Holy Oly

„What is your name?“, I was asked by our taxi driver, Gusti, on the way from the airport. From that point on he called me Oly like Holy. And we spent a few days with him.

Bali people are very religious and have lots of holy things. They have holy mountains, holy cows, holy water, holy monkeys and so on. Many things are holy for them. It is a little bit like in the US, where people talk about holy things. Like holy moly, holy sh.. or holy cr…  But it has a different meaning here, because Bali people are Hindu and holy things are important for them. I have seen holy monkeys in Bali, but I never saw one of these moly animals in the US.

Every Bali home has its temple and there many more temples in every town or village. We probably saw one thousand temples in 11 days. Every day they make 25 offerings for the gods. They buy flowers and coconut palm leaves and make small offering baskets. They put them in their houses, cars, shops and temples.

The next pictures show typical Balinese women with their offerings.

Our first thing in the morning after we arrived was the visit to the hotel temple.

The hotel was part of the old palace from the old days. They have a lotus pond in front of the temple, where I found a beautiful woman dressed in her sarong.

Does it rain in Bali? Oh yeah.

On our walk to the Holy Monkey Temple it started pouring. No problem. We stopped at a nice café overlooking a rice field and had a Bintang (very good Bali beer) and a tea. Michelle is happy to be out of the rain. California girls don’t like rain.

The rain normally stops after one hour. So we went back on Holy Monkey Road to see the temple. What can you see there? A holy water creek, a big temple and of course lots of holy monkeys.

The best part in the Temple was watching the tourists. Big signs were telling people not to feed the animals. But people had bananas in their hands to feed the monkeys. We saw monkeys jumping on people’s heads to get the bananas and tourists running and screaming with a monkey on their head. The best comedy show on the island.

On the next picture you see Holy Oly with Holy Piggy in the Holy Monkey Forest in front of the Holy Monkey Temple.

In the evening we learn, why the monkeys are holy. The Kacak dance tells a story, where the white Monkey with his monkey army attacked the bad guys and rescued the Prince and the Princess.

The Kacak has a 100 man choir sitting on the stage in a circle around the performers doing the rhythmic singing and music, while the figures were dancing and fighting. In the end there was also a trance dance, where a person dressed as a horse was walking thru the hot, coconut wood coals.

We also went to a famous temple, where they have holy water coming out of the ground. They use it for a religious ceremony, where they clean themselves.

Michelle and I also used some of the water as Weihwasser and made a cross like we are used to doing in the Catholic Church. Hindus are tolerant and allow other faiths to visit their temples and partake of the holy water.

BTW: Why did it take a while to write a new posting for the blog?

33 degrees Celsius (92 Fahrenheit) and 170% humidity can bring productivity down. Even the German Laugenbreze I bought in the Buddha’s Bakery was soggy and looks blurry.