Bali : sea, new culture, a French School … and a lot of tourists

After Java, next destination Bali : New scenery : Hindu culture, plenty of tourists and high prices !

First we visited Ubud, « the cultural capital » of Bali. Here, all house entrances have two dragon statue (or monsters, I don’t really know). They protect the house and let only the “nice” spirits enter. On Bali 90% of the population is Hindu and the religion is omnipresent. 30% of their income are spend for offering! Every day Balinese people do offerings for everything: The offering are made with banana leaves and contains flowers, incense and sometimes food. The offerings let on the ground are here to “calm” the bad spirits while the offerings in heights are used to honour the good spirits.

A lot of Balinese people have also some rice sticked on their forehead because rice is the symbol for prosperity. Sometimes they also put a flower behind the ear because flowers are used during ceremony, so having them behind ears is a good omen. Moreover, each time someone buys something in a shop, the vendor shakes the bill everywhere in the shop. For the ceremonies and preys, people wear white clothes and at the entrance of houses or temples they hang black and white fabrics (like Yin and Yang); to symbolise the balance between good and evil.

Hindus believe in 3 principal gods : Brahma represents the creation (and is symbolised with red), Vishnu represents the protection (and is symbolised with White and Yellow) and Shiva for the destruction (in Black). These colours are everywhere in temples and streets.

Religion has an important place in the life of Balinese people.

In Ubud, there is also a monkey forest where we can get very close with monkeys…

After Ubud, we continued our trip to Tulamben for diving, then to Candidasa for the beach and then to Kuta where we visited the French School of Bali ! We had a very friendly welcome and we also discovered new games :

•         The « Killer » is the easy version of « werewolf » : The children sit in a circle and one is the detective : he stays out of the circle and closes his eyes. In the circle, one player is designated as the killer and then the detective comes in the circle and has to find the killer before the killer kills everybody.The role of the killer is to “kill” the other players in winking to someone. The “killed” player should lie down.

•         Children also play « Pacman » (or « line-wolf ») when they have the sport field free : one wolf is designated and he has to catch someone but all players should only stay on lines (painted on the floor)

•        In the game « Midnight in the sheepfold », players are in the “sheepfold” and one stands opposite to them and is the wold. Sheep ask the wolf “what time is it mister wolf?”  and the wolf answers “it’s 7”. All players have to move forward from 7 steps. (it’s the same if the wolf says it’s 5, 10, 3…) but if the wolf says “it’s midnight”, all players has to run away to the sheepfold before being caught by the wolf. If they get caught, they become wolf.

•        The children also showed us a game that we played as well but we forgot about it: “Grandma can I come?” All children are in line on one side of the field and the grand-mother stands at the opposite side. One by one, children ask “Grandma can I come?” And the grand mother says “Yes you can, do 4 giant, or mini, or jumping steps”. SO the player has to do 4 steps forward and the size depends and what the grand-mother said (giant, mini, or jumping steps). This game isn’t really fair because only the grandmother decides who will win but we could imagine this game with a dice for the number of steps and cards for the type of steps.

•         We play the « vocabulary bomb » : children are in a circle and chose a theme (for example animals) : the first child with the ball has to find a word related to the family chosen and then pass the ball to another player. This player has to say an animal and pass the ball. If one player takes too much time to find an animal, other children start saying “tic tac, tic tac” and after 6 seconds the ball explodes like a bomb and the player is eliminated. If the player says the same animal as already said, he is also eliminated.

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•        For the « pass with 5 », two teams of 5 people face each other. One team has a ball and tries to pass the ball to all members of the team without falling down the ball. The goal for the other team is to catch the ball and then do the same as the first team (passing the ball to all members).

• For the game « butterfly- butternut », children are divided in two teams and stand in lines in the middle of the playground. The teacher starts telling a story and when he says the word “butterfly”, the butterfly team has to run away and the butternut team has to catch children of the other team. If someone is caught, he is out of the game. We continue until one team is totally eliminated.

•          In « Fish- Fisherman », the fishermen team does a circle and all players hold hands. They chose a number and start counting. In the meantime all « fishes » run under their arms. When the chosen number is achieved, all fishermen let their arms down. All fishes inside the circle become fishermen and go in the circle for the next turn.  

We enjoyed these two days and we met all ages between 3 and 11 years old!!! For almost all of them, school is an obligation and not a right!!! ;-) And Pomme Pidou received a lot of gifts from the children!! Thank you so much!

Just before taking off to India, we dived on a small island with two manta rays!!! But the water was really cold!!! Romain surfed also. (And of course we always go around with motorbikes :-) )