Paras
Adeng-adeng is a traditional Balinese mantra meaning “slowly”. It’s a phrase you don’t often hear these days on an island with more than 6.300 star-rated hotels (Booking.com) and 70.000 hotel rooms (Horwath HTL). People say that Bali is spoiled and for years the search has been on for a “new Bali”. But the “old Bali” never really disappeared: it’s just forgotten.
Long before “sustainability”, “community”, “artisanship”, and “local culture”, become the global travel buzzwords in recent years, Balinese people have established their own way to preserve their culture and nature while welcoming new influences from the outside world in a sustainable way — socially and environmentally. The Balinese culture is so tied to traditions of family structure and a ritual-bound religion that it acts as something of a hospitality style of its own.
As a result of this, Bali often feels like two co-existing yet parallel cultures that intersect peacefully, when they do at all. Now, it is more important than ever, to bridge the divide, identifying and conserving many of the more unique — and uniquely endangered — aspects of Balinese hospitality culture: family-style service, architecture and urban planning, craftsmanship and culture-driven development, collaboration and communal activities, and sustainability.
Paras (face, surface, stone in Bahasa Indonesia) observes and celebrates the old Balinese wisdom and its contemporary progress, and aiming to keep the spirit of Balinese hospitality culture alive. After all, “hospitality” is about us, humans, hosting our family and friends (hence the term) and, to certain extent, the culture and its natural surroundings, not hotels.
The content of Paras is in Bahasa Indonesia and broken English, and is for educational purpose — currently on Instagram only with a proper website online soon (or later).
Adeng-adeng.
Paras, 2020
instagram.com/parasparas_
