Balinese Banten

The Balinese make beautiful offerings in little baskets woven from coconut fronds every day. These offerings, called banten or sesaji, usually consist of colourful petals and small food items such as biscuits, pinches of glutinous rice cakes, a scattering of rice grains, but I've seen individually wrapped mint candy and an entire spring roll laid out for the gods.

Not everyone makes her own banten. If you are clumsy, not artistically inclined, terribly busy, or a combination of all the above, you can buy banten. You pay a person, usually a lady, and she'll come by to your shopfront/house every day to place a new banten and clear your old one. But I think you'll have to strike an agreement with the gods to make sure that the merit and good fortune still go to you and not the banten caterer. Because you paid her. And it's the money that counts.

Banten is put everywhere. They are in temples, houses and shops, on the pavements, in dangerous blind corners of roads, by the river, at the beach, and at all stone shrines, big and small. They are always really pretty. Visitors to Bali usually see their first banten in a cab. Banten is put in cars as an offering for a day's safe journey and in cabs, for better business.




A row of bikes for rent.

Balinese women on their way to ceremonies and a group of Balinese men at the wantilan.