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Saturday night – the night of the week we all get spoilt

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Malam minggu or Saturday night has a special meaning here in Indonesia. This is the night of party, or as one of my friends here said: “The only night of the week, when we all get spoilt – kita semua hancur!”

Meanwhile I had already moved to downtown, to be closer to the night hotspots of the city and see what’s happening in the nightly worlds of the waria. The main hang-out area Tembok Berlin is just around the corner.

The only issue seems to be the fact that this here is not the typical Indonesia, which could be described as rather safe, even when being a single foreign woman at night-time in party locations. Some young warias warned me about motorbike taxis, which are very common means of transport in Irian Jaya: “Don’t you ever use the motorbike taxi at night! They pick you up, take you somewhere where they have group of friends waiting. Then they rape you – all of them!” Supposedly this has happened around here already quite a few times.

One of the nights we were driving to the southern market area in Sorong where there was some open-air party a’la Papua. We stopped the car, took a brief look from the windows and my waria friends stated: “No, no, this is way too dangerous – we can’t go out, you will be beaten up and you’ll get a knife!”

I saw bunch dark shadows of the Papuans dancing drunk in the beats of dangdut music – the kind of party no-one could imagine happening in some dark downtown spooky market area. Papuan spirit. And a drunk Papuan unfortunately is a very common stereotype here, and for a reason – you could really see a lot of drunk Papuan people on the streets, lost in life, probably discriminated for some generations. But my friends just couldn’t let me out to check out this party and we drove off to safer grounds such as Tembok Berlin.

Starlight nightclub stands alone and proud and glorious in Kampung Baru, Sorong, Papua

As it was Saturday night, warias were all nicely dressed up and beautifully shining. One of the older warias was sitting on the wall and proudly poring out strong local liquor – one for the waria elder of Sorong, another one for me, then again to the elder. Until it was time to head on clubbing.

I remembered my friend who’s a local minibus driver here, whom I met one afternoon when he was visiting a hair salon held by a waria. In just some minutes he picked up all the warias and other chicks, so the whole minibus turned into a wild and wicked party-zone heading towards more party. We all seven warias, four women and the driver and his friend took off with a deep beat of dancehall sounds, and it all just reminded me too much of the infamous scene in Wariazone where me and Kiwa together with some nine warias were riding around Jakarta nightlife, singing Indonesian anthem. And of course, it was Saturday night! Wish I had a camera with me up there in Papua, but see the scene of Jakarta in Wariazone trailer:

In Papua, when talking about the waria, commonly people point out  that the parties where the waria are present last the longest and get most crazy. This seemed to be the case with our night in the biggest nightclub in Sorong – the Starlight, or SL as the waria call it. Interestingly, the security took a brief look at us and asked exactly the ticket money for seven people, as if the ‘real ladies’ get in for free, and the warias (as if they were considered ‘men’) should pay the whole price. I tried my best to negotiate, but they were stubborn, and it was really stinking of discrimination based on gender.

But as we entered, the party got wild. There was a band from Yogyakarta, followed by a hot dance party, where the sweat took hold and strip-dancers lifted our sexuality. Some of the waria tried to use me and Minna to get connection with men, and I, of course, was happily playing along. Minna seemed to have a crush on the hottest strip-dancer, who then poored some vodka in her mouth, dragged her on the stage and we were all shouting: “Hancur Minna, hancur Minna!”

This, by the way, is a popular dangdut song here in East-Indonesia, which translates as ‘spoilt Minna’ – a girl who went from village to the city, stayed there for too long and lost her morals.

Estonia – the new international meeting hub

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Arriving in Estonia is magical. After being away from home for almost two years, I enjoy all the tiny details that were never important to me before Indonesia.

Here are trees and green fields everywhere. The cities are full of parks and the highways are packed with forests for endless number of kilometers.

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Here is so much fresh food, fresh air and fresh ideas around.

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Here people care about you, not about who you date, who leaves your house after 10pm, who your parents are or if you go to church every weekend.

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Here when it’s hot I can wear a cooling dress with no sleaves without anyone staring at me. Or actually do anything without getting too much attention.

Here you can get privacy. Go swimming in a lake, naked, and be alone; walk in a forest and be alone; even when at a party you decide to be alone, you have the chance.

Here everything is so close and mobile. I can travel around festivals throughout the country and still meet the same friendly faces, who have been looping on the road since the days got warm.

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Here are festivals each weekend, using full Estonia as a kind of stage for excitement – from the prison halls, from the rooftops to the huge crop fields in the countryside.

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And the funniest thing – all my friends from around the world are suddenly in Estonia. Marie, who I met in Indonesia; Taras, from the time I lived in Russia; Patrick whose couch I surfed on in Kuala Lumpur and a long list of others coming to visit this new international meeting hub in Europe                                            .             Image

Zone of freedoms: how a boy becomes a waria at Berlin Wall

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When mentioning our fatherly careful uncle that some of these nights in Sorong I’m going out to Tembok Berlin (translates as Berlin Wall), his eyes filled with fear – this is dangerous, people are drunk there, orang mabuk!
A lovely waria Miranda also warned me that sometimes you can be attacked with a knife at Tembok. But Tembok is precisely the place where most of the waria in Sorong gather at night, so there is no question for me – I have to get there. Tembok Berlin is the heart of the city that runs, as the name says, as a wall along the coast current. This is the city’s most popular place for enjoyment and rendezvous (“tempat Santai”). Here we have great gorengans, coffee, tea, grilled bananas and luxurious durian. This is the meeting point for all young people in love and all secret lovers. Among others,  both female and male prostitutes hang out here, and latter being even more popular, because having a same sex partner can become a good smoke cover.
“People who pass by then just think that you’re meeting some old school friend. Nobody knows that this will be followed by sex, so your family relations will not be at risk, even if you’re having an extramarital partners,” my friend, who’s active in the local gay scene, told me. And it does not mean that the customer is necessarily gay himself.

But after all, this place is called Berlin Wall and there has to be a reason other than just being a wall. This here is the house of liberties of Sorong. On the one side of the wall we have the city, cars passing by and the numerous sweet aunties selling snacks and coffee, people chatting, having good time. But the other side is wilder – here we’ve got warm see breeze, green waves in constant move, along some trash and young people secretly making out. The zone of freedoms along the Berlin Wall.

It was there were I met a sweet young native papuan waria from Biak. Her story seem to be quite representative for the case of papuan waria – she had escaped from her family to another city, because the family couldn’t cope with the child’s non-conforming gender identity. So here she is now – hanging out with the waria of the city, trying to learn about her new life, and the salon work. Her dream is to open her private salon one day. To finance her life, she also comes here at nights to prostitute, just like her friends. When after an exhausting night she returns home, she prays. For her sins. When I asked her, what exactly she sees as her sin she has to pray for – is it her being a waria, is it sex work or is it something else? She replies: “This here…” While all other warias are joking and laughing just next to us, she tells me with glassy eyes that she only does it for money. She doesn’t get any satisfaction from it.

“Miss Angola!”cries another sparkling waria to sheer up my papuan friend, when she walks across the street in her sexy short pants. She rolls some hips as a reply to the girls laughing. Of course, our gender expression is constructed under various forces, just as feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir has stated that one is not born a women, but becomes a women.  What I experienced at Tempok Berlin could rather be seen as how a “boy” becomes a waria. It’s how a waria becomes to be here at the local Berlin Wall – zone of freedoms for some, zone of sins for others, zone of pain and hopelessness for some. Whatever it is – we have to break on through to the other side. Here that would be to the side of green waves and warm see breeze. Sounds like freedom, right? Yet so often the other side comes along with random sex for random money, wanted or unwanted, that takes place between the piles of hopeless trash on the beach.

Hot, hot, hot in Papua

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For a superficial traveler, Sorong might appear to be quite boring destination – the city known as the gate to Papua is spread around the long motorway paralleling the beach, but it gets another level of thrill once you’re there for quite some time – the daily struggle with heat and malariaquitos.

Everywhere is the center of the city, and people walk and ride the ojek (the motorbike taxis) or yellow busses. Public transport has been something to miss in most parts of Indonesia, but Papua is doing better – there’s some space here, and some good ways to move besides having a personal motor.

Besides bursting into my fieldworks of transgender already the very first evening here, I quickly grow a fascination for the local fruits. Each day I was passing by the market and later fell into juices of sweet mangos, bananas and pineapples. They are incredible in Papua, probably due to the fertile ground and sunny air. This is the sweet part of it, but it also has another. The weather is booming hot here – i’ve been sweating tons of water, having showers at least three times a day, and feeling constant lack of air, as it’s so hot, so humid, so dusty, so strong. We were also sweating at night-time, when the sun was gone long ago, but it was still hot. And my body was constantly waisted. To sleep less that seven hours was absolutely impossible. And as they say, the mosquitos with malaria are sneaking around. It was quite common to hear remarks such as:

“Oh, I’ve been in bed for three days – because of malaria!”

“Oh, I am not in a good mood, probably having malaria fever again…”

“Oh, this poor little girl has no father, the father died of malaria couple of years ago…”
So I swallowed the malaria pill once again, but it did not do any good. Rather it made me existentially loaded and worrisome, so that after couple of days I decided to stop it all. Just keep the pills ready in your pocket once you get bitten by the malariaquito – but don’t screw up your body and mind with these strong pills daily. 

The queen, the boss, the beauty: life around Eka’s salon

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Soon it came out, that my host Eka, who I knew was supposed to be the transgender holiness, the bissu, but who daily identified herself rather as a calabai or waria, and a proud one, was actually the Queen of the whole village.

Everywhere we go there were people she knows, everywhere, especially in the worlds which are dominated by women, such as markets, shopping areas, the social gathering spots here or there. But the Queen of Them All, she was still in her Kingdom, in the beauty parlor that was called by her name – Salon Eka. Welcome!

When I first entered this weird ghostly house, where people only lived on the first floor, the second floor was for ghosts and spiders, I had no idea who’s living in this household and where exactly they sleep. I was placed to sleep in the main salon room, where she usually sews (and she’s good, she’s so busy!) and where it gets busy in the mornings. On the walls, there are pictures of her and a man posing just like a newly married couple. Eka really enjoys everything that has to do with beauty and style and decorations and celebrations. That’s her work, her life, and her desire.

And her customers are satisfied. So much, that sometimes it can be pointed out, that the myth of warias having an extremely good sense of style, proves to be working in real again. She’s a busy woman. She was making me an occasional space for sleeping and herself went back in her bedroom. To get there you had to pass a wide area, which can be viewed as a kitchen, but which is basically everything a space can be. There’s also a huge exercise device – a bicycle, where she sometimes exercises, just like the most modern women who would do that in their city apartment where it can be difficult to leave the cozy flat and run around on some asphalt. There she was training, rats sometimes sneaking behind her and always some other people, as her salon was an important social gathering place, for men and women and all possible transgenders. Including her husband. Supposedly her husband already was married once, with a cis woman, who gave birth o two children. Then he fell madly in love with Eka and since then, already for nine years, they have shared some love, work and fun in life.

She had five people working for her. Including her husband. There was also a young strong man. A couple of warias, some ever-smiling women. Apparently many of them are sleeping just behind the narrow wall of room for spending nights. They are sleeping in the most magical room in this house – the very heart of the Eka’s salon. This is where she makes her art. She makes her art of make-up and of styling up the groom and the bride, who perhaps met some two-three months ago, but are eager to marry.

Then the whole family comes together, enjoys some lovely food, that some ten-fifteen women were cooking all day the day before. They exchange some news, take a lot of photographs, sometimes there’s a guy who shoots a video and burns it on a DVD within a couple of days, sometimes there’s some ceremony, sometimes there’s an amazing dance by the bissu, who enter into state of trance and present how the dagger does not enter their body. This is because they are already possessed by the spirit, that has made them supernaturally strong.

Rest of the time everybody eats and drinks water from the single-use plastic cups and wishes best luck for the newly married couple, who were just dressed up by some professional waria, in this area, most probably by Eka. Who also decorated the whole house for this special event, where eventually though the couple gets really bored. 

Into Indonesian subcultures: the blinking bikers

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During this 40 sweating hours spent on the ferry we met some bikers. The true ones. With all their folklore and codes of communication. It’s a strange world. And sometimes it can take you on a ride.

So we were in that boat. I was trying to keep some fieldwork diaries, but every now and then there was someone peeping inside of the round window of our very basic chamber. Or there was someone stepping inside of the room, thinking that as the staff on board this belongs to their rights. Of course I can step inside of the rooms of my far-away guests, we all want to know them, make friends and make them feel comfortable here.“ The good part of it was that some of them indeed brought us some watermelon. And I was floating in the watermelon sugar again, the pink nice watermelon, even the rats that were sneaking under our bed for the smell of it (and it was a 1-person bed, we were sharing it with Minna our legs and heads together, covering the whole with plastic bottles. – once there was a rat that was running behing the neck of Minna while we were watching some wierd films) turned into creatures with faces and attitude. All this sugar. But I also know that Ibu Maryani, the director of the Koranic school for the transgender in Yogyakarta, once said, that here in Indonesia they insert red ink with needles into the watermelon. (and I couldnt help thinking of breast silicon injection)

And then there were the motorbike guys. They were quit pleasent talking to us, we were having good time for around an hour. And once they heard we were about to head towards Toraja, they offered us a ride. Just because they are the motorbike guys and they do it all the time – they just ride across the country, visiting friends everywhere. And everywhere they go there’s the community of bikers waiting for them, ready to have some fun, some drinks, some riding around and crashing at some friend’s parents. And surely the mother was happy to have guests, and I enjoyed playing with kids. She was greeting us with some rice and delicious fish. Food, apparently is amazing in Sulawesi. And as they said it, they did it. We were riding all through South-Sulawesi, pass the endless rice-fields, through enormous rain, through some coffee on the roadside warung, over the mountains in the dark. We had a stop-over in one of the small towns on the road, where the old friends got drunk in a hotel that one of the biker owns. Next morning we had bunch of other bikers joining us until the next town. From there we had other bikers to join us to the next town. When we had trouble with the motor, the guys made some phone calls and in about ten minutes there were some local bikers to give them a hand. Sometimes we then drove off to some Honda mechanics centre, of course we were all treated by some tea and cakes. Apart from having great food, they also love to eat a lot here.
And so were we floating over the roads, with a row of blinking motorbikes, all covered by club stickers and pads. They had there own sign language, how they would communicate on the roads. And cars seemed to be taking a cautious respectful distance from them.
Later on I even heard from my friend Minna, who had to spend a night with those folks in Makassar, being stuck there in order to extend the visa, that they had a very weird ritual. If you want to join the bikers under the logo of „one heart“ or the Indonesian version, „satu hati“, you have to drink one litre of water straight. Yes, one liter, no less. And water (better leave the drinks out, this is still predominantly Moslem society). Most of the new-comers had to through out before they finished the third quater.
But the test was necessary. It was to test your strenghts. More and more girls are joining the bikers.
Indonesia is colorful of its vibrant sub-cultures, one more weird than the other. But people in general are nice. And I must admit, it is a wonderful feeling to travel on the motorbike across the earth, in sun and rain.

My friend, a biker.

Commodities you can’t enjoy in the West

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Somehow here’s an understanding as if West was the best place to live. I don’t know where this myths originates from, because my life has never been as spoilt as I have here in Indonesia, with a scholarship and just a bit more.

Somehow I ended up renting two homes. One just close to the university campus for travellers, friends or myself to crash in. The other one in the centre of the town, not more than a 5-minute walk away from the main street – a 2 bedroom private house with a rent of 320 euros a year. Yes, a year.

While in the campus room, I reach for my phone from bed each morning to send a text message to a fruit lady. Fifteen minutes later my freshly pressed mango, strawberry-tomato, avocado-chocolate or banana juice is waiting to be picked up.

The other house has no fruits around, instead a morning iced coffee rests on the living room table, delivered by the neighboring stall. Together with service – 17 cents.

When hungry, all you need to do, is to keep your ears open, as once in a while some music passes the house. Every Indonesian knows by heart what’s the rhythm of the barrow selling ice cream, soup or a bit more decent meal. When you hear, let’s say, Lambada, you better get up and stop the man with the barrow to enjoy a delicious dessert – no need to even leave the house.

Cooking at home in everyday life is as exclusive as a multi-course night at a restaurant in Estonia. Of course local street restaurants aren’t fancy places where one should walk in wearing high heels, on the contrary these are cozy little huts with no queues, homemade food and casual forms of etiquette. Menus are hanging on the streets, so just ride through the town and stop at a preferred rice with coconut sauce.

I also have my own laundry lady who washes my clothes, irons them, folds them neatly and brings them back to me. I study djembe under personal supervision and could afford a massage a few times a week. Things that were so far out of reach in my hometown.

To keep the post in balance I need to tell that here are things you can’t afford that often. A 2 euro bottle of beer and a 25 euro bottle of wine bring along a long moment of thought before I consider opening my wallet.

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Photo of the Week: Post-Apocalyptic Villages of Merapi, Indonesia

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As it was published in GoMadNomad:

It was in October of 2010 when Merapi of Central Java, Indonesia, erupted again, this time bigger than it had in over 100 years. Now the danger zone has been removed and the villages are welcoming for a visit. Small boys open the bamboo gates and let us go up five km from the crater in exchange for a coin in their donation box.
The view that opens from the slopes of the mountain can most precisely be described as moonscape. The lines of the destruction are so well cut, that if on one side of the road villagers are handling their everyday lives, the other side still rests under a thick layer of mud and ashes. In some places one can hardly imagine where the houses used to stand, in other places one can blow away the ashes from a doorknob and enter a house which is frozen in time.
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Some villages, where tourists are more often seen and the donation box is getting heavier, people have starteed to put their lives together again. Between the burnt ground and trees, between the gray houses, one can find colorful clothes drying in sun, an old lady washing her windows and her grandson cleaning carpets. There is no time for mourning.
Some other families are not doing so well. An old grandmother who we meet on the road has lost her house indefinitely. “All gone!“ she is shaking her head looking towards her ex-house, but still coming back to the village, because selling food to the tourists is her only income now. When the sun sets, the woman returns to her siblings in a safer place. And so do we.

These photos were taken in December 2010, and by now the situation has probably changed slightly, the most famous village turning more into a tourist spot where one can see all the broken houses and the way of the lava. The other villages probably continuing their normal lives in the houses which were not completely destroyed my mud and ashes. Many have moved, but there are still many who refuse to move.

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My Indonesian boyfriend

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As promised, I now have an Indonesian boyfriend. Before diving in, I’d have to explain that the relationship is of temporary and experimental kind, and at least so far there’s no threat of me bringing an Indonesian boy to Estonia. I ran into him on Bali where we started tripping together. He is officially a Muslim but not the most exemplary as he fasted for only a couple of days and ate meat when needed,  prayed in Hindu temple and relationships before marriage are not tabu for him. Seems like one modernized Muslim, but still not quite.

My indonesian boyfriend

Ryan is a graphical designer, policeman and a care taker in a temple, and all this in one personality. Usually he doesn’t take work too seriously because Ryan has a dream. Namely, his mother, who has a well-opened sixth sense and who works for the president and heals people with water in her free time, once predicted for Ryan that he’ll get married in a couple of years. Since the Muslim girls are too conservative for him and too dependent on their husbands he’s decided to collect some money and go and live in the USA with an intention of getting married.
Namely, it’s a shame here if a man in his thirties isn’t married and that is why he has to hurry. He first has to collect some money, then find a woman and so it could take years before he could get married. In general, he’s planned to have it all done in two-three years. If I asked how he thought to find a soulmate from a foreign country he said he trusted the God. And it’s not necessary to find a soul mate, it’s important to find a woman because the best gift in the world is a son. And a child without marriage is out of question.

So, my boyfriend Ryan has decided to marry a girl he’s dating in about two years. I recommended not to talk the western girls about his plannes in a too loud voice.
Ryan has alo decided to find himself step parents. He already has a step mom, a woman from the USA who’s promised to help him find a woman when he arrives in the USA. He needs step parents because his real parents got divorced five years ago and the scars in his soul are too deep. For me it is of course difficult to understand why a grown man suffers so bad because of his parents but if you take a look around on the island here, and see how families of tens live, it would obviously feel weird to come home in which there are only three people waiting: father, brother and sister in law. Not to mention the hippie mother who’s living alone in Jakarta, enjoying the anonymity of a metropol,  and who has turned her back to Islam conservatism. But in every city Ryan has uncles and other relatives whose doors are always open. Since my boyfriend had decided to lengthen our time together and drove me back to Solo I opened my door for him so that he could rest after the 20-hour ride and before heading back to Bali. I turned the lights on and went outside to call him in. Ryan was looking at me with confusion:
“THIS is your room?”
Since I didn’t quite understand what the stressed THIS had meant, I thought that my ascetic room had scared him.
“Yes it is, I’ve just moved and the room isn’t ready het,” I tried to explain why I sleep on a mat not in bed, although I have no plans of exchanging my beautiful colourful nest for something more soft. I finally understood what was bothering him. Namely, my ground floor windows open to the street and as I don’t want to ruin the wide view I haven’t got myself curtains. And then I took a look around – there’s no house where there would be wide windows without curtains, and if they didn’t keep their front doors open during the day I wouldn’t know how their homes look like.
“Good luck living here,” he said and huddled into a dark corner. “I don’t feel comfortable here.”
Meanwhile I’d taken I shower and wearing a towel I joined him on the terrace. It was midnight and very quiet. Again he looked at me with his eyes filled with surprise and started fidgeting funny. He tried to sit in a way I’d be as hidden as possible and dragged my towel lower on my legs.
While I’d been away a guy from Singapore had moved in, we ran into each other in the living room, both wearing only towels we carried out a short greeting dialogue. If this was unacceptable, then imagine Ryan’s face when Georgio came out from the next room in the evening and spread some fresh Solo rumour: Kiwa had sunbathed (or carried out sun meditation, as Kiwa calls it) on the balcony, stark naked.
Although I try to follow the local clothing rules when I’m outside, at home we always have our own rules, anyways there’s no one walking in the streets at night. But I did hear the question of “where are your trousers” so often, when I tried to feel a bit more humanly in a 35 degree heat wearing only a long shirt, that I finally couldn’t help but furiously stared at him.
The second case took place one evening when there was a huge amount of people in our house that had suddenly transformed into a culture centre. Many of them drank too much beer and crashed in different rooms. I went to get some tofu, forgot myself talking to the village boys, and got back an hour later. When I arrived I found the boy lonely sitting in the livingroom.
“What are you doing here? Everybody’s sleeping, you’re tired too, why don’t you go to bed?”
“I thought I don’t know where I could sleep.”
“What do you mean? There where you’ve slept before – in my room.”
“But here’s so many people, all are your friends.”
“There’s somebody sleeping in my room?”
“No.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“I don’t know if it’s appropriate.”
“What?!”
“Sleeping in your room.”
“You’ve already slept there for two days, why shouldn’t it be appropriate now?”
“You’ve got so many friends here today, they’d all see me going to your room for the night.”

Ryan did sleep in my room that day, as usual, after every thirty minutes he peeked to see if there was someone peeping into the room.
There were situations like that at least a couple of days a day and when I explained how I saw the things he thanked me profusely. I’ve never heard anybody thanking me so much. Thanks for letting me drive you, thanks for letting me to cook for you, thanks I can be near you, thanks for being here.
One morning, after a number of days I had lost my nerve, Ryan left. He left behind his pillows, his air conditioner, his drawing book and water colours, his weird turtle-shaped instrument, his helmet, his doormat and a chess board he’d secretly bought for me. And also a drawing of an old lady who’d asked us to her mountain cabin. He did it all by leaving me a letter, starting with Thanks…

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In crispy mountains, on a crispy lake, between the stiff dead

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When we were near Mt Agung and in sweet old Eddie’s car who after a few days was still interested in being our friend I felt myself at home. Flaming heat had finally left us and there was no gamelan pitch heard in our ears. Even the people who often seemed so hypocritical had left behind, so we got to enjoy the attendance of the nature and the Jawa friend only. The place I’d previously thought as the most beautiful on Bali was the most dreaded among the locals. The people of Trunyam village are told to be repulsive and greedy, if I were to say what a previously met villager had said to us.

They are greedy because on the opposite shore of the lake there’s a cemetery, they take their dead there but they never bury them. So the tourists pay an awful lot for the boat trip to see the bodies, they’re not told that most of the road could be passed on land. And the road by the lake, which took us to Trunyam, was hunting in my mind for a long time.
Trunyam didn’t seem agressive because there was an old friend of Eddie’s taking us to the cemetery by his little wooden boat. On the still lake, that reminded me of Titicaca’s Bolivian side, there were old ladies with fire wood sailing past us. They looked so fit that every grandmother in Estonia would envy them.
The cemetery itself was something we’d been looking forward to. On an area with a size of a few square meters there were six coffins made of straws standing, one could easily peek into them, too. The last body had been brought there three weeks ago and it more looked like a skeleton not a rotting body. The rest had got rid of their flesh and skin a long time ago and they were simply lying there. A pile of flip-flops, bowls, dishes and clothes. A reasonable amount of assets had been sent there with the dead, but as they didn’t bury that too, the pile was decaying there at its slow speed and waited for another pile of trash. Next to the pile there was a line of sculls, slowly becoming mossy; there were thigh bones other bones lying here and there.
There was no smell. Not a single sign of sacredness. Not a bit of eeriness. We were standing on this human land fill quite emotionless and we sat down right there to enjoy the beautiful view on the lake.

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Faith, place and the way of life

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A few days later we were lurking with Jana and TJ in the surroundings of Ubud hoping to find a little village untouched by Starbucks or  other commodities of the modern life. Half an hour later we believed we’d found a place like that. If buildings haven’t reached the modern age it doesn’t mean that other world hasn’t reach the ears of the village people. This also involves the knowledge of cheating the tourists. So, we were wandering in another temple, trying to find a suitable shade for resting in the maze of the buildings a guide loafing behind us. Since the guide forced us to listen him talking about the Bali temple culture the only way not to open our wallets was to split up and shake the guide off. This is how I ended up somewhere else.

Waddling on a pile of trash near the back door of the temple, wearing only flip-flops I suddenly heard music. It had to be a gamelan orchestra, and since I was studying gamelan at school the music motivated me to follow it, this is how I found myself behind a door of a Bali house. 

Traditional houses here look royal even when the rooms are simple and primitive, sometimes a bit worn of and filthy. But the outside is shiny as if it belonged to a rich family.
Bali family hands its house down from one generation to the other, but they never really own it – it means that it’s not possible to sell the house, wherever a person dies, his body has to be taken to his birthplace. Handing the houses down from one generation to other the house is expanded and thus it happens that a family has often many rooms for guests and relatives who need accomodation.
Anyhow, I peeked in and found the source where the music was coming. They were carrying out another ceremony, which is so common here in Bali. This time they were hallowing the rebuilt house. In the garden there were two men in masks facing each other – one of them representing the God and the other the men – and having a dialogue. The God was giving advice for living, and the mankind was listening. Like at every other ceremony there were sacrifices, prays, spraying the holy water or pressing rice against ones forehead.
Of course they were interested in the stranger and while the God was teaching the mankind a little Bali boy was teaching the foreigner the space organisation on this island full of culture. Namely, when building villages, houses and temples it’s important to follow a line that would join the sea and Mt. Agung, the greatest mountain on the island. The direction to the mountain is sacred and pure because it’s the place where the Hindu gods of Bali are, the direction to the sea is important because of the holy water. The other important direction is on the axis of sunset and sunrise. Every direction, and the centre, too, has a certain colour of god. Since the cosmology of Bali is divided between the upper, the middle and the lower these directions also represent the human body, the universe, the structures of temples and villages and different life stages.
This is why in every village a temple is built in the direction of the mountain, and a cemetery in the direction of the sea, every member of the family has to sleep his head directed to the sea or to the mountain, even the placing of the houses follows the swastika by and large. The finely brushed homes, streets, temples and villages are not only brushed centimeter by centimeter, even the base structure is  carefully planned on spiritual cogitations.
The boy keeps explaining the complicated system during the whole ceremony, which unfortunately doesn’t fit into this blog, until he offers me a place to spend the night. Suddenly I remember that somewhere in the other temple there are Jana and TJ wandering, but the young man also offers to invite them too. He also plans a long journey with us and euphorically lists the places he’d like to show me. From the moment Jana and TJ join us a little change, which peaks in the morning, is starting to take place. Suddenly there’s no smile on the boy’s face and he even doesn’t want to hear about any ideas. I notice the change in his mood and whisper to my friends that I presume there’s time we left. The young man waves and indifferently turns his back to us. A day later there’s credit worth 10 000 rupees and a message “This is what friends are for”. There’s a big question mark in my mind: “What happened?!”

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A random look into a Bali wedding

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I had just told Marika I had a wish to take part in a some ceremony in Bali when suddenly the bells ringing suggested there was something going on at our neighbours. We quickly found out from Wayan that the bells rang for a wedding and if we wished we could take part, as well.

When Marika’s help fitted a sarong for me and fastened it with a beautiful white bow I felt I was so beautiful, I hadn’t felt myself as beautiful since arriving in Indonesia, because in a traveller’s backback there’s room only for a few faded tops and worn out leggings. But my self-admiration disappeared the moment I stepped out my home yard to where the ceremony was held. Sarongs, laced blouses, strong make-ups, shiny jewellery and the women’s refined movements in their tight skirts turned a princess into a peasant girl again.


Despite that two bules were happily welcomed at the ceremony and we were allowed to go and congratulate the newly weds. The bride and groom were said to be distant relatives, they wore golden head wear so huge that the reason of their smiles gradually disappearing by hour during this endless ceremony was possibly the natural reaction to the things happening. While we were repeatedly coming and going to the ceremony, they kept standing there, trying to keep a smile on their faces, the bride in her tight dress trying to lean on the terrace.  Why on the terrace not on her man? Because he didn’t seem to be much of a help, he was standing next to his woman like a puppet, and despite the romantic photos on the wall there was mere indifference radiating between the couple.                          (still posing happily)        
Their wedding lasted for two days and in the list of guests there was at least eight hundred names. No matter how much we tried to find out when one or the other part of the rite would begin we got only very vague answers, which caused us to miss the most important stages of the event, but for an outsider those moments almost didn’t differ from each other at all. There was once a gamelan orchestra playing, then there was a dancer dancing, and then a paid priest mumbled his mantras. And people ate, ate, ate, like they always do at weddings.
I hope that the couple, who after the ceremony was lead to special room in the family house to spend their honeymoon,  still had enough energy for the entertainment. Because the wedding itself seemed to entertain the guests not the people involved. 

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With (Commercialized) spirituality against materialism?

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There certainly is something peaceful and calming in the atmosphere of Bali. Maybe it’s because of the glorious mossy temples, maybe because there’s life in the middle of the tropic atmosphere, but  for many it’s certainly the uncountable signs taking you towards spirituality. And the latter is achieved not in a mystical way, which means finding the one and only guru after a long journey, who would then be responsible for the development of his student for years, but there are explicit  road signs taking you from one teacher to another: Sacred mystery school, Heaven and Earth workshops, Chakra balancing healing session, Balinese yoga, Rebirthing breathing, Ashtanga yoga, Ayurveda as it is, Intuitive flow, Yoga and Chi Gung, Energy treatment and other similar one could endlessly choose between. So, everyone can compose  his/her spiritual development similarly to a training plan: Thai massage course in the morning, white magic teacher in the afternoon and then to  the Tibetan  energy world.
This is why I’m not surprised the mainly middle-aged people from the West move to Ubud and being droopy from the materialistic world consume spirituality. Of course they have to pay a lot. 70 dollars a night in shake therapy and 60 dollars for a chakra lecture. In the search of self the rich hippies dash towards the invisible world and don’t even realize that the spirituality that should help them break free from the boundaries of the capitalist order is available if your paycheck is big enough, it’s a product wrapped in pink and available only for those with certain resources – natural gifts don’t play a role any more.
It also seems as if spirituality was a sign of social status, just like TJ said with a grin: “Susan seems to know a lot about chakras, she’s cool, lets hang around her.” Because in every Starbucks like café, where people from the west sip their lattes and read their mail online, one could hear conscious explanations about energy streams in your body or get knowledge about spiritual awakening. If you’ve read two or three Buddhist books it’s enough to create a bastion of your knowledge in some middle-class American town and to start guiding people.
This is why the town arose some contradictory feelings in me. Actually there’s nothing bad in self development if there are people who are not ready to give up their western commodities but still want to experience this tropical vibe and get a feeling that is earthy and close to one’s soul. This is the place Ubud is excellent for. Everyone should be able to find something suitable and continue developing it if he wishes to. But equalizing practicing the self-help guides and knowing the spiritual world, and what is more, taking the position of a paid guru, seems to popularize the same materialist shallowness people try to find a cure for.

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Everyday sacrifices of Bali

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Crack, Crack,  I hear something cracking under my feet when I’m lazily dragging my legs along the fiery Ubudi street. The city is full of baskets having been smashed under peoples’ feet, the baskets are soon replaced with new ones in order to please the gods. The more I look around the more I see analogical bounties: bits of rice on a banana leaf placed on a terrace, basket with flowers on the street, a bowl with incenses under a window, the bigger the event the bigger the bounties. There are bigger bowls with fruit, rice, meat, pastry and other food appear next to the small ones, all decorated with flowers and incenses. All is served for the gods on leaves, in baskets, on huge plates and tables. No day passes without giving bounties to some Hindu god or to one remembered from the beliefs of the ancestors, and then there are demons, saints, souls and other powers observing the well-being of the universe. Since preparing bounties is of mediative nature and purifying, the elderly spend their days weaving baskets of palm branches and shaping figurines. Being so committed they can carry on working for hours, sometimes they sit in their own thoughts, sometimes they do it while spreading the latest rumours of the village. Those who don’t have the time can go to a market where readymade bounties wait for them. What is more, since none of the bounties can be used reused the streets are soon blanketed with colourful smashed figurines.       

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