“Why there are always ceremonies happening every day in Bali?” This question might pop up in your mind while traversing around Bali, especially if you are the first timer. It is true that Balinese people have many agendas of ceremonies. In addition to the ceremonies on big celebration days, like Galungan, Kuningan, and Nyepi, there is one popular ceremony that you need to know, ‘Piodalan’.
In a simple term, Piodalan is the birthday or anniversary of a temple (holy place), and each temple has its own day. This also means that every single establishment, like hotel, restaurant, shop, that has a temple on its building complex holds the ceremony once a year. The preparation to Piodalan Day sometimes takes several days. Citadines Kuta Beach Hotel, which recently held the 4th Piodalan celebration, started all preparation two days before. They created penjor, prepared the offerings and do all the spiritual trips to a holy spring. On the ceremony day, all staff gathered together to clean all hotel area, pray together and some of the staff performed Rejang Dewi Dance. On Piodalan Day, all hotel team ask for a blessing from God for the future operation of the hotel and prevent from dangers and bad spirit.
Simple rules of thumbs when you encounter this kind of ceremony are don’t honk and don’t walk in front of them.
