Visiting Bali -- Tourist or Traveller? (Bali)

Member Name: travelnotes

Product:	Bali
Date:	05/10/00 (360 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Something for everyone, from culture to hedonism.

Disadvantages: Public transportation is crowded and not always safe.

For many Australians on a package holiday and others on Australia flight stop-overs, Kuta is all they get to know about Bali. (It's so near the airport).

The long, white, sandy beach, crushing surf, west-coast sunsets, cheap cocktails, modern dance music, and easy sex is paradise to many. Girls from Java sit at the Sari Club dressed to tempt, while some more deviant characters, with deep voices and silicon implants, bait for back-door business.

Some visitors to this small Indonesian island do make the effort to travel around it.

"Transport?" Is a common cry.

You can hire a mini-bus (bemo) to anywhere at a haggled price. Public bemos run when full, and on set routes only.

The road out of Denpassar, the capital of Bali, is crowded and slow. Windows are open, but there is little or no breeze to comfort the eighteen passengers cramped together, with their possessions; in a space more suitable for eleven people, without baggage.

The public bemos share the narrow road space with air-conditioned, chartered bemos; hired jeeps; and mopeds.

The Japanese tend to charter the air-conditioned bemos, Australians on holiday hire jeeps or scooters, and travellers on the cheap choose the local method; often having to change two or three times to reach their final destination.

A market in the mud, alongside a pot-holed side street that shakes the bemo as it bounces its way through the puddles, is thriving at Gianyar. Life carries on around the puddles: little children walk barefoot, women carry goods on their heads, someone mends a puncture, and thin dogs chase and playfully bite each other.

A tout picks his ears and then his nose, scratches his soaking wet, blue woolen hat over his head, and stares at the foreigner. Schoolchildren pass carrying books, smart in identical uniforms of blue shorts and white, short-sleeved shirts; emblazoned with an intricate black print.

At the Tirtaga
ngga bemo-stop, the owner of the Water Palace Losmen is waiting. Another tries to offer cheaper accommodation on the other side of the road.

"You come look at the Palace," the first owner says. "You can swim there for free."

Lodgings are in nice little bungalows, with a small table and chairs on the patio outside. A great place to catch up on your travel log in peace and quiet.

Breakfast at the Water Palace is one of the most tranquil morning occasions ever experienced in south-east Asia. The sun rises early and floods the green fields with light.

You sit at a hexagonal bamboo table, on a balcony overlooking the many pools. Water splashes down from the top of a pagoda fountain and sprouts from the mouths of ornamental lions, wild pigs and monkeys.

Little brown children bare their bodies in the water, hills build up the background, and coconut palms frame the picture. The accommodation is cheap yet the feeling regal. The scene is yours alone and there is still the morning swim to come.

Moving On:

Public bemos along the east and northern coast roads of Bali are always crowded. People just shout out at their stop, often within a minute of getting on.

The drivers and fare-collectors lean out of their respective windows, pointing and shouting their destination; stop and reverse quickly if they pass another likely passenger carrying vegetables, to be squeezed into the already bulging over the safety limit vehicle.

Occasionally, a bemo is seen overturned, and stunned passengers crawl out through blood-stained glass.

Some tourists prefer to choose comfortable, air conditioned, more expensive modes of transport to the so called historical sights of war, regality, or religion; to the cultural exhibitions of artworks and colourful dances, produced or continued solely for their benefit; and to the leisure complexes where they can be together to talk about the tour, or m
ore frequently about themselves. They buy horrendous souvenirs to exhibit or distribute at home.

Travellers feel that they should choose the cheap, basic and often uncomfortable way the locals travel: the indigenous people become the sights, the culture, the way of life. The travellers practice their limited vocabulary and share the poor food.

They buy and wear the jewellery and colourful sarongs, and some even walk barefoot; these undergraduates live simple. But at the end of the day, the little guidebook tells them where everyone stays. Where you are from is of less interest to them than where they have been and where they are going -- and did you stay at....

Tourists and travellers can go to the same place yet come back with a completely different story.

Northern Bali is more Muslim than the rest of the Hindu island. Every village has at least one mosque, men wear little black hats, and girls white headdresses that cover their cheeks.

"What about the beaches?" you ask me.

My advice is: If you plan to visit Bali, get off your back and forget about Kuta.

Summary: