Day 549: Nyepi, Bali’s Day Of Silence
Pray for me. We are now entering into the Nyepi, the Balinese “Day of Silence”.
For the next 38-hours the country will gradually go quiet. The official time is 6 am Thursday to 6 am on Friday but they are already busy shutting down now at 3 pm, ready for travelling home to their families.
DPS is the only airport in the world which shuts down for a full 24 hours every year.
The WiFi will be turned off. You are not allowed to cook on flames. You are not allowed to work. You are not allowed to move off your property – the roads are closed and you will be in trouble if you are caught out and about. You are not allowed any entertainment. You are not allowed to turn on the lights. Did I say the WiFi will be turned OFF?
For the curious, here is the Wikipedia entry which explains it in better detail than I can:
A local we spoke to last night is actually looking forward to this. It’s “a chance to relax and do nothing”, and “it will be good,” he said.
But the WiFi will still be turned off.
We have our clutch of snacks, fruit and water. I got some extra pillows from reception for a fort, and we grabbed a copy of Canngu Weekly on the way home. This will be rationed out page by page over the coming hours.
Tomorrow I am introducing Giang to the great British cultural icon that is “the crisp sandwich”.
? One thing I am looking forward to is the prospect of seeing the Milky Way. With the entire country switched off, Bali will become the worlds biggest dark site (I have not researched if this is true). A dark site is a place where your view of the starts isn’t blocked by light pollution from Earth. Catching a glimpse of the Milky Way / galactic core has been on my bucket list for many years. The sky season is not great for this though, we are right on the edge of when it is visible to the night sky, so it may or may not pan out.
Fingers crossed for clear skies, and for the WiFi for us to be returned to us post-haste. ?