Holiday Weekend

Just finished a three day weekend yesterday, Friday was Nyepi or the Hindu Day of Silence on Bali and marks the start of a New Year in their calendar – with the exception of the hotels the whole island is closed for the day, there is no traffic pedestrian or motorised and even the beaches are closed.

“Nyepi is meant to be a day of self introspection to decide on values, eg humanity, love, patience, kindness, etc., that should kept forever. Balinese Hindus have many kind of celebrations (some sacred days) but Nyepi is, perhaps the most important of the island's religious days and the prohibitions are taken seriously, particularly in villages outside of Bali's southern tourist belt."

Although the religious observance is restricted to Bali, Friday was a national holiday across all of the Indonesian archipelago – unless you are an oilman who gets a request for a tender dropped in your lap on Thursday which has to be with the customer by Sunday. So it was 21:00 on Friday before lil' bro' returned from the office and we could head out to a BBQ a few houses down.

Did not return home until some time after 02:00 after the festivities had wound down with an extended karaoke session – an unusual mixture of pop/rock songs interspersed with Indonesian pop songs.

Saturday afternoon was BBQ time at lil' bro's house which started in the afternoon but was wrapped up by 19:00. Just as well really as we had foolishly agreed to play golf at 08:00 the next morning which meant leaving the house by 06:30. In the end I was really glad that we played as I was in much much better form than the last time and actually outscored lil' bro' which has not happened in a long time.

Saw more sun in that 3 hours than in the previous two weeks – we stopped after nine holes as we had another BBQ to attend at 15:00 and had to return to the house to shower and change and collect SIL and a driver before returning to Jakarta.

All in all am pretty glad that the weekend came to an end as my liver was starting to need a rest.