When Everyone Who Helps With Your Kids Disappears for 10 Days

What happens to childcare during Galungan

During Galungan, the ten-day Balinese Hindu holiday when families welcome ancestral spirits home, nannies and household staff take days off, sometimes nearly the full ten days, for their own family ceremonies, and daycares often cut hours or close for part of the stretch. Backup childcare becomes hard to find on short notice, so plan ahead.

Why the whole island pauses at once

Galungan is not a single day off. It is a rolling window: offerings go up and penjor, tall bamboo poles decorated with woven palm-leaf offerings, line the streets before the holy day itself, and the stretch continues through Kuningan, the day that closes the cycle. For the people who care for our kids, this is not a break from work. It is a return to their own family obligations, ones that come around twice a year and matter to them as much as any holiday matters to us.

The nanny who has been steady for months and the daycare that feels like a second home belong to families of their own first. The disruption we feel is real, but it is the smaller half of what is happening.

What this actually looks like for your household

It stacks up all at once:

• Your nanny or helper takes several days, sometimes close to the full ten, depending on her family's ceremonies
• Daycares post closure or reduced hour notices, often later than you'd like
• Cleaners, drivers, and cooks are often observing the same window
• Other parents in your circle are usually short staffed too, so the favor you'd normally call in is harder to ask

If this is your first stretch leaning on paid help in Bali, the mix of relief and unease doesn't disappear just because the calendar says holiday. We wrote more about that feeling in the guilt of hiring a nanny in Bali. It applies as much to missing the help as to having it.

Building your ten day plan

The families who get through this window calmly are usually the ones who started asking questions before the offerings went up outside their gate.

• Confirm exact dates directly with your nanny or daycare early. Bali's Pawukon calendar shifts the holiday's Gregorian dates each cycle, so last year's dates won't match this year's
• Ask, don't assume, whether she wants the days paid. It's a way to respect a family obligation that matters this much, but ask instead of guessing
• Line up one backup option for a true emergency before you need it, not while you're already scrambling
• Simplify what you can control. A rotation like the Bali dinner rotation that saves you from cooking twice takes one decision off the table every evening
• Lower the bar on anything non essential for ten days. The laundry pile and the tidy playroom can both wait
• Loop in your support network ahead of time, before the closures start, not after

When you're the only one on duty

Most of us know the week when the help disappears and it's just you, on rotation, for every meal, every nap, and every small negotiation in between. It's a different kind of tired. We wrote before about why delegating childcare doesn't delegate the worry. This window flips that idea: when the delegation goes away, you keep the worry and pick the task back up too.

Small things help more than expected. Bali's humidity means laundry that isn't quick-drying can take much longer to dry outdoors than it would in a drier climate, so easy-care basics that dry fast on the line are one less decision when you're covering everything solo. It won't fix the ten days, but it removes one thing from an already long list.

FAQs

Will Galungan fall on the same dates every year?

No. Galungan does not fall on the same date every year because it follows Bali's 210-day Pawukon calendar rather than the 365-day Gregorian calendar, so the holiday shifts each cycle. Ask your nanny, daycare, or Balinese neighbors directly for this year's exact dates rather than relying on what you remember from last year.

Should I pay my nanny while she's off for Galungan?

Yes, many families choose to pay their nanny through the Galungan break, since it treats the time off as a family obligation rather than an absence. There's no single right answer here, it's a decision between you and the person who works with your family, so ask her directly what feels fair for both of you.

What if I can't find backup childcare in time?

Start looking for backup childcare earlier than feels necessary, since other parents facing the same gap, community groups, and your own workplace are all easier conversations two weeks out than two days out. If work can't bend around the dates, an honest conversation about the calendar works better than staying quiet and hoping it resolves itself.

A note from Bali

We have sat through more than one ten day stretch where the usual rhythm of help paused, and the days felt longer than they should. If you're heading into one now, we hope this made the planning part easier. For the small logistics in between, we look for easy care pieces that hold up to a lot of wear and dry fast on the line. You'll find what we stock in the shop whenever you need it.