GWK Cultural Park

GWK or Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park, located at Ungasan, southern end of Bali, here is some description about the cultural park that i took from GWK cultural homepage http://gwk-culturalpark.com

Designed and built by Nyoman Nuarta, one of Indonesia's foremost modern sculptorhe Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue or GWK and its pedestal building will be standing 150 meters tall with its wings span 64 meters across. Made from more than 4000 tons of copper and brass, the statue is picturing Lord Wisnu, as the source of wisdom, riding on the back of the mythical bird Garuda as the manifestation of conscience toward Amerta, the perennial goodness.

The statue and its pedestal will be surrounded by more than 240 hectares cultural park which was once an abandoned and unproductive limestone quarry. The cultural park will provide attractions for both local and foreign visitors with supporting facilities such as Lotus Pond, Festival Park, Amphitheater, Street Theater, Exhibition Hall, as well as Jendela Bali The Panoramic Resto and souvenir shop. At present time, the statue of Wisnu, the statue of Garuda, and the hands of Wisnu have been placed temporarily in three different plazas within the park. GWK Cultural Park is intended to educate, especially the young generations about the importance of preserving and cultivating world’s cultural heritage.





So dont miss this amazing cultural park on your next visit to Bali. For further information on facilities, daily events and other attractive art performances, please visit www.gwk-culturalpark.com.

The Day Of Silence

New Year’s day is perhaps is the oddest day in Bali, On this day, throughout the island , silence is observed and inactivity reigns supreme. Also called Nyepi Day, the Balinese Day of Silence, New Year’s Day falls on the day following the dark moon of the spring equinox, and opens a new year of the Saka Hindu era which began in 78 A.D.

On Nyepi day, which starts with sunrise, don’t expect to be able to do anything. You will have to stay in your hotel. No traffic is allowed, not only cars, but also people, who have to stay in their individual house. Light is kept to a minimum, radio tuned down, and no one works, of course.
Even love making, this ultimate activity of all leisure-timers, is not supposed to take place, nor even attempted. A whole day simply filled with the barking of few dogs, the shrill of insects and simple long, long quiet day in the calendar of this hectic island

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The Galungan and Kuningan Festival

Among the many holidays in the Balinese 210-day calendar, the most prominent are undoubtedly those of Galungan and Kuningan ; the former on the Wednesday of the Dungulan week and the latter on the Saturday on the Kuningan week. Due to their frequency – roughly once every seven Gregorian months – these festivals are not celebrated as national holidays, but don’t try to do anything beetwen Penampahan Galungan (the day for the slaughter of the pigs that precede Galungan) and Manis Galungan, the day following it, or on the Friday preceding Kuningan; everything is closed. People go back to their village of origin to present offerings to their ancestors and village temples.

Unlike most Balinese festival which celebrate the particular anniversary of a temple, and are therefore scattered across the calendar, Galungan and Kuningan are all island holidays, everywhere, temples are all dressed up, with batik and white or yellow cloth wrapped around their individual shrines as sign that they are “occupied,” meaning the gods are visiting their descendants.

The ritual involved is a reminder of the strong ancestor’s cult aspect of the Hindu Balinese religion. When it took root in Bali, Hinduism instead of throwing away the older traditions as Christianity and Islam tended to do, integrated elements of ancestral beliefs and natural animism into its corpus, the rationale being that everything and every belief can be interpreted as “ray” or a manifestation of the “Ultimate Sun” of Surya (Siwa).

The ancestors do not come before being properly “invited”. They are expected to come on the Sugihan Jawa day when one makes offerings for the welfare of the world. The call is made in familiar language: “ Mai Jani mulih. Uba yang ngaenang banten. Mai delokin damuh-damuhe,” which means : “Please, come back home for a visit, we have prepared you food, please come and visit your descendants.”

This is all the more important for “dead” souls which have not yet undergone the whole cleansing process. If the dead is still buried in the cemetery, the soul is thought to be still hanging around nearby, provisionally entrusted to the God, the deity Prajapati. Thus it has to be handled with special care, and given the right punjung offering, lest it wreaks havoc among the living. But if the soul has been cremated and enshrined in the family temple, the danger is lessened and the chances are that its influence will be beneficent.

The language will change, though, to become more formal and religious, and the offering will be different, too: this time it will be a saji. The visit of the ancestors is expected to last until Kuningan. They will have feasted long enough and it will be time for them to go back to their realm of death. Another injunction will do “Go back over there to your abode of dead”. The shrines are then underessed and the temples return to quietness, waiting for another festival.

Source : Visitors Guide to Bali 2001/2002

Wishing a Happy Galungan and Kuningan Day to Ode and friends at Studio Kami, Dexno the master SEO and all my friends that celebrates it.

The Annual Bali Art Festival

This annual event usually held on midyear around June or July. All the art performances take place at Art Centre in Denpasar. For 30 days the festival presents arts and cultures performances from all regions of Bali. Actually not just from Bali, every year the festival would have guest performances from other provinces of Indonesia and foreign countries likes Japan, Australia, USA, etc.


So you don’t need goes around the island to find interesting art and cultures from every region of Bali, just come to the festival and you’ll find almost everything about the art and culture from all over Bali not to mention a bonus to see different cultures from other province in Indonesia and other countries.




What I like to see every time the event comes is the opening ceremonial that usually takes place at Bajra Sandi Monument in Renon Denpasar. Just like opening in sport event we will see the parade of the participants. In this festival the participants are represent all regions of Bali, other province of Indonesia and foreign countries.



The interesting parts of the parade that all the participants will wears their traditional outfit and performed a unique culture of their regions or countries. Unfortunately I could not watched the parade this year, but I still have some pictures from the opening ceremony parade last year.

The Day of Silence

New Year’s day is perhaps is the oddest day in Bali, On this day, throughout the island , silence is observed and inactivity reigns supreme. Also called Nyepi Day, the Balinese Day of Silence, New Year’s Day falls on the day following the dark moon of the spring equinox, and opens a new year of the Saka Hindu era which began in 78 A.D.

On Nyepi day, which starts with sunrise, don’t expect to be able to do anything. You will have to stay in your hotel. No traffic is allowed, not only cars, but also people, who have to stay in their individual house. Light is kept to a minimum, radio tuned down, and no one works, of course.
Even love making, this ultimate activity of all leisure-timers, is not supposed to take place, nor even attempted. A whole day simply filled with the barking of few dogs, the shrill of insects and simple long, long quiet day in the calendar of this hectic island.

Nyepi is religious event. Bali is a Hindu society, one that believes in the karmapala principle, according to which the dynamics of life and of Man’s individual fate is set in motion by “action”. Man is in the midst of a Samsara cycle of incarnation, each of which is determined by the quality of his actions (karma) in his former existence. His “ideal” is thus to put the system to rest, i.e., to control one’s actions, and thus to subdue one’s “demons”. Only in such a way can Man hope to achieve “deliverance” from his cycles of life (moksa) and eventually merge with the Oneness of the Void, the Ultimate Silence of Sunya.

The day of Silence is a symbolic replay of these philosophical principles. At he beginning of the year, the world is “clean”. The previous days, all the effigies of the gods from all the village temples have been taken to the river in long and colorful ceremonies. There they have been bathed by the Neptunus of Balinese lore, the god Baruna, before being taken back to residence in their shrines of origin. The day before Nyepi, all villages have also a large exorcist ceremony at the main village crossroad, the meeting place of the demons of the Bali world were let loose on the roads in a carnival of fantastic monsters, the Ogoh-ogoh.

The parade is held all over Bali after sunset. All the banjar neighborhoods and hundreds of youth associations make their own Ogoh-ogoh monsters. Some are giants from the classical Balinese lore, while others are guitarists, bikers or even AIDS microbes. All with fangs, bulging eyes and scary hair, illuminated by torches and with the accompaniment of the most demonic gamelan music (bleganjur) of the Balinese repertoire. They surge suddenly by the hundreds from every street, some more “horrible” than the others, each carried on the shoulder of four to thirty youths, jerking this way or that way so as to give the impression of a dance, or sudden turning in circle, much to the fascination of the spectators.

And, believe it, this is not small “procession”, it lasts for three to four hours, as if Bali has an inexhaustible pool of demons. No more than it gods and goddesses for sure. Thus, on Silence day, the world is clean and everything starts anew, with Man showing his symbolic control over himself and the “force” of the World. Hence the mandatory religious prohibitions of mati lelangon (no pleasure), mati lelungan (no traffic), mati geni (no fire), and mati pekaryan (no work).

Source : Visitors Guide to Bali 2001/2002