Offerings are everywhere. We wake to the smell of incense, and find an Intricately woven and stiched palm leaf tray, filled with flowers, a few grains of rice, and a burning stick of incense, gracefully arranged and placed at the entrance to our bungalow. We walk down the street and find little trays everywhere: along the broken sidewalk, on simple shrines, on car windshields, and at dangerous corners of the road. Every morning, afternoon and evening women and sometimes men, place these offerings to appease the good spirits (for a good life, bountiful rice harvest) and the demons (no motorbike accident, no fall through sidewalk, no earthquake...) The ibu (mother) weaves one hundred or more every day, which takes twenty minutes, according to my teacher at a "offerings making" class I took at the local museum, where I struggled to create ten in two hours. The pre-dawn market is filled with vendors selling bundles of palm leaves and bags of flowers, or pre-made offerings, for women too busy to make their own.
As we tiptoe down the sidewalks, avoiding broken hatches that teeter over a six foot drop to rushing water below, or walk in the roadway (around the crumbling sidewalk and broken hatches...) avoiding mobs of motorbikes driven by twenty year olds, each with a beautiful girl perched side-saddle on the back, or ride in taxsi's, horn beeping as we weave our way past motorbikes, chickens, more motorbikes with huge loads of plastic buckets or sacks of rice, and other pedestrians, we hope these offerings will keep everyone on the streets of Ubud safe, happy and prosperous..
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