Welcome to Bali
Bali is an Indonesian island located at 8°25′23″S, 115°14′55″E, one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, and one of the country's 33 provinces. It is in a chain with Java to the west and Lombok to the east. Bali is a tourist destination and, along with Java, known for its highly developed arts, including dance, sculpture, painting, leather and metalworking, and music, especially that played on the gamelan.
Geography
Bali lies 3.2 km east of Java and about 8 degrees south of the equator. The island is 153 km long and 112 km wide (95 by 69 miles), with a surface area of 5,633 km². 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 from the centre to the eastern side, with Mount Agung the easternmost peak. Mount Batur is also still active. About 30,000 years ago it experienced a catastrophic eruption — one of the largest known volcanic events on Earth.
The principal cities are the northern port of Singaraja and the capital, Denpasar, near the southern coast. The town of Ubud (north of Denpasar), with its art market, museums and galleries, is regarded as the cultural center of Bali.
In the south the land descends to form an alluvial plain, watered by shallow rivers, dry in the dry season and overflowing during periods of heavy rains.
Its population of over 3 million is mainly (about 93%) Hindu, but a very small part is Muslim (mostly coastal fishermen).
The main tourist locations are the town of Kuta (with its beach), Sanur, Jimbaran, Seminyak and the newer development of Nusa Dua. The Ngurah Rai International Airport is located near Jimbaran, on the isthmus joining the southernmost part of the island to the main part of the island.
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 north 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 (Tabanan), near Sungai Ho and Pura Segara, is a quiet beach 14 km southwest of Tabanan. The Ho River is navigable by small sampan. Beautiful black sand beaches between Pasut and Klatingdukuh are being developed for tourism, but apart from the famous seaside temple of Tanah Lot, this is not yet a tourist area.
Most of the Balinese people are involved in agriculture, primarily rice cultivation. Crops grown in smaller amounts include fruits, vegetables and other cash crops. A significant number of Balinese are also fishermen. Bali is also famous for its artisans who produce batik and ikat cloth and clothing, wooden carvings, stone carvings and silverware.
History
Balinese people are descendants of a prehistoric race who migrated through mainland Asia to the Indonesian archipelago, presumably first settling around 2500 BC.The end of the prehistoric period in Indonesia was marked by the arrival of Hindu people from India around 100 BC as determined by Brahmi inscriptions on potsherds. The name Balidwipa has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong charter issued by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 913 AD and mentioning Walidwipa. The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on Eastern Java island founded a Balinese colony in 1343. The empire collapsed slightly before 1500 due to assaults, causing an exodus to Bali.
Europeans first discovered Bali when Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived in 1597, though a Portuguese ship had foundered off the coast of Bukit as early as 1585. The Dutch soon established a trade post, and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) started trading from early 17th century. Dutch control of the island was firmly established after a series of colonial wars (1846–1849). These wars were so fierce (with the entire royal court of the Raja, women and children, plunged into battle armed with kris and spears, preferring to kill each other on the battlefield rather than be taken captive) that afterwards the Dutch governors exercised little influence over the island, generally allowing local control over religion and culture to remain intact.
Japan conquered Bali during World War II and maintained control until August 1945. During the Japanese occupation a Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai, began to gather a Balinese 'freedom army'. The Dutch returned immediately to reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. But now Balinese rebels were fighting them with 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, led his 95 guerrillas in a last-ditch battle in which all were killed by aerial bombardment-a reenactment of the 'puputans' of 40 years earlier. After a series of guerilla type confrontations which served to arouse the wrath of the Dutch, Ngurah Rai 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 became part of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia on Dec. 29, 1949. In 1956 Bali officially renounced the Dutch union and became legally a province within the Republic of Indonesia.
In 1965, after a failed coup d'etat in Jakarta against the national government of Indonesia, Bali was the scene of widespread killings of (often falsely accused) members and sympathizers of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) by right-wing militias, along with several other parts of Indonesia, most notably Java. Possibly more than 100,000 Balinese were killed by the Indonesian military and associated militias, the exact numbers are unknown to date and the events remain legally remains unclosed[citation needed]. Until today many unmarked but well known mass graves of victims are located around the island.
On October 12, 2002, there was a car bomb attack in the tourist resort of Kuta, killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists and injuring a further 209. Another series of terrorist bombings occurred nearly three years later at Kuta and nearby Jimbaran; see 2005 Bali bombings.
Another increasingly important source of income for Bali is what is called "Congress Tourism" from the frequent international conferences held on the island, especially after the terrorist bombings of 2002; ostensibly to resurrect Bali's damaged tourism industry as well as its tarnished image.
Demographics
The population of Bali is 3,151,000 (at 2005).
Religion
Unlike most of Muslim-majority Indonesia, about 92% 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 (5.7%), Christianity (1.4%), and Buddhism (0.6%). These official statistical figures do not include immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.
Language
Balinese and Indonesian are the most widely spoken languages in Bali, and a large majority of Balinese people are bilingual and trilingual. Most of the staff working in Bali's tourist centres are, by necessity, multilingual, speaking as many as 8 or 9 different languages to a surprising degree of competence. There are several indigenous Balinese languages, but most Balinese can also use the most widely spoken option: modern common Balinese. The usage of different Balinese languages was traditionally determined by the Balinese caste system and by clan membership, but this tradition is becoming part of history.
English is a common third (or the primary foreign) language of many islanders, owing to the requirements of the large tourism industry.
Culture
Bali is famous for dance, as well as painting, scuplture, and woodcarving. Balinese gamelan music is highly developed and varied. The dances portray stories from Hindu Epics such as 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, mainly Java) is changing the composition of Bali's population.
