The Road to Bali

This is my first and second combined blog, so I hope if there's anyone out there, I'll be forgiven. I'm Maurice Gold, originally from Edinburgh, in Scotland. I'm 56 years old, just recently married (!), and living in Bali, Indonesia. In summer 2005, my then girlfriend and I had a wonderful holiday in Bali. Later that year, she was still so impressed, (and so fed up with life in England), that she talked me into thinking seriously about having a life together out there. In late 2005, I threw in my IT job of 16 years, in a print firm in London, got married and made plans to move out.
It wasn't done quite like that really, because the "thinking seriously" bit required considering that living on air wasn't a good idea. I needed to find some sort of money-making venture. And that was how Bali Art Sales was born.

Bali, for those who don't already know is an island in the South Pacific, one of around 15,000 islands that make up what is now Indonesia. (Indonesia is home to over 200 million people and is considered by some to be the world's 3rd largest democracy.
Indonesia as a whole, is mainly Muslim, in general more moderate and peaceful than their counterparts elsewhere).
Bali is a small island, stretching approximately 140 Km from east to west, and 80Km from north to south.
The people there are naturally creative; many artists and artisans, and indeed whole villages earn their living from the manufacture and sale of arts and crafts.
These items range through; painting (religious themes from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, abstract, representational, realistic, etc etc).
A fascinating variation of this is egg-painting: this is incredibly detailed painting on (emptied) egg-shells of all types, large and small, depicting just about anything imaginable. As you can imagine the eggs are incredibly fragile, so great care must be exercised by the artist, and the buyer. Luckily, there is an alternative egg-material: wood). Thin-shelled hollow perfect eggs are made in wood and then painted. This makes for a much less nail-biting experience for transportation:
sculpture: in stone, wood, metal, combinations , subject matter again religious and spiritual.
(to be continued)