You will stumble upon a small temple when walking in the garden of the Mercure Resort in Sanur.

A little neglected, somewhat messy even. In other words: exactly the way a small Balinese temple is supposed to look.

I have always pictured the witch in Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel story as an old, malicious looking, little women with a kerchief and a thick wart on her fat nose. Crooked and bent, leaning on a walking stick. The last time I saw her was in a theme park in Holland, called ‘De Efteling’. Our children were still small then, so it is a long time ago.

She must have been expelled from Holland because of excessive drug abuse, since I found her in this little temple in Sanur. Her ‘total makeover’ must have been done locally. It was not a good job. Someone had transplanted the wart to her forehead but that was not enough to fool this keen observer.

I recognized her immediately and she still had that malicious look in her eyes.

She even has some kind of godly status in Bali now, judging from the fact that her feet were buried in offerings.

Unfortunately, she also seems to have a bad influence on the other gods, and there are a lot of them on Bali, ‘the Island of the Gods’.

I caught one of them red handed with an almost finished joint in his mouth.

The picture is proof.