Offerings

Early mornings sees the Balinese out sweeping up all of the previous day’s offerings from around their businesses and homes.

Offerings may consist of coconut leaves, flowers (lots of frangipanis) and may also include biscuits, rice, candy and stalks of incense. 

Since the offerings can also be found in pavements and in the middle of streets, you should be careful not to step on them, because there is a superstition that people who step on them will be met by “Leak”, a kind of Balinese version of demon, which are said to eat human’s organs. “Leak”, which means “Bad Witch” in English, eats dead bodies in cemeteries in the afternoon, while at night, they are said to appear as tigers, monkeys, pigs, even as human’s head with some parts of internal organs to hunt living human.

Offerings constitiute a daily practice of many Balinese who may replenish these offerings 3 times a day. Because of its very religious society and its numbers of Hindus temples, Bali is called as the “Island of a Thousand Puras (Temples)”, or the “Island of the Gods”.Read more