ANIMISM:

1.  belief that nature has soul: the belief that things in nature, e.g. trees, mountains, and the sky, have souls or consciousness
2.  belief in organizing force in universe: the belief that a supernatural force animates and organizes the universe
3.  belief in existence of separate spirit: the belief that people have spirits that do or can exist separately from their bodies

The Balinese are predominantly Hindus or animists and have many wonderful rituals...and these daily rituals are a major draw card of tourism. Every morning you see little baskets of woven banana leaves with a little rice and some other bits of food and lots of tiny flowers....offerings for a peaceful and profitable day. The ritual alone when they put these little baskets down everywhere is fascinating to watch.
Usually done by the lovely girls dressed in their Balinese outfits and they go through a ritual of the most graceful hand movements and it's really quite beautiful to watch.

And that is what is so sad about this, above and beyond the tragedy of such an event. The people responsible would do this to their own countrymen, destroy their fellow human being's lives without any guilt or compunction
The hotel I was staying at is on the street that runs parallel to the street where the bombing of those two pubs happened. By proximity it was not that close really, but the effects were still visible in that when I got back to my room, my bed was covered in dust and the bathroom was a mess too... dust and debris from the ceilings. The building must have shaken so much for this to happen.
I was fortunate enough not to be right there when it happened....I was having dinner with friends (at a restaurant on the same street but a suburb away)
and we were on our way back to this part of Legian Street to go to the Sari Club where most Aussies hang out.
This is one of the pubs that was hit very badly and where most of the tourists were either injured or killed. I still to this day cant thank God enough or feel so lucky....if we had got their five or ten minutes earlier....
At first we thought the traffic was just a normal Saturday night traffic jam on Legian Street, but this one seemed to be more congested. Our taxi driver asked a pedestrian what was going on...and the pedestrian told him that one of the pub/restaurants up the street is on fire...they think it was a gas cylinder that exploded.
Some of the seafood restaurants on this part of Legian Street...right in the heart of Kuta...do their cooking in front of the restaurant....you choose your seafood and you tell them how you want it cooked...either barbecued, fried or whatever, and they do it right in front of you.
They use gas cookers and these cookers are fuelled by gas bottles underneath. Very rarely but it has happened, there is a faulty valve or leaking tap on these bottles and sometimes they can explode. And this is what everyone thought had happened at first.
The police were all over the place blocking off the street so we couldnt get into that part. We had to deviate through a side street to get back to our hotel.
When I got back to my hotel, the staff in the lobby were all very shook up and some were crying and some had left so there was only a skeleton staff on (which is unusual as it was only about 10.30 - 11pm). That's when I found out what had really happened. Then I panicked because two guys I met staying at that hotel told me that afternoon that they were going to the Sari Club that evening for dinner and drinks and would I join them later on.
I went straight to their rooms but sure enough they werent there.
The next morning I went down to the poolside restaurant where I always had breakfast with these two guys I met...and they werent there. I asked the staff if they had seen them and I was told they never returned.
I dont know to this day whether these two guys were killed or (hopefully) merely injured. I was really scared so I raced down to the nearest Garuda Airlines office and changed my booking for the next available flight to Jakarta. I managed to get an afternoon flight and I raced back to my hotel, packed my bags, paid my bill and raced for the airport. I knew there would be a massive exodus of tourists leaving and sure enough the airport was packed.
The really sad part to this story is...these two guys...Chris and David....were married and each had very young children.  Like me, they were both from Perth. Their wives entered a competition in an Australian women's magazine for a free trip to the Gold Coast in Queensland. They won the trip so the guys thought they would have a little holiday too...and Bali is a lot less (A LOT) expensive than going across the country to Queensland. The difference between a holiday in Bali (for people in Perth) to a holiday in Queensland is a couple of thousand dollars.
I thought about their wives and their little kids and I still feel very heart-broken about it. I wish now I had stuck around to find out what really happened to them but I was by myself...and I was scared. The friends I had dinner with the previous night were going home too so I didnt want to stay in Bali.
I thought....even though this is a hell of a way to start a new life in a strange city...at least I could thank God and my lucky stars that I was not one of the casualties of this horrible tragedy.
One year later, on the anniversary of the bombing I went back down to Bali to join the commemoration services. The head politicians from both parties  came up and there were many events and services being held for the survivors and families of those who were not so lucky.
In the year that followed the bombing, Bali became almost deserted. Tourists stayed away and the local people who's businesses survived from tourism dollars were suffering. These are already poor and struggling people and they depend very much on at least the Aussies, if not the other westerners for their daily survival.
It was plain to see how much of a struggle the local businesses went through that year, but to their credit, they remained as friendly and as wonderful as the people they are.
My most favorite and memorable part of the commemoration service was the evening of the 12th of October. Everyone was down at the beach in Kuta..including  the Prime Minister of Australia, the Opposition Leader and about 20 secret service guys (they stood out like sore thumbs...dressed in their black suits and forming a cordon around the dignitaries).
 Just a few minutes before sunset, hundreds and hundreds (literally) of people with surfboards lined the beach of Kuta. They walked into the sea with their surf boards laden with beautiful flowers...flat on the calm water and slowly walked in single file towards the setting sun. It was an incredible sight to behold. It was called the Walk for Peace. They slowly placed all the flowers into the water as they walked as far as they could and turned back towards the beach with the setting sun as a backdrop.
So many people cried and I still feel all choked up right now, just recalling these images. I think about Chris and David and still wonder...........