48 Days at Sea: Denpasar, Dragons, and a Dumpster Diving Goat

Indonesia is a fascinating riot of color, people, noise, religion, heat, dirt, scooters, traffic, smells, and absolute chaos. It is incredibly hot and sticky - temps over 100.

After two sea days, we arrived on the Island of Bali on Sunday, March 2. Four million people on a very small island - and most of them in Denpasar. Our morning tour took us into the city of Denpasar where we saw the Royal Family compound, a temple, and a market. Bali is one of the only remaining Hindu cultures in Indonesia - the vast majority being Muslim. Hindu is a fascinating - and very high maintenance - religion. Offerings must be put out several times a day every day and praying and worshipping goes on constantly. There are not set “services”, so the temples always have people coming and going. The offerings are little boxes woven from leaves and filled with flowers, fruits, incense, and sometimes money and then placed all over the altars and statues in the temples and on the ground. The ones up on something are offerings to the gods, and the ones on the ground are offerings to spirits - both good and evil.

Women carry around the offering boxes on trays and put them everywhere, along with burning incense.

We had a sampling of local fruits - delicious!

The traffic is incredible - no rules, lights, or signs - thousands of scooters zipping around cars and busses, on very narrow roads, all going in any direction. The scooters sometimes had 4 passengers! Babies very commonly sitting in between dad in front and mom in back. We were amazed we weren’t seeing accidents at every turn. There are more than a million scooters on Bali.

Everything is extremely dirty and very crowded. In the market, little tiny stalls serve as shops and they are all packed to the gills with inventory of food, household goods, clothing, fabrics, kitchen stuff, and toiletries. (I got lots of photos of the food, but none of the rats running around underneath the food bins). People are yelling, bargaining, hurrying, laughing - it’s a very loud, colorful, smelly, crowded and hot experience.

The main floor of the market from the third floor

Just in case, I like to make friends with the local authorities.

Every aspect of life here is chaotic. The religion takes a lot of work, there are countless gods and spirits to account for, and there are ceremonies required for nearly everything. There are like 30 political parties, and their importance at any given time is represented by how big their flag is. The traffic is like nothing we’ve seen anywhere between cars, busses, scooters, bicycles, horse drawn carriages, hand carts, and pedestrians all sharing the very narrow streets - there are no sidewalks. Even the social structure is complicated - polygamy is common, you can’t sell your house unless the village elders say you can, and then only if your first born son doesn’t want to inherit it. Weddings take place in the houses and then the newlyweds are sequestered for three days. There are very involved ceremonies for EVERYTHING going on all the time. It was exhausting to be in the middle of it all!

That afternoon we took a cab to a hotel where we could use their pool and beach, and just relax. Burr trekked off down the beach in search of a geocache that was in a sea cave and met some new friends while in the cave!

Monday was a day we have really been looking forward to - Komodo Island and the infamous Komodo Dragons!! It was fabulous.

We took the tender to the island where we met our guides. There is only one very small village on the island - around 1000 residents - and the rest of the island is a national park. Our group was nice and small - only about a dozen people - and we trekked off into the interior of the island to a water hole where the dragons are known to hang out waiting for deer to come get a drink and then become dragon food. Our guides were armed with only sticks! The dragons we saw were 6-8 feet long, and only a few yards away from us! They were lying down or moving very slowly, but when motivated they are very fast runners.

Look how close we are!!

Soon to be dragon lunch.

As we tendered back to our ship, we were followed by little boys in canoes begging. They circled the ship for the several hours until we left - people would toss things off the decks into the little boats - or if it landed in the water the boys would go swimming. The boys were doing as much bailing as they were paddling.

Today - Tuesday - was Larantuka on Flores Island. This is not on anyone’s list of places to go. It’s a tiny little crowded place with an absolutely filthy market. It was well over 100 degrees, smelled SO strongly of garbage, and is completely packed with people. The people were extremely friendly and loved having their photos taken - nearly every photo has someone smiling and waving.