Hindu Happy New Year
Trip Start
Jul 18, 2004
1
8
9
Trip End
Aug 16, 2004
Chakranegara, Indonesia
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
The day we arrived, we went straight to the market to do some last souvenir shopping. In the afternoon, a guy from our hotel invited us to celebrate the Hindu New Year (whatever the festival really was) with him and his friends. So we came to the house of an obviously quite rich Hindu. We sat in the courtyard with him and his friends, all men, and drinks were offered. We could choose between the pink, yeast-tasting palm wine and some special Arrak, hm, cocktail. A huge jar with strange solid stuff at the bottom, filled with brownish liquid. They told us, the solid parts were ginseng, sheep foetus and special herbs. Too late, we couldn't get out of that, our glasses were filled and Thomas had already announced that we didn't like palm wine. To be honest, it didn't taste that bad, a bit like sherry, just stronger. You shouldn't look at the solid parts in the huge glass though, they really seemed to be foetus.
Thomas bravely stuck to that drink, along with the guy from the hotel; Rebecca switched to pink palm wine.
The whole party was boozing only, Remo you would have loved it! After a while, they got out a guitar and drums and bells, and played and sang traditional Balines songs. It was really cool, great atmosphere.
We made a big mistake when they tried to hand the guitar to Thomas: he said he couldn't play the guitar, only the keyboard. Guess what they did! YES! They got a keyboard from somewhere. And Thomas didn't know a singel song by heart! So he played "Alle meine Entchen", a kid's song, and "Oh Tannenbaum", a christmas song, stating they were "traditional German songs". We also sang, but the whole thing wasn't as good as they had hoped, so they quickly got back top the traditional Balinese music, fair play to them, it was much better.
We also got loads of food there. Rice, fried noodles, (pork!) meat, chicken with chillie, grilled fish, roasted duck, all spicy, all good.
Thomas had to toast many times with the men, Selamat Minum, and got a bit drunk. So Rebecca decided it would be better to leave before sunset, to find back home, and to put Thomas under a shower.
It was a bit difficult to get out of this incredible hospitality, somehow we did. I mean, they had never met us before and entertained us a whole afternoon with food and drink and music!
The evening was quiet, the next morning early, for the market, some more shopping and then the ferry to Bali.
