On the Road to Sakenan

I sit next to a family from Amed in East Bali who have never been to Sakenan before (Home-based spiritual tourism has surged since the movie “Eat pay Leave”).  They leave the temple carrying two giant Spongebob balloons and talking about the big pink poo-bah who was chatting with the priests. I was at the Turtle Island (Sakenan) turn-off last month, waiting for a band of village gods to arrive down the bypass. To kill the time I chatted to a pair of singing traffic policemen who were waiting to help the ‘processioners’ and their gods to cross the busy road. I asked them their opinion of the “Bali Police Corruption” video on Youtube (2,000,000 hits). They were embarrassed about the bust and their colleagues’ subsequent fall from grace but were outraged, at the same time, about the “sting operation” style of the videonistas.