This is the the big night of the year in Bali, the night before Nyepi as featured yesterday. Meeting some friends down the street to go to the gathering places for all the monsters - great wonderful statues of wood, styrafoam, paper mache, rebar, anything - sitting on a wood and bamboo platform carried through the streets by young men from the villages, neighborhoods they come from. Maybe about thirty tonight. Thousands watch them going down the street, rotating three times counter-clockwise at intersections. The ones in this area will end up in a field near Mertasari Beach and one by one they'll enter a performance area surrounded by a fence with people crowded all around. I think it's a soccer field, that size anyway. They'll rotate the Ogoh Ogoh there and ther'll be gamelan music and loud announcing. It will go on for hours. It's a wonderful crowd to be in. Never any dangerous or rowdy or drunk people - not that I've noticed. They'll be drinking water mainly. I've written about this before a few times. This is my fifth Ogoh Ogoh and Nyepi - missed the first one in 2014 because we were checking out Thailand and Japan for four months before coming back and staying put. Google Ogoh Ogoh to learn what it's about.
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