Kedonganan

Kedonganan Beach is situated closeby to Kuta Beach and Jimbaran Beach, which are already common famous tourism destination in Bali. Kedonganan is well-known for its fishermen village as well as the seafood restaurants along the area's coastline. The fishermen existence is ensuring the sustainability of the raw fish supply for those restaurants, and also for those which are located in Kuta. Moreover, Kedonganan also function as a manufacture of fresh fishing product for individual consumers like it is of the groceries. After all, Kedonganan is infallible spot to search for delighting seafood, as well as the ambience of the fishermen villages' daily activities.

Melasti Ceremony

Balinese run the "Melasti" ritual several days before the Seclusion Day or "Nyepi" to extinguish evil spirit and bad traits of this world and of the spiritual world, so that in the next day they could practice worshipping without any disturbance. Generally melasti take place near the water reserves or beaches, depending on practicality of the ceremony to begin with. People usually look for the nearest location from those two to hold the ceremony. One of the unique main conduct of the ceremony is to throw offerings to the sea as a symbolic appearance of erasing bad stuff and to renew their spiritual beliefs to God.

Legian

Legian is a suitable spot to take a brief look to the modernization process in Bali. I've spent my recent five years studying in Jogjakarta so that i couldn't frequently monitor its physical development as well as human interaction there. Eventually, it seemed like time stopped by and I found nothing had altered its shape. Foreign tourists had always living up every side of every single small street that I could say that Legian had also fetched the melting pot of multiculturalism, where you could find not only the diversity of the people and culture but also more intense interaction inside it. The small shops were also crowding the road and even small turns, to provide delightment of the tourists' shopping passion. However, it was not as dense as before the first Bali Bomb hit the location. But one thing remained the same for sure. When I took an eye to the horizon of the beach, I still found the enchanting sunset stealing my sight from everything else.

Another Hour With Jero Dalang

Jero Dalang Adi Saputra is one of the finest young puppet masters in Tunjuk, Tabanan, Bali, my home village. He is so talented and gifted, even his first conduct was when he was just a third grader in junior high. Eventually, I got a shot to watch him when he became conductor of "Wayang Lemah" at a local religious ceremony inside the temple. Literally in English, "wayang" is "puppet", and "lemah" is "noon". That was just due to some reasons. Commonly, puppet shows are being held late at night, however, this event was being rolled out at noon, and this was where the term came from. The Wayang Lemah show had generally been a part of a greater religious ceremony or "ngenteg linggih", as well as a part of the offerings to the ceremony itself beside for entertainmet purposes.

As Jero Dalang said, recently wayang as a form of entertainment has gone and being left behind by the people. As various television shows and movies spread into the society, wayang became even more marginalized because they found it more interesting than watching wayang. In contrast, when he was still at the early age of childhood around ten up to fifteen years ago, children eagerly idolized the famous characters of wayang. Bima, Arjuna, and even Hanoman were among the most popular of the characters because of their excellent traits and strength. But these times, the circumstances has been changing a lot. The essence of that traditional value of wayang is not a choice to the people, particularly as a part of entertainment and education.