Bali Museums

Typically when I travel, I visit and enjoy museums, as they give me a broader perspective and a sense of the history of the place, enlarging my actual experience. When I was in Egypt last year, I immensely enjoyed the Cairo museum with its spectacular exhibits, many collected from nearby sites. Additionally, I had an experience that dramatically alerted me to a common occurrence, when, at that Cairo museum, I examined the replica of the Rosetta Stone, because the original had been moved to a London museum, thus was unavailable in this place which was its actual home.

Traveling in Indonesia on the islands of Bali and Nusa Tenggara, I did not visit any museums, though later, when I looked through my Lonely Planet guide, many were listed. Nevertheless, I did not feel deprived of museums and of the historical perspective they can provide. Now, it makes me think: when is the right time for the artifacts, the things of a culture, to move to a museum?

In Ubud, we stayed in a guesthouse (Sania’s), very old, with misshapen stone stairways, worn over generations, with beautifully carved doorways and intricately carved furniture, where we sat for our breakfast. As an aside, we chose each day between the typical Indonesian breakfast of fried rice or Western options of eggs or pancakes, each served with a fresh fruit platter and coffee or tea.

On one of our ‘tours,’ a day-long drive, just us with our driver, among other things, we visited one of the ubiquitous Hindu temples. To address a false impression of my own, these temples are unlike churches or synagogues that are familiar to us as single buildings. No, these ancient Hindu temples are sited on acres, enclosed by a wall and containing a multitude of buildings, statues, shrines, fountains, gardens, and smaller spaces designated for prayer. Before entering the temple, a guest must be robed in a sarong, both men and women, available for a small offering at the entrance gate. The sarong was to be returned at the end of the visit. My own long skirt was not considered as an appropriate substitute for the sarong, but needed to be covered by the sarong.

One of the temples that we visited was considered a ‘holy water’ temple: a river ran through it, contained by walls and available to guests for blessings, by walking in it, more than waist high. For this, another special wading sarong was available. Although we had secured the proper sarongs upon entering the temple, we passed on the opportunity to receive the water’s blessings in the special sarong.

Back to the topic of this essay, museums. This was an ancient temple, its purpose essentially unchanged for centuries. Was not this a museum? No, not in the usual meaning of museum, but in its actual purpose, to give a person the sense of existing in a former time?

Was it acting as a museum only for me, visiting from a different culture and a different time? For me, it certainly served the purpose of a museum, allowed me to experience a different culture, a different time. My Lonely Planet guide describes an ‘inherent spirituality’ in these islands. I truly experienced this throughout our three weeks, not only at this temple.

I need to describe an incident at odds with this perspective that occurred at the same temple, shortly after our arrival. An Indonesian woman holding a bunch of small bananas approached me, offering me a banana, even peeling it for me. I thanked her, then she pushed a bag of about a dozen bananas towards me and told me their price. I offered her a strong, ‘No, thank you,’ and pressed a small offering toward her for the banana I had already bit into. This was an important reminder for me that, despite the ‘spirituality’ so abundant in this place, other factors were also at work.

Nevertheless, this temple was, for me, a museum, beautiful and alive.

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