Spectacular is the only word to describe sunsets in Bali. I have never seen anything like those in my life. Every night, hundreds if not thousands of people gather on the Kuta Beach, the famous surf beach of Bali, to enjoy the heavenly show which is far better than an average Hollywood movie. And in better technicolor!

The magnificent flaming colours are not only due to the tropical climate and humidity but also Indonesia’s high volcanic activity. Volcanic ashes in the sky reflect the light and make the colours so powerful. When Krakatoa exploded in 1883 the sunsets were screaming orange and blood red as far as in Europe for a year or two. I remembered this while watching the show, and remembered something else too. There was one painting in my mind all the time. This:

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

The Scream (all of its versions) has been painted about ten years after Krakatoa sunsets. I remember from my Art History classes from uni a heated debate about weather Munch painted the real sunsets of Krakatoa or not, a debate which has hottened art circles ever since the painting was fresh. Some claim Munch is an expressionist and wouldn’t have had painted anything realistic but express his inner feelings. True, yes, but in this case bullshit. I claim now after seeing the volcanic ash sunsets that this kind of powerful views ink to your mind so strongly that it will come out some day in some form, especially if you are an artist.

Munch writes to his diary himself in Nice in 22.01.1892 about the birth of The Scream: “I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

In Kuta Beach, late December 2008 the sunsets were as intense. Close to winter solstice, when the sun is close to its lowest point, a huge bright red-orange sun will approach the horizon of Kuta like a giant juicy blood orange, descending ever so slowly. The water reflects the gold and orange, the sky is painted first to more impressionistic flashes of honey, gold, rosy pink, malva and forget-me-not blue, then the colours intensify to expressionistic level: to burned sienna, flaming orange, blood and burgund, indigo and azure. Broken pieces of cotton clouds march across the sky like soft silk fabrics, and rays of the dying sun colour them with a thick brush.
When the sun has disappeared behind the horizon, the sky and the sand still reflects the colours for a long time.

The feeling was really strange, like sitting on the last beach of the world, or just minutes before the world’s end. We joked about that, and felt like living in a sci-fi movie setting. Always when the sun went down I held my breath for a moment for something bad to happen, but it never did. But the hold of the sun was like a magnet, and I understood well why the ancient people were sun worshipers. Well, in many temples in Bali they still have the special sunset rites and offerings even today, and the local people also came to beach to put a small, floating offering of flowers, incense sticks, fruits and snacks to the Gods.

Sunsets were definitely the best time in Kuta. When your eyes were fixed on the sky, you didn’t see all the trash which was floating all over the shallow water. Plastic bags, ice-cream papers, water bottles, used condoms, broken flip-flops, even dead fish. You name it. The colour of the water reminded of watery oatmeal, gray and more solid than water should be, and foul-smelling.

Water was so disgusting I had no intention to swim in it. I was planning to get some surf lessons, but after seeing the water (and smelling it!) I decided otherwise. An English couple we met in the hostel pool had had some lessons but cut them short when they discovered a dead, rotten fish size of their surfboard almost floating nearby. Locals say its only now on Western wind season, when the wind blows everything into the bay, and other times of the year beach is clean, but I don’t know. I have my doubts. Even the local hospital warned on its fliers not to swim on rainy season, especially near the street-water sawyers. So much for the famous surf beach, then, and we spend most of our time in the pool.

I will try to put some more photos from Bali to Flickr soon. When the connection here in Borneo allows…
Maiku