The street shrines of Kuta

Even in the most modern of Thai cities, one can walk down the street or stroll a university campus and suddenly happen upon a stupa, an ancient Buddhist shrine around which the city has grown up as if the structure were protected by a force field. Some of these objects date back to the reign of Charlemagne or to the early Middle Ages, when Notre Dame of Paris was being constructed. Some are so old that, like primeval mountains, they are eroded down into pitted mounds. They aren't nearly as grand as the vast wats, Thai temples with which the tourist soon becomes watted out. They are simply part of the urban landscape. But people still leave offerings of flowers, food, and drink at them, and they remain undisturbed no matter where they stand. To stumble across such remarkable artifacts in the midst of a bustling city, unnoticed and unheralded by plaques or guided tours, is a constant revelation.

  

Here in Kuta, Bali, there are even more such structures, though here they are Hindu and not usually so archaic. Some of them are parts of actual temples, pura, but even the little back-alley neighborhoods of Bali look like temple complexes because of their coronet finials, internal courtyards and shrines, and tiled or thatched rooflines.



Apparently, once these edifices are installed, they are never removed.  There are remnants everywhere, still rising silently amid the empty spaces surrounded by ongoing hotel construction.

                                 

Some are now doorways to nowhere, protected by leering guardian demons, dvarapala, who bear weapons and fearsome scowls.

Some dvarapala stand in front of bars and surf shops that have sprouted around them. They are respectfully draped in checkered robes or shrouded like mummies. 

                                                

Barely noticeable twin shrines, contained by iron fences, flank the vacant lot that cuts between The Pad Bar & Grill and our hotel, giving it the illusion of being a bit safer at night.

Antique stone walls coated in emerald-green moss surround a muddy parking lot off Legian Street.

But the newest shrine erected in Kuta has a grimmer origin. Regrettably, it is listed as a top TripAdvisor attraction, in front of which one can see visitors in Santa hats taking one another's grinning photos and their own selfies. On the site of the destroyed Paddy's Pub, a busy corner off Legian Street, stands the massive carved-stone Ground Zero Monument, a memorial to the 2002 terrorist bombings in the Kuta tourist district. It lists on a black marble plaque the names and nationalities of all 202 victims, most of them Australian partiers. One of our drivers, Gede, was among the lucky, bartending at Paddy's when first one, then another bomb went off, leaving him with a permanent tinnitus in one ear and covered with the blood of customers whom he had been serving just moments before.

                                        

The monument bears a handful of smaller, more poignant memorials from the families of individuals who lost their lives there: Jerry & Andrew, Happy Birthday Joey, May Family. One wonders why there are so few of these remembrances.

Like the other mute shrines around the city, it will no doubt stand forever. But it is unlikely that it will ever be as solemn as they. There is now an annual "Kuta Karnival" media promotional event--originally an attempt to bring tourism back to Kuta, but now a big beach party--that celebrates the anniversary of the bombings,