:: Bali - The Island of Gods Travel Guides ::
It is a
paradise
island for all visitors and a world of Hinduism temples.
Bali is a most favorite holiday destination for everyone
from all part of the world. Bali offers peaceful place,
great fun, relaxation for those who want to escape
themselves and the family from the pressures of daily
life.
Besides the leisure and relaxing, Bali is also conjure
up the unique experience for the couple who love one
each other to marry here in the beautiful island. Bali
gives a blessing with a spirit from the paradise in the
day where once in your lifetime experience.
Bali is
an Indonesian island located at 8°25′23″S, 115°14′55″ECoordinates:
[show location on an interactive map] 8°25′23″S,
115°14′55″E, the western most of the Lesser Sunda
Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to
the east. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with
the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of
the island. The island is home to the vast majority of
Indonesia's small Hindu minority. It is also the largest
tourist destination in the country and is renowned for
its highly developed arts, including dance, sculpture,
painting, leather, metalworking and music.
History
Bali h
as
been inhabited since early prehistoric times firstly by
descendants of a prehistoric race who migrated through
mainland Asia to the Indonesian archipelago, thought to
have first settled in Bali around 3000 BC.[citation
needed] Stone tools dating from this time have been
found near the village of Cekik in the island's west.
Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian, and
particularly Sanskrit, culture, in a process beginning
around the 1st century AD. The name Balidwipa has been
discovered from various inscriptions, including the
Blanjong charter issued by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 913
AD and mentioning Walidwipa. It was during this time
that the complex irrigation system subak was developed
to grow rice. Some religious and cultural traditions
still in existence today can be traced back to this
period. The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on
eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343. When the
empire declined, there was an exodus of intellectuals,
artists, priests and musicians from Java to Bali in the
15th century.
The
First
European contact with Bali is thought to have been when
Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived in 1597,
though a Portuguese ship had foundered off the Bukit
Peninsula as early as 1585.[citation needed] Dutch rule
over Bali came later, was more aggressively fought for,
and was never as well established as in other parts of
Indonesia such as Java and Maluku.
In the 1840s, a presence in Bali was established, first
in the island's north, by playing various distrustful
Balinese realms against each other. The Dutch mounted
large naval and ground assaults first against the Sanur
region and then
Denpasar.
The Balinese were hopelessly overwhelmed in number and
armament, but rather than face the humiliation of
surrender, they mounted a final defensive but suicidal
assault, or puputan. Despite Dutch demands for
surrender, an estimated 4,000 Balinese marched to their
death against the invaders. Afterwards the Dutch
governors were able to exercise little influence over
the island, and local control over religion and culture
generally remained intact.
Japan occupied Bali during World War II during which
time a Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai,
formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. Following Japan's
Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Dutch promptly
returned to Indonesia, including Bali, immediately to
reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. This
was resisted by the Balinese rebels now using Japanese
weapons.
On 20
November 1946, the Battle of Marga was fought in Tabanan
in central Bali. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, 29 years
old, finally rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga
Rana, where they made a suicide attack on the heavily
armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion was entirely wiped
out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military
resistance. In 1946 the Dutch constituted Bali as one of
the 13 administrative districts of the newly-proclaimed
Republic of East Indonesia, a rival state to the
Republic of Indonesia which was proclaimed and headed by
Sukarno and Hatta. Bali was included in the "Republic of
the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands
recognised Indonesian independence on Dec. 29, 1949. In
1950 Bali officially renounced the Dutch union and
legally became a province within the Republic of
Indonesia.
The
1963
eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created
economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be
transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia.
In 1965, after a failed coup d'etat in Jakarta against
the national government of Indonesia, Bali, along with
other regions of Indonesia most notably Java, was the
scene of widespread killings of (often falsely-accused)
members and sympathizers of the Communist Party of
Indonesia (PKI) by right-wing General Suharto-sponsored
militias. Possibly more than 100,000 Balinese were
killed although the exact numbers are unknown to date
and the events remain legally undisclosed.[2] Many
unmarked but well known mass graves of victims are
located around the island.
On October 12, 2002, a car bomb attack in the tourist
resort of Kuta killed 202 people, largely foreign
tourists and injured a further 209. Further bombings
occurred three years later in Kuta and nearby Jimbaran
Bay.
Geography
Bali
lies
3.2 km east of Java and approximately 8 degrees south of
the equator. East to west, the island is approximately
153 km wide and 112 km north to south (95 by 69 miles,
respectively), with a surface area of 5,632 km˛. The
highest point is Mount Agung at 3,142 m (10,308 feet)
high, an active volcano that last erupted in March 1963.
Mountains cover centre to the eastern side, with Mount
Agung the easternmost peak. Mount Batur (1,717 m) is
also still active. About 30,000 years ago it experienced
a catastrophic eruption — one of the largest known
volcanic events on Earth.
In the south the land descends to form an alluvial
plain, watered by shallow rivers, drier in the dry
season and overflowing during periods of heavy rain.
The principal cities are the northern port of Singaraja,
the former colonial capital of Bali, and the present
provincial capital and largest city, Denpasar, near the
southern coast. The town of Ubud (north of Denpasar),
with its art market, museums and galleries, is arguably
the cultural center of Bali.
There are major coastal roads and roads that cross the
island mainly north-south. Due to the mountainous
terrain in the island's center, the roads tend to follow
the crests of the ridges across the mountains. There are
no railway lines.
The
island
is surrounded by coral reefs. Beaches in the south tend
to have white sand while those in the north and west
black sand. The beach town of Padangbai in the south
east has both: the main beach and the secret beach have
white sand and the south beach and the blue lagoon have
much darker sand. Pasut Beach, near Ho River and Pura
Segara, is a quiet beach 14 km southwest of Tabanan. The
Ho River is navigable by small sampan. Black sand
beaches between Pasut and Klatingdukuh are being
developed for tourism, but apart from the seaside temple
of Tanah Lot, this is not yet a tourist area.
To
the east, the Lombok Strait that separates Bali from
Lombok marks the biogeographical division between the
fauna of the Indomalayan ecozone and the distinctly
different fauna of Australasia that is known as the
Wallace Line, for Alfred Russel Wallace, who first
remarked upon the distinction between these two major
biomes. When sea levels dropped during the Pleistocene
ice age, Bali was connected to Java and Sumatra and to
the mainland of Asia and shared the Asian fauna, but the
deep water of the Lombok Strait continued to keep Lombok
and the Lesser Sunda archipelago isolated.
The population of Bali is 3,151,000
(as of 2005).
Religion
Unlike
most
of Muslim-majority Indonesia, about 93.18% of Bali's
population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, formed as a
combination of existing local beliefs and Hindu
influences from mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Minority religions include Islam (4.79%), Christianity
(1.38%), and Buddhism (0.64%). These official
statistical figures do not include immigrants from other
parts of Indonesia.
Immigrants from other parts of Indonesia have
drastically changed the demographics in Bali.[citation
needed] Although the majority of the population of Bali
adheres to Balinese Hinduism, recent years have brought
an influx of people from other islands seeking to
benefit from the tourist industry, export of local
handicrafts and other factors, making Bali the most
affluent island in the region. The bombings in Bali by
Muslim militants and the numbers of wealthy Muslims from
Jakarta with political connections buying prime real
estate for development has started to create
Hindu-Muslim tensions where none existed before.
Culture
Bali is
famous
for many forms of art, including painting, sculpture,
woodcarving, handcrafts, and performing arts. Balinese
gamelan music is highly developed and varied. The dances
portray stories from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana.
Famous Balinese dances include pendet, legong, baris,
topeng, barong, and kecak (the monkey dance).
National education programs, mass media and tourism
continue to change Balinese culture. Immigration from
other parts of Indonesia, especially Java, is changing
the ethnic composition of Bali's population.
The Hindu new year, Nyepi, is celebrated in the spring
by a day of silence. On this day everyone stays at home
and tourists are encouraged to remain in their hotels.
On the preceding day large, colorful sculptures of
ogoh-ogoh monsters are paraded and finally burned in the
evening to drive away evil spirits. Other festivals
throughout the year are specified by the Balinese
pawukon calendrical system.
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