Meghan Brown Anderson

BALInese culture

A place steeped in tradition and we are so fortunate to have been called family by the staff at the end of our stay!

Day 1 at dinner we were honored by a performance from some local dancers - they had the most intricate hand movements in this unique Balinese dance style!

Day 2 at breakfast we learned about societal structure: most people live in communities with a single complex per family. Every event from wedding ceremonies to funerals involve and are paid for by everyone. There is a real sense of comradery but at the same time we learned there is a class system - from high priests to royalty to commoners and this will often influence who marries who. A fun little anecdote is that children’s names have 4 set prefixes for the first 4 children of any family. If a 5th is born they are automatically named the same as the first with a suffix meaning “turn-over”.

Offerings

This was among the first things we noticed when arriving in Bali - from a sensual perspective: you can see and smell these beautiful arrangements of flowers and incense. Daily offerings are prepared and presented to ask permission from the spirits for us humans to inhabit the space. They were around the pool for example, in the corridors and everywhere from temples to airports.

Other traditions include seeing the local healer for all kinds of ailments, and asking the local priests for their blessing (for a wedding date, a baby name, a plot of land…) We even got blessed by the 2nd highest Priest in Bali as part of our “purification ceremony” which entailed being soaked in holy water and soaking-up the good energy as incense burned from a table of offerings then eating the blessed fruit and breads. We each got a head-dress made of some kind of straw and flower petals and all in all it was a beautiful and totally NEW experience!

BalinesE food

(THE BEST CATEGORY YET!)

Mmmmhmm - we gotta get those 6 mini-meals in per day, right?? So every morning we’d have our shakes and then workout - Gus would make a delicious smoothie, we’d have coffee with coconut milk, and almost always a selection of vegetarian options.

We were allowed to request our top picks on our last day!! PUMPKIN PANCAKES, these incredible PURPLE SQUASH BALLS with BROWN SUGAR, a delicious fruit platter, peanut butter and jelly toast slices and SAUTEED VEGGIES. DM me on Instagram @meghankbrown and let me know which recipes you’d like cause I bought their recipe book!