Amed

I had one of the best dives of my life in the warm waters of Amed – an hour and 22 minutes of fish, untouched corals, sharks, turtles, cuttlefish, nudibranchs, and almost everything else the sea could provide. I'm sure that because we were down for so long we drifted beyond the normal dive site to where there were no signs of any activity past or present, and that was the true gem.

I won't go into anymore detail because there is something that trumps even that dive. As I was tucking the last inch of the mosquito net in around my bed by the light of my headlamp (thanks Liza, it's been really useful!), a knock comes to my door. The rapping came paired with a female French voice urgently calling out my name. Before my mind could come up with any possible disasters that could be happening, the voice announced that there was a car of people in the parking lot waiting for me to go to a traditional full-moon ceremony. Convinced that it couldn't be a dream since I never actually fell asleep, I tell Margerie that I need to put clothes on but will be there straight away. Fully clothed and suddenly far from tired, I climbed into the back of the van filled with 4 Balinese guys, Margerie, and some French girl strangely dating one of the guys even though she met him after she arrived alone a few days ago. Weird.

About 45 minutes of talking, laughing, singing, and trying to learn Indonesian, we came to the house of the guys in order to don the appropriate attire. A sarong for everyone, with an extra waist piece for me as well as a headdress. The pictures pretty much say it all. With the seal of approval on the attire, we were back in the van and all systems were go for the ceremony.

A 5 minutes' drive took us straight to the ceremony where we walked through a sea of at least a hundred scooters and motorbikes parked tightly all in the same direction. How anyone could locate his or her own, especially in the dark, was entirely beyond my imagination. Upon reaching the ceremony, my only focus was staying with the group. I barely looked around enough to notice that there were vendors there just like on the streets of the rest of Bali. I then realized that the ceremony was more of a celebration not unlike a carnival. This realization softened the shock of what I saw next, though I am still a bit dumbfounded. There were several clumps of men, each clump standing and sitting around something that I knew must be of great importance. When I finally peered through one of the crowds packed like Times Square on New Year's Eve, I could barely make out what seemed to be a game of some sort. There was a mat on the ground like Twister in the sense that there were different colors, but this mat also had different shapes and numbers. A man would release a silver ball on a wooden board with identical marks but this one came with nearly imperceptible troughs on each shape so the ball would stop on only one. It seemed to be a game not far from roulette. The thing that struck me was the fact that there was gambling at this biannual religious ceremony. I'll be the last one to judge, but all I'm saying is that I was taken by surprise.
Wandering through the crowd, the alienation was undeniable. Children's mouths would drop in awe and even members of the older age groups could be caught doing double takes. It was not offensive; we were the only three whites that I saw in the crowd of well over a hundred. I don't imagine white people at their traditional ceremony is commonplace so I came to expect the varied quizzical reactions. I couldn't go 5 whole minutes during the entire ceremony without an audible chuckle as I replayed in my head Margerie's urgent message at my door as I was literally putting my head on my pillow. Fruit bowls were passed around in a very sharing manner. Although a bit confused, the general demeanor of the crowd was one of acceptance and not a single person was rude to us the entire time unless you count staring which I've already addressed shouldn't be considered rude under the circumstance. By the time midnight rolled around, the guys ordered a round of meals for everyone. The sauces, meats, and vegetables prepared traditionally and served over rice were all too good to pass up, hungry or not. Before I knew it, we were back at their place returning the clothes and dropped off back at our hotels very soon thereafter. Although I was exhausted, finding rest proved difficult after such an extraordinary event.