Bali (Indonesia): Tropical Beauty with Blemishes

Lured to Bali by an Ol’ Classmate

I’d had been hoping to visit Bali for the past couple years ever since my friend, Bruce Briscoe, moved back there following a couple years teaching English in Shanghai, China. Bruce and I go back about 48 years from our undergraduate days at Ohio State University. We were never best friends but I always enjoyed this good natured, but cynical and iconoclastic, big teddy bear of a guy. We’d kept in touch off and on since college and I’d last seen him in ‘89. I admired him for chucking his computer consulting career in the San Francisco Bay Area about a dozen years ago and moving to Bali, a tropical Indonesian isle that he had previously fallen in love with.

Indonesian Flag

Map of Indonesia showing Bali’s location

Since I had a couple weeks in between the IECA conference in New Zealand and a workshop on Debris Flows in China, I planned my itinerary to include a stopover in Bali. I was glad to be able to “work Bruce into the schedule” on this trip as he has had some health problems recently. At our age, you come to the reality that life is short, so postponing visits with old friends may mean you don’t see them again!

When Bruce and his Indonesian sweetie, Catharine, met me at the airport in Bali, I was pleased to see he was he old feisty self, indulging in good-natured sarcasm and the occasional rant against politicians and other people of whom we share a mutual dislike. Over the following three days, Bruce did his best to enhance my experience of Bali. He found me accommodations in a clean and comfortable traditional Balinese guest house in Ubud, the artsy town where he lives away from the tourist beach “scene”. We dined at his favorite restaurants which had numerous and delicious veggie options for me while providing him with an array of carnivorous offerings. Both the guest house and the meals were unbelievably cheap as were the tickets to watch very talented Balinese dancers in elaborate costumes perform at the local palace. We also indulged ourselves at a message center where a skillful Balinese masseur worked me over for about an hour followed by a skin cleansing with abrasive tamarind powder, application of fragrant oils, and a relaxing soak in a tub of warm water sprinkled with flower petals. I knew I wasn’t truly “worthy”of such indulgence but who was I to argue with my host?

Bruce readies himself for a Balinese feast
while our pretty waitress describes the fare

Traditional Balinese dancers perform at the local palace in Ubud.
In Denver, I would have paid ten times the US$8.50 it cost for my ticket.

Bruce zipped me around Ubud on the back of his motor bike as I grasped his big shoulders for dear life. Fortunately, he is a safe driver but I found the chaotic and heavy Balinese traffic a bit disconcerting and quickly became saddle sore. The traffic seemed to have a flow of its own with no angry confrontations or crashes that I saw. Bruce explained that the Balinese practice "cooperative driving" whereas American driving is "competitive".

I also had some time to myself as long walks don’t interest Bruce but he knew I wanted to see some of the local area on foot. My scanned guidebook pages described a couple of local walking paths which I eagerly sought out to escape the crowded streets of Ubud. Despite the heat and humidity which left me drenched in sweat, I was enchanted by walks through intensely green rice paddy fields and along ridges overlooking deep gullies carved by streams into ash deposits originating from the volcano, Gunung Batur, about 25km (15 miles) to the north.

Rice cultivation in Bali relies on an intricate system
of terraces and irrigation ditches.

Ubud’s “ridge walk” provides views into deeply incised stream valleys.

 

I appreciated the very polite and easy-going Balinese people. Bruce pointed out that complaining is not part of the Balinese culture. That may make for harmonious relationships but efficiency and accuracy can get sacrificed in the process. The island’s population is an anomaly for Indonesia as it is overwhelmingly Hindu whereas the other Indonesian islands are majority Moslem. Every home has its own Hindu temple be it a small shrine or a large, elaborate stone structure. 
 

A shrine in every Balinese home and some get quite elaborate

 

Just another awesome Hindu temple

Problems with Paradise

Unfortunately, from my perspective anyway, Bali is being “loved to death” by too many foreign admirers. They flock here by the planeloads from Australia, Europe, North America, China, and Japan. Most of them join the crowded beach scene in places like Kuta where 88 tourists, many of them young Australians, were killed by Islamic extremist bombers in 2002. The balance seeks the more “authentic” Bali in communities like Ubud. Because I visited Bali in the drier, cooler part of the year, it was my misfortune to encounter high season crowds on the streets. Both tourists and locals contribute to a trash problem as evidenced by bottles, cans, food packaging, cigarette butts, food wastes, etc. which are too much in evidence to please my eyeballs and nose.



Trash next to a stream in Ubud

Of course, trash can be cleaned up but a larger issue will be tougher to solve in the long term. Bruce rents a modest house but many foreigners are leasing Balinese farm land to build condominiums and even mansions. Why? Because they can. Prices are cheap by Western standards and the Balinese are as eager as any people with meager financial resources to make a quick buck (eventually, they get the land back when the lease expires). As the years go by, I can envision Bali becoming more of a society of well-off foreigners and the low-income Balinese who serve them. What will happen to traditional Balinese culture and society in the process is not a future I find pleasant to contemplate.

Trophy home adjoins a Balinese rice paddy

Coming next: Bruce put me in touch with his Rotary Club in Ubud and they invited me to speak about my SOIL Fund project in Ecuador at their weekly meeting. In turn, the local Rotarians put me in touch with David Booth, the energetic director of the East Bali Poverty Project (EBPP). In a post on my SOIL Fund blog (http://soilfundambassador.blogspot.com/2012/09/bali-indonesia-english-visionary-his_6.html), I have described a part of Bali which tourists never see and which is making great progress in education, nutrition, and soil erosion control due to the efforts of the Balinese staff of EBPP and the local people.