A Balinese Way of Life

Young people in Bali are expected to marry young, have as close to four children as possible (one for each element), and stay in the village where they were born, working at/for the business of their parents.

We met one young woman of about 22 who was working in a dress shop geared towards tourists, but hadn’t left her village in three years; that trip had been to a beach town 20 minutes away.

Travel is unexpected in a culture that demands a strict adherence to ritual. Access to a vehicle isn’t always a given, either; every road is full trucks with multiple loads and of families (with both babies and small children) on single motorbikes.

Even though the tourist industry is huge and ever-growing on tiny Bali — a fact addressed in the late 2007 global climate conference held in the sterile, designed-for-tourists area of the Balinese island Nusa Dua — sustainable farming remains a top priority.

Our Bali Barong tour guide, Tasman, is part of a large Sumatran farm family that has scattered across Indonesia in search of better-paying work; he explained to us that many Balinese work much of the year in tourist industry jobs, but also make time to help on the family farm.

Rice terraces are found everywhere on the island, stacked high into hills and mountains to maximize every inch of usable land; with expats from Europe and elsewhere moving to Bali in droves, competing for space with already large Balinese families, keeping up with food production is a constant battle.

But chemicals and pesticides aren’t employed here; instead, mottled brown ducks are invited to make their homes in rice paddies, as they eat pests that would otherwise harm the tender shoots before they mature from yellow to green.

Other Balinese cash crops include coffee and cocoa; bananas; avocados; potatoes; and a bready-sweet fruit the size of a plum called snake fruit for its scaly skin.

Chickens are cooped end-to-end in hillside buildings called long houses, and pigs are penned for market in long, narrow baskets.

Fishing is another big industry in Bali, though certainly not a path to prosperity.  On one of the rainiest days of our trip, we went to the southern fishing village of Kusamba, having been told only that here was the island’s busiest fish market.

Past slum dwellings made of concrete and box flaps, and down a wide walking alley, we were quieted by one dark kiosk after another, each full of  two or three tired women squatting over metal cauldrons on smoky wood fires, dark gray fish piled on sheets of  newspaper beside them.  No matter their ages, their reddened hands were gnarled and knotted as they boiled off scales, scooped out whole fish with bamboo ladles, then mined their guts and bones.

Lobster and eel baskets were stacked high on hand-drawn carts.  Garbage was strewn about the ground, and as rain endlessly pelted the bumpy tin roof above, some women hummed and rocked as they stirred their pots.  Even with the air washed clean, the market smelled briny and sharp.

500 feet away, incongruously light, colorful fishing boats were parked all along the black, volcanic sand; visibility had become too compromised to fish well that day.  Nearby, teenage boys smoked cigarettes and stared out to sea while ubiquitous, protective dogs huddled under shacks and boats to stay dry.

The Balinese royal family is still in place, but no longer has real influence over the government. What they do have is a smattering of royal residences; some, like the fabulous buildings and lush gardens of Kirtagangga (pictured here), are open to the public for a small fee.

There is Western-style wealth to be found, but it’s almost exclusively displayed by Australian, French, and Indian merchants and hoteliers.

In Balinese culture, though, wealth is largely counted in terms of luck and adherence to tradition — not in money.

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See also
Bali, Indonesia by Way of Taipei, Taiwan
Southern Bali: Part One
Southern Bali: Part Two
Northwestern Bali
The Heart of Bali: Part One
The Heart of Bali: Part Two
Ubud, Bali
Tips on Traveling in Bali
TWT Travel Binder: Bali