MOONSHINE IN BALI

As a little girl, I used to pack up my suitcase and put on my “traveling clothes” which consisted of a huge hat and shawl that my grandmother gave me for dressing up. I would take my bag, packed only with a teddy bear and head deep in the backyard where I would lay in the sun and dream of all the exotic foods and people that I would see if I were really traveling. The thrill of experiencing a new culture is still what keeps me traveling today! I don’t think it’s possible to experience another culture without comparing it to our own. I don’t see myself as extremely southern, and yet the more I travel the more I realize that being raised in Alabama definitely left a mark on me and how I view other cultures.

In the south, it’s not uncommon to see semi-clear liquid being served at cocktail hour from mason jars. This near 100 proof alcohol is better known as hooch or white lightning, but it’s all moonshine. Just this past Thanksgiving, a friend brought me a few bar items as a hostess gift, including a mason jar full of what I thought was hooch. My mother always warned me that drinking anything out of a mason jar would make you go blind and none of us at the table weren’t looking for a 2 day hangover, so we all politely declined the mason jar. Sadly, it turned out my friend had made a simple syrup for our mixers and we had all unnecessarily avoided his generous gift, but you can see most southerners are familiar enough with moonshine to be wary of gifts in mason jars. The Dukes of Hazard might have made this liquid famous but making “shine” has been a tradition in the south for a long time. 

On my first trip to Indonesia, I was riding through the streets of Bali, enjoying the exotic temples and food stalls that reach out into the streets jammed with motorcyclists. I had been curious before arriving here if the world’s largest muslim country would be very different from my own.  Imagine my surprise to see a familiar semi clear liquid in old alcohol bottles and water jugs being sold every 10 feet or so at the road side stands. I was shocked that a country of devout muslims would have street stalls of hooch everywhere! Of course, as soon as I saw a guy pouring the contents of one of those refilled whiskey bottles into the gas tank of his motorcycle, I realized that yet again, my southern upbringing had caught up with me.  In my defense, I’m pretty sure the chemical make up of both the Bali “hooch” and southern shine is roughly the same!