The “Thing” With Bali

When I came to Bali, I wasn’t sure what to expect as I’d been told many things.

The general consensus was that the island, once beautiful, is now crawling with tourists, Australian “bogans”, pretentious yoga couples floating down the streets and women in their fifties attempting to hopscotch in the footsteps of Elizabeth Gilbert.

Despite all this, I wanted to come here with an open mind. Bali had called me and I was determined to find out what it had to say.

To me.

Personally.

After a gruelling double-plane journey from the UK, no sleep, eyes like grit, and then a nightmare at immigration, we finally stepped out of the airport in Denpasar. As we began the drive to Sanur, I gazed out of the taxi window, my sleep-starved brain frantically joining the dots, trying to decide whether this place was anything like my beloved Cambodia.

And it was.

Kind of.

But it also wasn’t at all.

There was something in the air here that felt very different. Maybe it was the trees, I thought.

Nature was everywhere, as though the buildings were planted into a jungle (rather than the other way around). The greenery wasn’t sparse or apologetic, but looked rich, vibrant, bursting with more life and vitality I had never witnessed.

Was this the “thing” that felt different about the place?

I didnt know.

I couldn’t reallly put my finger on it.

The next few days we spent in Sanur, on the beach, letting our feet feel the dusty ground and our skin absorb the new levels of heat and humidity. The air was thick with smells: sandalwood burning in the mornings, incense rising from stone shrines outside every house and shop, the smoky sweetness of coconut shells turning to ash.

We wove our way through meals, jet lag, gritty Balinese coffee … and all the while I felt something. A sensation like an invisible field of energy woven through every street, every toothy smile, every flower shamelessly blossoming in the hedgerows.

It actually began to do my head in! I was unable to articulate what it was and was beginning to find it frustrating.

“What is it about this place?” I asked John, my absolute beloved man, who has lived in Bali on and off for many years. “There’s this… thing I can’t describe.”

He thought for a bit, then replied, “It could be because with nature and the Balinese, everything is sacred. People here believe every rock, every carving, every tree, every mountain, every street dog is animated with the divine.

Everything is treated with reverence. Nearly every day of the year there are ceremonies too … ceremonies for the gods, for nature, for people. The place is steeped in magic and devotion to the gods. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling?”

Once he’d said that, I began to see it: the care, attention, and love poured into the natural world; the biophilic architecture; the daily lives of the Balinese woven with offerings, spirits, and gods.

On the crooked pavements outside every home was a thrice-daily canang … a small banana-leaf tray holding flowers, blossoms, pandan, even cigarettes. Larger shrines of volcanic stone, housing offerings of food, flowers, billowing incense, sat tucked against the walls of houses, shops, and streets. Hidden like secret gardens among the properties were family temple complexes with ornately carved gates, pillars, and statues of gods and demons wrapped in cloth and saffron. Follow the mismatched, mango-tree-lined lanes and you eventually arrive at the village temple, the largest of all, and another fractal in this ever-expanding landscape created to honour gods, spirits, and nature.

It was then I began to understand the nameless field of energy I could sense.

It was an invisible weaving … a magical way of living that the Balinese move within. Lives full to the brim with gratitude, love, and reverence for the Otherworld and the consciousness they believe resides in all things.

Like silvery spider webs cast each morning when the first offerings laid, the extravagant, multi-day ceremonies, the meticulous prayers and symbolic rituals passed from grandparent to parent to child, the island is thick, almost impenetrable, with a unified field of the mystical.

If we could see it, it would throb from the land, the rocks, the trees, the food, the people, the creatures, and the culture like a heartbeat. So yes, there are Western minds, bogan grins, influencer selfies, yogic aloofness here and Eat, Pray, Love devotees here …

But there is also the net that seems to exist like an energetic framework throughout the fabric of Bali.

And now that I had at least an idea of what this thing was, I was determined to get into it further.

I wanted to swim in the current, slip beneath the surface, fuse my awareness with it, drink it, taste it, unite with the weave. I wanted to see what magic it contained.

And like all good magic, this synchronised perfectly with us leaving Sanur and heading to Ubud, energetic epi-centre of the island, treasure box of energetic gold and home to John’s sister, Sally, the lady with the magical key.