It’s almost 3 in the morning. Today is March 7, 2019. The Balinese People is celebrating their Nyepi or Silent day. Every year, for one day, they close every shop, don’t work, don’t take any leisure to take a pause and perform a silent day. It’s a ritual for cleansing Bali from unholy activities brought by both locals and tourists like me.
So why am I still awake? We got to our Villa here at Buana Sakti in Ubud early. I got tired from travelling through Ubud’s Holy Water Temple, Falls, Rice terraces, Volcano, and Butterfly Garden. And then, I slept from 4 pm to 1 am. I got up to check some emails from work. I wasn’t really planning to blog but there is something about Bali that makes my thought alive even if it is 3:00 am. Bali is a paradise that is about to get lost and I hope that we do something about it. Maybe, that’s the reason why I am still awake at 3 in the morning because it’s like an itching thought.
Bali’s popular Kuta Beach has a fair share of rubbish on its shores
I decided to book a Bali tour for me, my husband, and son because of the swarm of facebook posts that I read about Bali. The beautiful temples, the rich and abundant culture, the amazing waterfalls and beaches but what I haven’t read is about is it’s water pollution. It’s sad. It’s depressing. Not because I didn’t enjoy the tours and not because I didn’t find Bali beautiful and worth our money. It’s sad and depressing because I can see Bali getting eaten up by swarms of plastics. I can see Bali’s water turning from blue to mud like. I do not know where to start because I’ll be leaving Bali 2 days from now. All I can do is create AWARENESS… raise AWARENESS out of my shitty writing. Out of my incoherent thoughts. I haven’t written any personal blogs for years now but this condition in Bali made me want to. Don’t take me wrong, I live in the Philippines where we are facing a lot of issues with both air, land, and water pollution. I am not saying that I live in a perfect country but let us do our fair share of keeping the planet clean and saving our environment no matter how little or big our contribution is. I am not even planning to start a clean up brigade at Bali. This is the little thing that I can do about it – to raise awareness and do my share in disposing my garbage using the right way. It angers and saddens me that people can do shit things like this. Why would you throw garbage in a place as beautiful as Bali? And if people can throw nasty things in a paradise like Bali, what more can they throw in simple places like unpopular river, sea, and other bodies of water?
The video above is a diver’s viral video about the plastic pollution in Bali. I hope you will not get disinterested about visiting Bali. It’s a beautiful paradise that is about to be lost if we normal and ordinary tourists like us don’t do our part. While we post beautiful things like this in our social media accounts, take your part and raise awareness about the ugly side of the trip not because you want to discourage others from visiting the place but for you to raise awareness. To emphasize that a single plastic thrown in the sea, in the land will soon pile up. Do you think that those plastics were purposely thrown all at the same time? NO, they are thrown mindlessly by ordinary tourists like you and me who don’t think that a single plastic cup will do a harm in a body of water as big as a sea or an ocean.
The photo above is my son, me, and my husband enjoying the view from The Edge’s infinity pool at Kuta alan Pura Goa Lempeh Banjar Dinas Kangin Pecatu, Uluwatu. We also went to Nusa Dua beach and it’s still clean. So far, the beaches in Kuta are the ones that are polluted.
Am I going to visit Bali again? Yes, I will. The polluted beaches at Kuta doesn’t mean that Bali is ugly and disgusting. Maybe, that’s the reason why other tourists don’t blog about these things. We always want to create that perfect vacation image – photos of pristine beaches, wonderful bikini bodies, smiles, laughter, blue skies, and majestic temples and we don’t want to taint it with the ugly side of it. I don’t have any personal photos of what I saw – why? Because I, myself, is guilty of this. I was dismayed, I didn’t took a photo of it. Eventually, I realized that I have to share this. We already have a lot of people blogging about their itinerary and while all of these are helpful, let us also add our own insights in restoring mother earth.
This is my own way of celebrating Nyepi (Silent Day) here in Bali. Not a day to be silent about the water pollution here in Bali. Not a day of cleansing Bali from unholy Activities but of raising awareness to Clean its bodies of water.
Forgive me if my ideas about this issue is scattered everywhere in this post. I’ll try to be more organized in my next blog posts.
Next on my blog
A review of The Edge Bali and One Eighty Bali Restaurant
