Ogoh Ogoh scare away ghosts in Seminyak Bali

Sitting in my house in Seminyak I feel lucky. The ghosts that normally hover over Bali have been scare away by the extravagant offerings made the Balinese and given a final kick out the door by the scary ogoh ogoh. To bad the religious conservatives from Jakarta weren’t here tonight, one of the ogoh ogoh had a woman in a bikini on its back. Its seems to me the Balinese have perfectly combined the old and the new with the ogoh ogoh’s. One of the ones I saw featured a wild looking creature with a barong like mask, fighting a crocodile.

Another has 2 brightly colored monsters fighting, each displaying fangs and sharp nails. The best one I’ve ever seen was a Freddy Kruger type monster doing a wheelie on a Vespa. Tonight the excitement was a bit too much for one monster and a chunk fell off. The crowd loved it, but remember, everything here is symbolic, if something fails in the ritualistic meeting of good versus evil, it could be a bad omen. Definitely don’t want Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva failing off of a float. It was a steamy night tonight and the young guys did a great job of hauling those floats up and down the street.