Bali Tour Guide

Galungan Day is one of many ceremonies that celebrated in Bali. Galungan can be considered as the merriest celebration because there many decorations and food involved in it. Ceremonies and praying are held in family’s temples, village temples as well as other bigger temples.

After finishing my prayer at the my family temple, I drove to Buitan, near Candidasa, to meet my guest for a day tour. Our first stop was Bat Cave temple. As we expected there are many local people attending Galungan ceremonies at the temple. There are families, couple, and groups of friends. There were from many different part of Bali, came to pray to this one of Bali’s essential temple. They all came dress in colorful temple’s outfits. The ladies carried basket of offering on their head.

Feel enough observing the cultural scenes at Bat Cave temple , we continue our cultural adventure to Panglipuran village. Penjor are placed and lineup very nicely in front of each house gate at this traditional village. Penjor is decorate bamboo pole that has shape like dragon of rice plantation. Balinese people considered as an offering as well as decoration that become the symbol of the universe.

We visited a family compound. Their family temple were decorated with colorful clothes and coconut leaves.. Many offering were placed in temple’s shrines and other building in the compound. The family just finish doing the pray when we arrived. We then joined them to go to their village temple to do another praying.

At the village temple, many villagers have gathered. Offerings were placed in the altar at front. Men were playing the musical instruments. Kid playing around happily while most people wait patiently for the pray to be started. We did not stay until the ceremonies finish as we were getting hungry.

We then drive to Lake Batur to have our lunch at floating restaurant by the side of the lake. We enjoyed nice view of Mount Batur and Mount Abang while having our lunch.

After lunch we drove down to Ubud. Before reaching the famous rice terrace north of Ubud, there was a little traffic jam. There was a ceremonial parade by the villagers. The parade was art of Galungan celebration. The villagers bring their holly Barong and Rangda, both are the symbol of God, walking around their village along with traditional music of gamelan and colorful umbrellas and flags. Each family put offering in front of their house as the parade passed by. A parade to spiritually cleanse the village and its people.

We made a quick stop at the beautiful rice terraces before made a visit to moneky foret in Ubud. After having fun with the monkeys we headed back to Buitan. On the way back, we still noticed many people wearing their temple outfits on the road. We also passed by several smaller parades.

Click here to see some photos of this day