Bali: A Travel Adventure

Bali has a population of over three million inhabitants.

The best known kecak accompanies stories from the Ramayana, the great Hindu epic, and trance dancing is frequently an element of these performances. It is also known as the Monkey Dance, named for an episode where the male chorus plays a jabbering band of monkeys in thrall of its leader, Hanuman, the Monkey King.

The Barong is a mythological lion-beast that represents the forces of good. Barong are protective spirits for Balinese villages and these sacred masks are kept in a special place within the temple and given daily offerings.

Trance is not at all unusual in Bali; it is encouraged as a special state in which people can enter into direct communication with the spirit world and bring back knowledge or special wishes of the deities. Even in moments of ecstasy or self-inflicted violence, trance is rarely allowed to get out of control.

The legong dance-pantomime is the best loved of classical dances in Bali. Only very young girls perform the legong, often beginning their training at age five. By 14 they are considered too old and retire from this style of dancing.

Bali three words for rice are used: padi, origin of the English term “paddy”, indicates rice that is still in the field; beras means threshed rice; and nasi is the final form of the cooked, edible grain.

The outstanding characteristic of Balinese is the use of “vocabularies of courtesy”, a linguistic phenomenon that developed with the introduction of Hindu caste hierarchies. There are in fact three special vocabularies within the language. Common speech is used between friends and intimates and employed when speaking to a person of lower social standing. The polite form is spoken to strangers (before their rank is known) and to superiors. The deferential form is used by commoners when speaking to high caste persons, priests and other important people.

Bali is considered the last outpost of mainland Asia, separated by a 1,000-foot (300-meter) deep channel from the island of Lombok to the east. This channel also represents an ecological boundary known as the Wallace Line after the 19th-century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. He noted that Bali has luxurious vegetation and animals found on the Asian mainland such as elephants, tigers, monkeys and wild cattle, while Lombok and the islands to the east suggest an affiliation with Australia and not Asia.