Bali to Lombok

Playing with boys on swan rocking horses.

Transport Lombok style.

Monkey in the forest.

A rice paddy - spot the eels and frogs.

Full grown rice.

Terraced rice paddy fields.

Calling the holy eel.

We finished our circuit of Bali, back in the main city, Denpasar. On the way from Lovina, on the north coast we visited a centre for disabled people. People who are handicapped at birth are given a home in the centre. They get education and training in a range of skills. All speak English well and many make handicrafts or paint. They cooked lunch for all our party then showed us round the centre after giving us a presentation of their daily lives and activities – including scuba diving!. The whole atmosphere of the centre is happy and welcoming and we all felt we had made some new friends. The last stop was a beautiful  temple on a small island just off the coast.

Our new friends at the centre.

The bear made a friend too!

Off to Lombok.

Temple on an island

Our next stop was Lombok, another Indonesian island, about 30 miles to the east of Bali. Most people in Lombok are muslims and wherever we went we heard the call for people to pray sung from the tall minarettes found all over the island. Muslims have to pray 5 times a day and the first call is at 4.30 am, the people get up very early in Lombok!

Our boat arrived on a beach as there was no quay for it to moor to. The luggage had to be passed forwards and we had to jump off the front of the boat.

Our first stop on the way up the mountain, where we were staying, was another Hindu temple built for the royal family of Lombok hundreds of years ago. There was a temple for people of all religions to worship in within the main temple area and we asked the priest to make the eel appear in one of the ponds to bring us all good luck. The priest broke some duck eggs in the water and, after a lot of calling, a huge eel appeared, we were all lucky! On up the mountain, another dormant volcano, we saw our first wild monkeys. The trees are full of fruit and as few people live in the national park at the top of the mountain there are lots of monkeys. The rice paddies are on steep slopes and have to be terraced, with fast streams flowing between the fields. There are fish, frogs and eels in the wet paddies and as the crops ripen and the fields dry out people collect them to eat. We saw families threshing the rice after it had been harvested to get the grains from the stalks. The grain is then winnowed to get the husks from the grains and make it ready for cooking. There is no bread in countries like this where it is too hot to grow wheat. This means no toast for breakfast – just rice! It is too hot for potatoes to grow as well, so no chips for tea – just rice. There are plenty of spices like chillies, peppers, nutmeg, and mace, these are cooked with the rice and chicken to make interesting meals.

Bali Bear

Goodbye Auckland!

A pavilion in a temple.

A temple guardian with a lotus filled moat behind.

Another guardian with a sari.

A dragon guardian with an offering.

More offerings in the market.

There are large spiders here!

Goodbye to New Zealand and on to Bali with a transit stop in Sydney, Australia. Bali is an island in Indonesia. It has 3 million people (New Zealand has 4 million) on the island which is about the size of Norfolk. The island is volcanic and has 2 very large craters both with lakes inside. The soil is very rich as it is volcanic and together with a heavy rainfall from a monsoon climate the land is very fertile. The main crop is rice, grown in paddy fields, and the farmers get 2 crops a year. Rice growing involves a whole community as the individual fields are dammed then flooded but each dam has to have a sluice onto the next paddy so all the village can share the water. Keeping the water flowing is very important and is the responsibility of the whole community as is keeping the dams and sluices in good repair. Harvesting involves everybody as it is all cut and threshed by hand. The fields are all tiny so mechanisation is not possible. As Bali is quite mountainous many of the fields are on terraces which are even more difficult to maintain.
The main religion is Hindu but there are some Muslim and Christian communities as well. Every village has at least 1 temple and every house has a shrine. Offerings of food flowers and incense are made daily at home and family shrines as well as at temples. Even businesses make offerings so the whole of Bali smells of incense! Stone guardians in the form of dragons, warriors, and animals protect the entrances to the temples to keep the bad spirits out. The 3 main gods are Brahma, fire, red, Shiva, wind, yellow, and Vishnu, water, black. Different temples are dedicated to different gods and are decorated in the colour of the god. The really large temples have more than one god and are very richly decorated.

Chickens for the pot on sale in the market.

Which god is this temple dedicated to?

This is made from flower petals picked every day

Carrying goods to Market.

Russell School, Bay of Islands

This bear went fly fishing!

The Queen Elizabeth outside Russell

Russell School sign 

Scoler meets the class

Russell school

Russell was called Kororareka by the Maoris before the British settlers renamed it and made it the first capital of New Zealand before Auckland.  It now has a population of about 1,000 people and is well known as a tourist destination because of it's history and many old buildings. The town is located in The Bay of Islands which is a very beautiful area of Northland. It is on a deep estuary opposite the town of Pahia and near Waitangi where the treaty was signed.

 Many large cruise ships visit, some, like the Queen Elizabeth, on a cruise round the world.  Russell Primary School also has bears which it sends round the world! There are lots of bears which are given messages about themselves and where they would like to go. These bears are left around the town for tourists to find and, if they are taken, the tourists send messages about where the bear is and what he is doing. Some of the bears have been round the world and are now back in Russell. When the pupils get a message from a bear they look up where in the world it is and find out about the country and place it is in. 

The headmaster, Mr Fuller, invited Scoler to meet his class. The class showed us how they found out where their bears were and looked up Scole in Norfolk. We told them about Norwich and some of the history of Norfolk, they might like some postcards of Norwich Castle and other famous sights near Scole. They sang songs for us and the boys showed us how to do a haka, a maori dance and song used to frighten rivals. The New Zealand rugby team always do a haka in front of the team they are playing to try and frighten them! This year the rugby world cup is being played in New Zealand, The All Blacks, The New Zealand team will be doing lots of hakas.