At Alam Anda Homestay “Ali Baba” (I’m sure that’s not his real name… or is it?) served me a banana pancake for breakfast. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hated banana, so I ate the whole thing regardless (surprisingly I didn’t die…), while he told me about the surrounding area, trying to encourage me to go on a guided tour. But this morning I didn’t feel the need to go on one. If you are as strange in a place as I am in Bali, even crossing the street to go for ice-cream becomes an adventure. Wandering the streets of Ubud, everything I see bares a secret and another questionmark over my head.

There is one thing that really strikes me about Bali though: Religion. It. Is. Everywhere. You literally can’t walk along a sidewalk without stumbeling upon it. Every two meters you find another little basket filled with flowers, incense sticks, crackers, biscuits, cigarettes, money… they are offerings, I know that much. But to whome? I know the Balinese are Hindus and believe in spirits, good and bad ones. Are the offerings to them? And why are they just lying around in random spots in the streets? What if a monkey eats the crackers? Or even worse: smokes the cigarettes?! Also, religion in Bali is something everybody seems to be living so openly. At home pretty much the only people I ever see showing off their religion in public were born before 1940. But here, everyone does it…

And so I guess I found a good reason to go on a guided tour after all: I don’t want to die stupid. And I have this feeling that I can’t claim to have seen Bali without understanding at least the gist of what it means over here to believe in God. Of course, I could just ask wikipedia… but I have this feeling this time I should go for the real thing.

Oh, by the way: I enjoyed Suri’s Homemade Lemon Squash and a Full Green Pizza in the gardens over at the Art Café today. And the taste of the freshly baked pastry reminded me of pizza evenings with cheap red wine in the tiny kitchen of my first flat in Berlin.