{"id":10902,"date":"2012-03-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/03\/25\/bali-island-shuts-down-for-hindu-new-year\/"},"modified":"2012-03-25T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T12:00:00","slug":"bali-island-shuts-down-for-hindu-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/03\/25\/bali-island-shuts-down-for-hindu-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Bali Island Shuts Down for Hindu New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesundaily.my\/news\/330040\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BALI (March 23, 2012) : Shops were shuttered Friday and many tourists stayed inside their hotels as the Indonesian holiday island of Bali closed down for a day to mark the Hindu new year.<\/p>\n<p>More than 2,500 police dressed in traditional black-and-white batik sarongs guarded the island to ensure there was no activity in the streets on the day of reflection, known as Nyepi. Bali&#8217;s international airport in Denpasar was also shut, with almost 300 flights cancelled over a 24-hour period.<\/p>\n<p>Around 35,000 passengers normally fly into Denpasar each day, airport officials said. Vehicles were not allowed on the streets, and TV and radio were cut off.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Other than police, there is no one outside, nothing at all to do,&#8221; said Nyoman Sumaya, a receptionist at the beachfront Oberoi Hotel in the busy tourist district of Seminyak. &#8220;We informed all our guests that they could not leave the hotel or even sit on the beach out front.&#8221;On Thursday night, locals paraded effigies of demons known as ogoh-ogoh, before setting them alight to symbolise renewal and purification, but on Nyepi night, the island blacks out as lights must stay switched off. <\/p>\n<p>[HPI note: Dont&#8217; miss Hinduism Today&#8217;s special issue on Bali <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/\">here<\/a> ]<\/p>\n<p>See a slidewhow with extrordinary photos of Nyepi <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibtimes.com\/articles\/318549\/20120323\/nyepi-day-2012-indonesia-celebrates-balinese-new.htm\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source BALI (March 23, 2012) : Shops were shuttered Friday and many tourists stayed inside their hotels as the Indonesian,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}