Bali

I went to Bali to meet my cousin, Vivien, for the first time, so my trip was colored by the poignancy of a family that had been torn apart by the ravages of WWII and the Holocaust.  Vivien's family chose to go to Israel before it got really bad in Austria, our common ancestors' homeland.  But from Israel they went some years later to Australia, and so it was that I had never met that part of my family.  Yet, my mother and her mother had kept up a thriving correspondence for many years until her mother's death in 1981.  So we mostly shared stories and photos and tried to catch up on about 60 years of life.  She had not known that my father and grandfather had gone through a concentration camp experience, and that my grandfather had not survived. So that was the main purpose of the trip of three days.

 

    Still, I wanted to experience Bali, since I had heard so much about it here, and the saying is that you haven't been to Indonesia until you have been to Bali.  Even with the knowledge that Bali is far more oriented toward tourists than the sleepy big small town where we live, I was disappointed by the rush of vendors and hawkers everywhere in the resort area of Nusa Dua and the surrounding towns.  When we got out of the car in Kuta, a place that Vivien had remembered as a quaint little town, we were surrounded by people shoving merchandise in our faces.  I found myself buying a sarong (when will I ever wear a sarong?) and several other articles just to get rid of them.  I even bought a fake wood case containing three "silver" elephants.  Yes, I guess I bought a white elephant or three.  But despite the clamor of sellers with money on their minds, I found the scenery quite lovely.  The dance performance at the temple at Ulu Watu was memorable, with the chirping chorus of seventy men whose sounds were unlike anything I had ever heard.  In addition, I found that the people of Bali are just as committed to their Hindu religion as the Muslims of Java.  I found little "chanang saris," little bamboo plates full of offerings of flowers and fruits, in front of each shop and stacked at the many shrines and temples along the way.  The whole experience just deepened and enriched what it means to be in Indonesia's incredible diversity of cultures and ethnicity.