Bali Day 3
Learning time
Every day we try to learn something new about Bali, Indonesia or our immediate surroundings.
Ella
Ella wonders, what is the population of Indonesia?
The population of Indonesia is 273.8 million people
Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populous country.
The population of Bali is 4.37 million people
There are three main languages spoken in Bali: Indonesian, Balinese, and English.
We are all learning Indonesian on Duolingo!
Keith
We had the internet go down for two hours last night (boo!) and this made me curious about the internet tech in Bali that we rely on.
Our villa has fiber optic internet, and is quite speedy!
The provider is Biznet, based in Jakarta.
It looks like the provider was doing maintanance or had some kind of outage, because the upstream connection dropped completely. Besides this, the fiber internet has been very reliable.
We’ve been using Airalo eSIMs for data roaming which has been great (eSIMs let us keep our primary number for times that we need to receive an SMS, say for authentication). Unfortunately the coverage by the Indonesian provider Telkomsel is not great in our area so we’re limited to fiber when at home, for most things. However much of the area has enough coverage to connect to Google Maps or to call a cab.
Hoping that this event was an outlier as I am working remote from Bali for two months and need things to be reliable 😅.
Krista
We are finding these small woven baskets made from palm leaves filled with flowers, rice and other items on the ground everywhere we go. We have learned that this is a daily practice to express devotion and to honour the beauty and balance of life. These offerings are called “canang sari” and are a cultural tradition rooted in Balinese Hinduism, symbolizing gratitude and respect in daily offerings to gods and spirits, maintaining harmony between the physical and spiritual worlds.
Finley
Fin has found the general chaos and noise in Bali to be eye-opening. He used the word “devastating” to describe the poverty that he has seen in our short time here.
There is a lot of beauty here, but many other aspects that we are not used to. There is constant construction and development all around, tons of traffic, with motor bikes and scooters clogging the narrow streets. The streets are like a maze and it’s easy to get lost.
