Two Balinese practices are known worldwide, and both are commonly misread.
Trance is a normal feature of temple ceremony rather than an exceptional one. Participants become vehicles for a deity or a spirit, may handle fire or press krises against their own chests without injury, and are brought out of the state by attendants with holy water. Jane Belo's fieldwork in the 1930s documented the range of forms and the ordinariness of the institution, and the material she gathered remains a principal source. What outsiders often see is a performance version arranged for visitors, which is a real cultural form in its own right and is not the temple event.
Cremation is likewise misunderstood as a funeral. The body is usually buried first and exhumed for cremation later, sometimes years later, when the family can afford the ceremony, and the event is loud, expensive, communal and often shared between families. Its purpose is to release the soul from the body so that it can proceed toward eventual reincarnation and eventual enshrinement as a family ancestor, and further ceremonies follow the cremation itself.
Bali has been a mass tourist destination since the 1970s and its religion is unavoidably part of what is sold. The island's own institutions have taken positions on which ceremonies may be watched, photographed or entered, and those rules are set by temple and village authorities rather than by the industry.