Don't Worry Be Happy

Just a few photos of some of the 'offerings'

The Balinese are known for their arts - music, dance, batik, etc. I've always been interested in the music of other cultures so when Bev (our tour arranger) mentioned some of the optional activities we could take part in I immediately thought I'd like to do some gamelan playing. The gamelan are basically metal xylophones, usually played in orchestras with various sizes. So this morning I ventured off to the local arts museum for a lesson.  My instructor was very patient and I must say playing the melodies was quite simple.  The difficult part was the dampening. Because they are metal and resonate loudly, while you play one note with your right hand you need to dampen the last note at the same  time with your left hand. To get a sense of the difficulty imagine playing the melody with your right hand and simultaneously playing the same melody with your left hand, only one note behind. The coordination required was very taxing on my brain and half way through I was dripp...

Our first full day in Bali was really a crash course in the Hindu religion. Although Indonesia is mostly Muslim, Bali is 90% Hindu. Everywhere you look, there are temples and offerings that have been made to the gods to express thankfulness and gratitude. The offerings are small baskets of (mostly) fruit, cake, incense and flowers. They are all along the sidewalks and all over the two major temples we visited today. Every home has a family temple, every community has several temples, there are public temples and temples for specific purposes. Before entering we had to don a sarong. Scott joined us for today's tour. Our first temple, Goa Gajah or Elephant cave, was excavated in 1954 but has been dated to the 11th century. The 2nd temple was Holy Spring temple which is a purification temple. People were bathing in the springs. Today was a special religious day - I believe it was the new moon.  School children we saw along the way were in traditional costumes and many of the c...

Since Indonesia has the most active volcanoes in the world (130) it's not surprising that one of them actually started spewing ash. It IS surprising that we would be affected although based on our unblemished travel record so far I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. We had been checking flights into and out of Bali since the airport started experiencing difficulties a week ago but everything seemed to indicate that the ash problem was a bit better. Apparently we missed the news reports during our 11 hour flight from Vancouver on Sunday to say that the airport was again closed. After our arrival in Seoul we labyrinthed (is that a word?) our way back and forth, up and down the huge airport where eventually we were given vouchers for a night at the Grand Hyatt along with a fabulous dinner and breakfast. Good thing I was tired or I might have eaten more. I think it was our 6th meal of the day although technically it was 2 days. And fortunately both Ross and I carried a cha...