. Bali is thus increasingly turning into a designers heaven.

When doing business in Bali, one should take into account this specific environment. Investors are officially welcome in most sectors of the economy, but the bureaucratic hassles and the level of investment required-US$1 million-duscourage more than one. Unless one intends to pass large orders, or invest in the hotel industry (in which case it may be preferable to do business in partnership with-established local partners), the best way to do business in Bali is probably by using the informal network. There is one reservation though. Whatever the high technical skills of the Balinese, some sort of supervision, either by an expatriate or by an Indonesianaccustomed to quality and schedule requirements, may be needed: the Balinese are an agrarian peopla, and their artistic skills rest to a large extent on this cultural background. This gives them little awareness of the demands of a modern economy. It is probably the reason why so many businesses are run or indirectly controlled – at least at the level of finished products and marketing – by non-Balinese, sometimes Chinese or Jakartanese, but more often than not by Western or Japanese expatriates.

This combination of Balinese artistic talent and outsiders’ ideas and marketing skills may well soon be provided with a better legal framework. Indonesia is in the midst of its ‘reformasi’, and among the ideas being discussed I that of autonomy, perticularly in the field of economy. It is obvious in this context that the existing connivance between the Balinese and their foreign guests could be put to a more productive use in given an adapted regulatory setting. Bali is the ideal place where individual creative types can exercise their talents such as writers, publishers, software and fashion designers, education specialists and painters. These are the kind of people who should be welcomed to work, set up businesses and transfer skills. The alchemy between Bali and the outside world is already working, albeit informally. With encouragement, Bali can become not only a place where modern ideas an products could be developed.

To support the core businesses of the tourism industry, many support services have developed. They include cargo handling, freight forwarding, shippin, toursm publications, graphic design and printing.

One dynamic company in the creative field in Art Vision. Set up six years ago as a professional production service company, it does full production and associate production services for the filming industry from around the world. It has a wiide range of state-of-the-art equipment.Art Vision has been appointed as associate producer by many film companies that shot in Bali.

The company is run by international standard professional management and a creative team who have access to other professionals in the film industry both regionally and worldwide. To cater to market needs and to create new business opportunities in thw international market, Art Vision has been responsive in adopting new technology such as mutimedia, internet, and other advancements. In fact, its multimedia and graphic design division has seen tremendous growth recently. With an understanding of local culture, it also provides communication services for international companies who use Bali as base for international markets in the hotel and tourism-related industry.

Agrarian Economy

Bali’s economy is basically agrarian: the vast majority of the Balinese are still simple peasants working in the fields. Coffee, copra and cattle are major agricultural exports; most of the rice goes to feed Bali’s own teeming population. Although the Balinese are an island people, their unusual tendency to focus on the mountains rather than the sea is reflected in the importance of fishing. While there are many fishing villages and fish are part of the Balinese diet, fishing as an activity is not on the scale you might expect, given how much ocean there is around the island. Tourism plays a considerable role in the Balinese economy, not only in providing accommodation, meals and services to many visitors but also in providing a market for all those arts and crafts!

With a per capita income of more than US$500 per annum, Bali today is one of Indonesia’s most prosperous islands. The standard of living is much lower on Java, where the “minimum wage” is only about Rp1000 per day. On Bali it’s Rp3500 or Rp4500 per day for day laborers-Rp5000 and up in Singaraja, Rp7500 in Ubud and Kuta. Only 10% of the island’s villages are without electricity. The number of new Mercedes 300 and BMW 5 series cars is striking-proportionally far more than in the States (well, excepting Palm Beach or Beverly Hills). The ones who have it really have it.

Rice growing and export about 100,000 tons annually – still dominates the economy, but tourism is catching up fast, employing an ever greater proportion of the population. In 1990, only 50% of the population was employed in agriculture. Besides rice, the Balinese grow tea, tobacco, cacao, copra, groundnuts, cassava, indigo, maize, onions, and legumes. Coffee is another major export crop, shipped primarily to Japan, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A.

In the days when barter was the major means of exchange, the man who owned many rice fields was considered very wealthy. Today, rice lands are steadily giving way to urban growth. Real estate and tourist development and the cash economies of the tourist and souvenir industries have become powerful agents of change in the egalitarian Balinese village. Now the Balinese want money – not bartered goods or labor-to buy consumer items, Hondas, cosmetics, electronics.

Rice Growing
Bali is one of the few places on Earth made visually stunning by its main economic activity. The cascading terraces of rice fields are the most striking features of the landscape, claiming even slopes that look too formidable to be of any possible use. The island is one big sculpture. Every terrace is manicured and polished, every field and niche carved and tailored by hand. Some plots are so small; they hold just four rice plants each. The Balinese have lovingly carved their own world in a series of geometric steps that climb up the volcanic slopes to the mountains where the gods live. Fringed by coconut palms, deep ravines force their way through this checkerboard pattern to the sea.

On Bali rice – growing is both an art and a science. Because of the island’s superb drainage pattern, the high volcanic ash content, and Bali’s equable climate, conditions for traditional ‘sawah’ cultivation here are perhaps the most ideal in all Indonesia. However, rainfall in the lowlands is insufficient to grow wet rice, and Bali’s steep and narrow ravines are not easy to dam.

To remedy these problems, the Balinese have devised ingenious cathements to collect rainwater and channel water. Thousands of tiny waterfalls spill a precious allotment of water onto tiers of paddy from high mountain lakes to coastal rice fields. This complex irrigation system, continuously maintained, groomed, and plowed, has been developed over many centuries.

With a remarkable system of hand-built aqueducts, small dams, and underground canals, the island’s terracing and irrigation practices are even more elaborate, sophisticated, and seasonably predictable than those on Java. Water is sometimes carried by tunnels through solid rock hillsides; water needs high on the ridges often require tunnels two or three kilometers long, some dug eight or nine centuries ago.

About 70% of the population are rice farmers and it’s due to their expertise that the Balinese have been able to support such a refined civilization and theatrical, picturesque religion. The discipline required to share water and resources has also created a remarkably cooperative way of life. Rugged individualists cannot exist in communities where every farmer is utterly dependent on the cooperation of neighbors.

Made from palm leaf, the abstract female head with a large fanlike headdress is dedicated to the rice goddess Dewi Sri and dates from pre-Hindu rice cults. The figure is a symbol of wealth, fertility, and good fortune; it can also be found on cakes, baked clay, or made from old Chinese coins. The art of cutting and folding young coconut or palm leaves in intricate designs, both for impressive large-scale ornamentation and small-scale temple flower offerings like the above, is thought to be a pure Balinese art form, with no trace of borrowing from outside cultures.

Rice Rituals
The divine rice plant is the source of all life and wealth, a gift of the gods. Rice rituals differ depending upon place, time, and situation, but all over Bali huge importance is placed on the growing of the island’s single most important food crop. As in other areas of Balinese life, women prepare the offerings, designed to gain the goodwill of the deities who provide water and other favorable conditions for a successful harvest.

Before each planting season, the head of the local ‘subak’ undertakes a trip to the Mountain Lake of Bratan to ask Batara Wisnu (“Provider of Water”) for his assistance. A few drops of water from the lake are symbolically splashed in each rice field before planting begins.

Just as rite-of-passage ceremonies mark stages in a person’s life, prayers and rituals accompany every cycle of growth in the life of the rice plant. Germination of the seedbed, the planting, the plant’s first birthday (42 days), ripening, Dewi Sri’s “pregnancy,” harvest, and at last a thanksgiving ceremony (ngusaba nini) in which a handsome meter-high cone of cooked white rice is offered up to Dewi Sri in the ‘subak’ temple.

Small bamboo shrines, resembling Thai spirit houses, stand at the corners of every ‘sawah’ to hold the offerings dedicated to such agricultural deities as Ibu Pertiwi (“Mother Earth”), Surya (the sun-god), Batara Wisnu, and Dewi Sri, the lissome and beautiful rice goddess. Dewi Sri’s deified effigy, fashioned from rice stalks, is found everywhere in the rice fields until the harvest is completed, when it’s moved to an elevated place in granaries (lumbung) located in the backyard of almost every Balinese domestic courtyard. To discourage the evil spirits, who are accountable for seed loss by birds and mice, offerings of flowers, rice, and eggs are laid before the shrine; cockfights may also be held to satisfy the spirits’ bloodlust.

Stages of Growth
There are no particular seasons for growing rice. Traveling over the island at any time of year it’s possible to see all phases in progress. In fields side by side you’ll see the stubble of newly harvested fields; the glimmering mirrors of flooded, newly prepared fields; the jade of freshly replanted shoots; the swaying green or robust gold of a mature crop; the burning of the stalks; the plowing of fields interspersed with bright green seedbeds. ‘Sawah’ are at their most beautiful when flooded, just before the young rice is transplanted. The smell of a healthy young ‘sawah’ is akin to the odor of a healthy aquarium.

To prepare the fields for planting, the farmer first rakes and breaks up the bare, dry ground and stubble of the ‘sawah’; this is called ‘ngendag’ (“opening up”). After hoeing, the field is flooded, then smoothed with a wooden sledge (lampit) pulled by one or two cows (buffaloes lack the necessary stamina) until the whole field is turned into a muddy, watery ooze. The dikes (pundukan) must be continuously cleared of vegetation that would steal needed water from the ‘sawah’.

Next, if one is planting ‘padi bali’, a corner of the rice field is walled off and a seedling nursery is begun with already germinated seeds. With the new high-yield dwarf varieties, the seeds are simply broadcast by hand. Seedlings grow for 25 days in the seedbed (ngabut). Several days before they are transplanted, the fields are again flooded and smoothed, then fertilized with urea and TSP. The more intensively and diligently the field is worked, the higher the yield.

The transplanting in the larger field next to the seedbed is a group effort, the shoots thrust one by one into the watery mud, spaced one hand’s breadth apart and lined up in rows. As the rice grows and the ears fatten on the heads, the rice is said to be pregnant; at this time the fields must be vigilantly guarded from mice and birds. Fluttering plastic strips, rags, bamboo clappers, whips, whirring, clacking contraptions-even human scarecrows-are found all over the fields.

Traditional Harvest Methods
After four months (six months for ‘padi bali’), the deep green of the nearly ripe crop appears, turning a golden yellow when fully mature. Although only men plant the rice, harvesting (gampung) is carried out by both men and women. This is a time when the usual quiet of the rice fields is replaced with the lively chatter and upbeat singing of happy throngs of workers-a time of great excitement in a Balinese village. Working under great bamboo hats, every able-bodied villager joins in the work, including children. Harvest is an opportunity to meet future sweethearts.

During a harvest the village streets are almost deserted, the ‘banjar’ empty-everyone is out in the fields. Offerings are made first, the rice goddess thanked for her bounty. So as not to frighten the goddess, women cut off the ears of ‘padi bali’ with a small knife concealed in their palms.

Behind the women as they progress across the field come the children, gathering whatever rice has inadvertently been left behind. These leftovers become the harvest of the children, which they can take home for themselves.

Each handful of ‘padi bali’ stalks is gathered into a sheaf of 10, handed to a man whose job it is to form the wonderful round bales (suwun). Ten sheaves comprise a 10- to 12-kg bale, which is tied with a bamboo string, turned upside down, and hung on the ends of bamboo poles to be carried back to the village in a sort of half-walking, half-running gait, or transported home on the heads of women.

After the harvest, the straw left in the fields is burned, enveloping the whole region in suffocating smoke. After several crops of ‘padi bali’, soybeans or some other legume are planted to rejuvenate the soil.

Threshing, Storing, Milling
Traditionally, bundles of rice are taken from the granary and husked a little at a time, just enough for one day’s cooking, or sold, as the family needs cash. The rice stalks must first be threshed, which frees the grains from the stalk. Then, because the Balinese prefer white rice, the grain is pounded to separate the husk from the inner kernel, usually in a hollowed wooden trough by women using metal-tipped, two-meter-long bamboo poles they rhythmically change from hand to hand. The sound of several women engaged in this task is an ancient form of percussion; some musicologists theorize the hypnotic cadence produced is the origin of most forms of Balinese xylophonic music.

After the pounding loosens the chaff (nebuk), the rice is winnowed (njidi), the grains thrown up and caught on large split bamboo trays while the chaff falls to the ground or is carried away on the wind. The rice is then milled in one of the 1,500 or so gas- or diesel-powered mills found all over Bali. Mills purchase the rice outright, mill it, and then sell the processed rice (beras) in 100-kilo sacks. The coarse bran, germ, and husk byproduct is used as food for pigs.

Rice is the farmer’s savings account. In Dutch times, farmers sold their crops for cash to the Denpasar rice mills; the money often squandered long before the next harvest. Now, after the harvest, rice is stored in the ‘banjar’ granary, or tied in bundles ‘sepingan’, to the top of tall poles. You still sometimes see these bundles of rice drying in the sun, particularly in the uplands. The Indonesian government subsidizes the price of rice, known as the “mother price,” so that all citizens are at least able to eat. Government, military and private-sector employees are paid partly in coupons that can be redeemed for rice.

Marine Industry Economy

Harvesting products from the sea is vital to the lives of many Balinese. The people of the East Coast burn coral to make lime, process sea salt, and fish. The Balinese are not known as great seafarers like the Polynesians, nor do they have a history as long-range maritime traders like the Makassarese. Seldom did they trade farther than Lombok or Java. Bali is lack of good, sheltered anchorages and its inhospitable, unprotected coastline studded with jagged coral reefs and high cliffs were not conducive to the development of maritime skills. Most inland Balinese look upon the sea with fear and misgivings, but there is a quite vibrant local fishing industry which tourists rarely see.

The island’s largest fishing center is at Pengambengan, 10 kilometers southwest of Negara. The second most important fishing center, and the easiest to visit, are the four fishing villages along Jimbaran Bay just south of Ngurah Rai Airport on the West Side of the narrow isthmus separating southern Bali and the Bukit Peninsula. The best time to visit Jimbaran Bay is at the peak of the dry season (May-Sept.); get there soon after sunrise, as the beach is deserted by midmorning. The scene is even more frenetic at Kedonganan, directly east of the airport, where up to 50 trucks line up in front of the T.P.I. fishing cooperative office waiting to haul off each day’s catch.

Bali’s fish harvest is around 60,000 tons per year. Roughly 70% are sardines, 20% tuna and mackerel, 10% sharks and coral fish. The export of fresh tuna to Japan and the United States alone brings in US$10 million. Most fish are canned in the plant at Suwung near Benoa, which produces 15-20 tons daily, most exported to Java.

Seaweed Farming
The Balinese have collected seaweed for hundreds of years, though government-supported commercial production only began in 1980. The most successful cultivation site is the narrow strait between the islets of Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan, and on the north coast of Nusa Penida. About 1,000 families are engaged in seaweed production on Nusa Penida, while 35 families work at the Cape Geger project.

To farm seaweed, stakes are first driven into the sandy ocean bottom near shore, then plastic ropes are tied between the stakes to form a rectangle 2.5 by five meters square; 50 of these rectangles make up a 625-square-meter area; 16 squares occupy a hectare. All cultivation and harvesting take place underwater.

It takes a family of five to maintain one-quarter of a hectare, producing about 20 tons of dried seaweed per year. The collected seaweed is used in food, sauces, soups, condiments, and agar-agar, a thickening agent used in cooking. The harvest is sent first to Surabaya, then exported to France, Denmark, Japan, and Singapore for processing. Bali exports approximately 400 tons of seaweed per year. The government does all it can to promote this highly exportable, profitable, labor-intensive, nonpolluting, non-seasonal industry.

Saltworks
Next to ‘lombok’ (chili peppers), salt is the favorite condiment of the grain-eating Balinese. In the southern part of the island a vigorous family-run cottage industry produces clean, unrefined natural salt from seawater.

The island’s salt-making capital is Suwung. Another salt-producing area is the broad tidal flat of Jimbaran. The glistening, volcanic black-sand beach at Kusamba, three kilometers northeast of Klungkung, is a third salt center.

All three locations use different methods to produce salt, though the principle is the same: large amounts of seawater are deposited onto land and allowed to dry under the sun; the residue is scooped up, leached, and the outflow allowed to evaporate, leaving gritty salt crystals which are then purified. The Jimbaran saltworks employs an evaporator, a large, loosely woven bamboo basket extruding a long, white, dripping stalactite around which forms a cake of salt. Saltmakers produce an average of about 25 kg per day.

Saltmakers at each site claim that the salt from the other locations is crude and bitter, but it’s generally believed Jimbaran salt is the highest quality. Because of its complex beneficial minerals and bio-electronic properties, sea salt balances alkalinity/acidity levels, renews energy, restores good digestion, rejuvenates the body’s biosystems, and relieves allergies and skin diseases.

Small Industry Economy

Garments/Textiles
One of the best places in Southeast Asia to buy fashionable clothes and beachwear is in Sanur and along the road running between Kuta and Legian. European and American designers have teamed up with nimble-fingered Balinese garment workers to open hundreds of fashion boutiques selling the latest in continental and industrial fashion designs, as well as every type of ‘batik’ imaginable, including Malaysian imports.

The garment industry of Denpasar, Kuta, and Sanur comprises over 150 establishments employing about 8,000 people. Garment exports total over US$90 million. Two of Bali’s largest textile factories lie along the main tourist artery between Denpasar and Mas. Government-owned Patal, opened in 1965, makes polyester and rayon yarn for Central Javanese batik. The raw materials are brought in by truck from Java; about 200,000 kg of finished product is returned to Java each month. The other factory, Balitex, is owned by the provincial government of Bali, its 60 looms producing about 30,000 meters of good-quality cotton and rayon cloth each month. Most of the cloth is sold to garment makers in the Kuta-Sanur-Denpasar tourist grid. The factory also maintains a wholesale/retail shop on the premises.

Several other, smaller textile weaving factories (pertenunan) are found in Gianyar, where there are also a number of large display rooms. Weaving factories in Singaraja specialize in reproducing ancient, finely detailed silk ‘ikat’ and distinctive hand-woven sarong and ‘kain’.

The Balinese make very little batik themselves, importing for resale batik from Java. But they do produce a very striking and distinctive tie-dyed cloth called ‘endek’, actually more popular with the native Balinese than with tourists. Scores of factories all over Gianyar, Denpasar, and Singaraja manufacture this unique fabric. ‘Endek’, ‘ikat’, colorfast sarong, and gold-threaded ‘songket’ are created and sold in Poh Bergong village about 10 kilometers south of Singaraja on the way to Beratan.

Other Small Industries
The Bukit Peninsula is home to a number of important industries. One is the conversion of coral into quicklime (pamor), used in the making of mortar. A very high temperature is required to slake lime; you can always locate a limekiln by its great clouds of choking, polluting fumes.

During the early 1980s the offshore tidal environment and reef fauna of Kuta, Sanur, and Candidasa were totally degraded by indiscriminate coral gathering. Now regulations prohibit coral harvesting less than three kilometers from shore. Fortunately, lime output has started to fall off as more builders switch to superior cement.

Limestone quarrying on the Bukit to produce blocks and bricks is concentrated south of Pecatu. You can see many old quarries on the main road to Uluwatu Temple. Long crowbars (linggis) are used to pry the limestone loose from the cliffs, and the blocks are sawed where they fall.

Baked red bricks and roof tiles are made in wooden molds by hand in the northern part of the island wherever there are clay deposits, which is just about everywhere. This enterprise is a curious sight, the brick- or tilemaker’s shed completely surrounded by a deep moat dug right out of the clay topsoil. The island’s brick-making center lies just south of Mambal on the road north from Denpasar to the Monkey Forest, where half the population is involved in this lively industry.

Bali’s prefab clay, concrete, and ceramic center is at Kapal, between Tabanan and Denpasar. Kapal is also famous as a manufacturing center for Bali’s rice cookers-the weird and wonderful dang-dang many tourists mistake for hats-as well as numerous other sheet metal products. A growing market is the export of traditional Balinese wooden house frames and parquet floors, particularly to Australia and the United States.