Serious Business

   Kites are a big deal in Bali.  During the windy season from June-August, kids all over the island are flying kites.  If you're in the right areas, it's not uncommon to look up and see close to a hundred kites up in the sky.  But it's not just for kids...

   Adults also take kite making and kite flying seriously.  There are huge festivals and contests that pit kites against each other from villages all over Bali.

   Some of the kites can be over 45 feet long, with the tails measuring 100s of feet long.  Although it's not fun to be stuck in the many traffic jams caused when they are carrying these big kites to the beach to fly them, it is pretty cool to see lots of the big ones up in the air at the same time. 

   With the proliferation of small GoPro-type cameras, more and more villages are recording the events of the day but also hooking up the cameras directly to their big kites as they fly.  It's interesting to get the vantage point from up top.  You can CLICK HERE for one (really long) video taken from a local village in Bali, it kind of shows the activities of the kite festival day. 

   The video on top is a trailer of a documentary that was done chronicling the history of the kites and the cultural/religious significance of the kite festivals.

Musim Angin

Musim anging means windy season. It is just beginning and it is our favorite time of year here in Bali. The rain is gone which makes it less humid, and there is almost always a cool (relatively speaking) breeze.

It's also the time of year when there are kites everywhere. We were driving near the beach last week and spotted some really big ones... They look kind of small in the picture, but I'm guessing the tails on those things were at least 40 feet long.

UFO (can you see the blue spot?)

I don't know if it's the dogs howling, the bats flying around, or the chanting in ancient languages, but our street can be a little bit eerie at night. Keep this in mind when reading the following story...

I was walking home the other night at about 11pm, and I looked up into the sky. I saw a hazy, blue light moving around in the sky. It was moving erratically, and then it disappeared. About two seconds later it reappeared. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things. But it was still there, and it was still appearing and reappearing and moving very strangely around in the sky. By the way it was moving around and randomly disappearing, I knew it couldn't be a plane. So what was it??

All kinds of theories were floating around in my head as to what this could be. I was starting to get a little concerned. I went to my friend, and very seriously asked about the nature of this strange blue light. The Balinese are always talking about spirits, black magic, and ghosts, so he could have come up with quite a story. Fortunately, he decided to immediately tell me the truth instead of having fun with his naive foreign friend.

"It's a kite. It has lights on it and the batteries are almost dead."