The day starts off as per usual. To the beach to watch the sunrise.
If you would like to start the day off with us, go to www.fotothing.com/balicharles/ before we start the days events.
Now that you have all calmed your selves, you can now join in the battle of the serong. Not wanting to make a total fool of myself & wanting to have it just right. I ask the staff @ Ritas to help me. As loverley as they are, they have little command of the English language. Made was the first to come along. I asked him for his help to tie this Bl***y serong. We go through all the motions, but it doesn't look right to me.
Still feeling rather uncomfortable with the dress thing, I now ask one of the girls to help me with the damn thing. Her instructions were the same as Mades'. So we dress for the Ceremony, feeling rather proud of our selves for going to the trouble to do it right.
We catch a cab to Shreks house by 10 am. There are people everywhere in ceremonial dress. As we get out of the cab, we meet Girl Wayan, who worked for Shrek last year. She gives the Mrs. the warmest welcome & a great big hug (This welcome, is just so Balinese). The village Temple was just over the road from Shreks house & apparently there were a number of the same type of ceremonies for a number of different families.
All these ceremonies are of such an enormous expence to the families of the deceased. So where they can, they combine these Ceremonies whith other families from the same Temple.
We met a couple of other forum members, that were invited to Shreks family ceremony.
I am now sitting in the back stalls & notice that this damn serong, after all my efforts, is tied wrong. My overlap is like a womans, I am so embaressed that I sit cross legged & hide my beautiful pleats (at least I got them right).
After the ceremony & all the prayers etc. a beautiful smorgestboard lunch is served. We chat to a few Aussie guests,( my Bahasa is only understood by myself) as not many Balinese there could speak English. We were asked to follow the family to the Village Temple, which we did.
After a short service there, we headed for our beach walk. Most of the day has gone now, so we slowly stroll along the beach towards home base.
We still have many friends along the way to say hello to. There is the "Sanur Festival" opening night tonight.
We stop to watch some of the activities.
While standing on the beach, watching the events, we are approached by a local guy. He welcomes us & thanks us for still coming to Bali. After chatting for a while, we mention that we consider Bali as our 2nd. home.
Before we know it, he has offered us land to build a villa.
We can stay as often as we like or rent to our friends & it will not cost us anything for as long as we like.
This sounded so very tempting, esprcially as we already had plans to build in Bali.
We refused the offer, even though we believe him to be genuine.
Our belief is , you get nothing for nothing in this world.
We certainly would not take advantage of these beautiful Balinese people, no matter how much they offered us.
As he seemed such a genuine person, we took his details & promised to keep in touch, Another friend is added to our ever growing list.
You can never have too many friends in this world.
Don't forget pics at www.fotothing.com/balicharles/