Bali

I just got came back, along with a sunburn on my shoulders and a lei around my neck, from Bali. BALI! This place has been incessantly been brought up by the Indonesians I've met since the first day I got to Indonesia, and now I know why. It's amazing. It's balancing a line of a vibrant, traditional culture as well as supporting a bustling tourist industry. Along the streets of Denpasar, I saw surfers who'd come from every corner of the globe to catch a wave at Kuta walking alongside the Hindu men and women worshiping at the dozens of temples that line the streets. 

I went with my exchange friend, Lucie, and her host family and we got to stay at a hotel as well as a local Balinese family that Lucie's host mom is friends with. My first day after we arrived, I got up just before sunrise to try out the waves at Kuta. There were actually quite a few people there for it being so early, and I was able to rent a surfboard for only about $4 an hour. This is what I was able to do most mornings, and once everyone else back at the hotel/house was up we all had breakfast together and visited dozens of temples and beaches around the island. The people in Bali, I noticed, are really different from those back on Sulawesi. In Bali, everyone's hindu, so I finally was able to wear shorts and a tank top without having to worry about insulting anyone who saw me. Also, there are a ton of bule, white people, that both live on and visit Bali, so near the beaches and town its kind of half Balinese and Indonesian people and half bule and tourists. It was a really, really strange feeling being there at first, and I'm kind of glad I didn't go during the first half of my exchange (I'm officially half-way through!) because it would've been really, really strange returning to Sulawesi. It's sort of hard to explain, but Bali felt like civilization whereas Makassar doesn't. Everyone in Bali was comfortable with my presence, I wasn't an outsider, they were all listening to the latest American top hits (none of which I had heard of before at all), were all up-to-date on current events that I hadn't known, and had a more 'western' mindset about everything. When I spoke Indonesian to people there, they weren't shocked and astounded like people in Makassar are (making it really difficult to actually hold a good conversation) but were relaxed and I was able to ask them more about their culture, as well as their opinions about Bali, Indonesia and the rest of the world. In Makassar, most all of the women have their head covered up behind a hijab, and the men all have the same short-cut hairstyle. In Bali, the women all have long, gorgeous hair, some with ornaments or flowers and the men have anything between bald to meter-long dreadlocks. 

Bali also sort of reminded me of Hawaii in a few ways. From hearing from my family who live in Hawaii, as well as having been there myself, I noticed the strange balance between maintaining a unique and beautifully rich culture, while also relying on tourism to support the economy. The same is true for Bali. It was strange to see a new KFC that popped up next to a traditional Balinese temple. There were people waiting for their buckets of chicken alongside Balinese hindu people waiting to go worship. 

Bali is truly a beautifully unique place, and its reminded me that I really cannot label anything as being 'so Indonesian', because every single Island (there's over 18,000) in Indonesia is completely different from the next. But now, I can finally say, that I have been to Bali.