Bali next……

 I have been here once before in 2007, and i felt that it was a very spiritual place – I couldn’t really put my finger on why….. I hope that my second visit leaves the same impression.

Its night time when I arrive, and one thing I hadn’t noticed before was the shape of the moon. When we have part moons in the UK , we get a crescent shape, but the moon here is lit from the underside making it look like a large Cheshire cat smile in the sky.

As you can imagine its very warm here even at 9pm but guess what, they even have hoodies here in Bali! They are all hanging around the airport asking if you need any help with your bags. I arrive at my hotel and am given a beautiful free garland of flowers and a glass of fruit nectar! The flowers smell divine  – a combination of fragrant Jasmine blossoms and small red rose buds, and the aroma hangs around for 3 days (much longer than the delicious drink!)

The following day I am collected from my hotel by our local agent for Bali, Mr Benny and our Indonesian agent Andy for today’s visits. I notice that a lot of the trees and the roadside statues have checked cloths around them. I ask the reason for this and am told that they denote cosmic duality – the concept of good versus evil. The Balinese see the world in terms of opposites, night and day, good and bad, mountain and sea. One cannot exist without the other. The cloth is known as Poleng and is the perfect representation of this view – the squares are of equal size, perfect black and perfect white. Grey squares contain both black and white strands to show that you cannot have one without the other.

Most of the statues are also shaded by ornate parasols which are seen as symbols of protection for obvious reasons.

There seems to be an awful lot of activity around the temples and this is because there are many public cremations to be held today. In Denpasar alone there are a total of 40 bodies waiting to be cremated. It is a day of great ceremony –  all the villagers help to build the funeral pyres, even the children help to thread the flower garlands that will decorate the cemeteries  and the bodies. Cremations are an important and elaborate event in Bali, but because of the monetary cost, most people can’t afford to have their departed cremated straight away. Families therefore, often wait months for the public cremation so that the villagers can pool resources and have a ceremonious send off. I think the fact that everyone is involved whether you have anyone to cremate or not brings the village together as a whole and also de-mystifies the process of death….here it is always a celebration of life rather than a sad occasion. I like the idea of death being so much a normal part of life.

Our main business here in Bali is fragrance for Incense. The whole island has a fragrant aroma, with incense being burned on every street corner, in every home and every temple. It is burnt as an offering to the Gods. No-one knows exactly where the Gods might be at any given time, but the Balinese believe that smoke from the incense will find its way to the Gods, assuring that the relevant prayers and offerings will be delivered.

As I leave Bali on my way up to Jakarta, I spy a wooden lizard in one of the craft stalls at the airport. The lizard now adorns my lounge wall and is known to everyone as Mr Benny!

Next stop Surabaya and Jakarta…..

The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed back at Cape Canaveral on Thursday at 5.57am, heralding the end of NASA’s 30 year shuttle programme.

It has been NASA’s longest running space flight programme and in the words of Commander Christopher Ferguson ‘After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle has earned its place in history. And it’s come to a final stop.”

Only 12 people have walked on the Moon – all of them American, and so it is only through these handful of astronauts that we can glean any real information as to the atmospheric conditions up there.  Apollo 17 astronaut, Gene Cernan gives us an insight to the mysterious smell of moondust. You might be wondering how he could smell the moons surface as they were fully covered in their lunar spacesuits, but the trouble with moondust is that it suffers from a terrible case of static cling (bit like my hair actually!). This I am informed is due to the solar winds constantly bombarding it with electrons. Therefore, after every moonwalk, although the astronauts did their best to remove the dust, it was trampled back inside the lander on their boots and also on their helmets and gloves.

Once the helmets and gloves were taken off, the astronauts could feel, taste and smell the moon. It apparently feels soft like snow but has an abrasive quality, and the smell is akin to burnt gunpowder. All the astronauts are in agreement with the smell, and are all very specific that it is like burnt gunpowder not the unfired variety. Curiously, back on Earth, moondust has no smell whatsoever. There are a few theories as to why this might be as follows…

The moon is akin to a 4 billion year old desert, incredibly dry. Once the moondust came into contact with the moist air inside the lunar module it began to give off odour in a similar way to the the smell that we get here as the first big splats of rain hit the pavement after a hot dry spell.

Another theory is that the the smell comes from the evaporation of gases caused by the solar winds once in contact with moist air.

There is yet another theory that oxygen when combined with the chemicals in the moondust could create oxidation which, although too slow for smoke or flames, could produce a burnt aroma.

So, if any of these theories apply then the samples brought back for study would already have been ‘pacified’, and any smelly chemical reactions therefore, would have ended long ago.

Nasa plans to send people back to the moon in 2018, and hopefully we will be able to discover more about the smell of the moon. In the meantime, whilst researching moon information I came across this recipe for your own home made moon oil….have fun

MAGIC MOON OIL

13 drops of sandalwood oil

9 drops of vanilla extract

3 drops of jasmine oil

1 drop of rose oil

Mix oils together prior to the next full moon and then place on a windowsill in a clear container overnight in the light of the moon. This captures the energy of the moon. Use to anoint yourself or in an oil burner when you feel that you need a burst of moon energy…and of course dont forget to let me know how you get on with all your newfound energy!