I think everyone has their own image and, when they’ve been there, experience of Bali. It can be idolized as Paradise on earth, and it also can be seen as dirty, trendy, over-hyped. I didn’t know what to expect in the four days I planned to spend there, so I can say I wasn’t disappointed.

I confess I am writing this piece after my Voyage of Rediscovery has come to an end, already back at what passes for home for five full days. So that reality might color what I write about my visit to Bali, and the account that will follow about my visit to the Philippines, but I’ll do my best to recover my memories as I experienced these places.

I read that the south of the island is dirty and overcrowded, and one should go to the north side. People I met said, oh, no, the north is boring and unfriendly. Go south. Others said the west end is best. Others, no, forget that. Only go to the southeast peninsula. Some people seemed to love life on the island, others said nice place to visit, but not to live. What was I to believe?

I shared a sauna with a young French self-styled digital nomad while in Pattaya in Thailand. He and his girlfriend were taking a break from Bali, where they had been living. He said he was tired of it and preferred to work back in France, though France’s taxation — if he brought in 5,000 euros a month, he said, he was lucky to keep 500 — was a strong inducement to keep him overseas.

After all these conflicting views, I had to find out for myself. Not to bury the lead, here is my conclusion: Nice place to visit, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.

I wound up spending my four days in Sanur, a town on the southeast coast, but not on the peninsula. It seemed like a good compromise of factors, was described as a relatively quiet place to relax, near a beach, it was close to the airport, I found an AirBnB that sounded great at a decent price, and the owner was able to arrange a transfer from the airport so I wouldn’t have to deal with local taxis. I can say I think I made the right decision, and all those factors were met. Had I allotted more time for the island I might have wanted to explore other parts of it, but honestly I was beginning to get tired, after nearly 10 weeks of mostly non-stop traveling, and settling in one place for four days was just what I wanted and needed.

Oddest entry experience ever

Bali, of course, is part of the Republic of Indonesia. It is one of the currently estimated 18,108 islands in the Indonesian Archipelago. Entering Indonesia begins with applying online for a visa-upon-arrival from the Indonesia immigration authority, which entails gathering but the first of several QR codes, like the one above. Had I not hated QR codes prior to this experience — and I did — after going through this process I now reallyreallyREALLY hate them.

Indonesia justifies this madness on supposed environmental grounds. Never mind that the country is mostly an environmental disaster, or the human and energy costs of gathering these stupid codes. The country might be better advised to address its real environmental issues and not making visitors crazy.

Picture this scene: Arriving at night after a few-hour plane flight, and walking into a huge, ornate, gold-colored terminal filled with thousands of people arriving from all sorts of places, all scurrying about trying to figure out how to gather additional QR codes for health and customs clearances, in addition to the one they needed just to arrive. And some didn’t even have that one, so they were left trying to figure out how to obtain yet a third QR code and pay the 500,000 Indonesian rupiah visa fee (about 30 gringo dollars, speaking of inflation). To describe the scene as total chaos would be about accurate.

I already had my first QR code in my camera, and somehow managed to get the health one (another odd thing to focus on, considering overall how unhealthy the country is). But the process fell apart in attempting to obtain the third QR code, for customs clearance, when the stupid device used to make one’s declaration failed to yield that QR code. I would still be in that airport were it not for a sensible customs officer who waived me through even without the requisite QR code, aided by the magic words, “I don’t have anything to declare anyway.” Most more sensible countries simply have a “nothing to declare” passage, but not Indonesia, preferring to rely on technology gone wild.

Still, the oddness did not end there. I was expecting to be greeted by one Mr. Sama, the person arranged for my pickup, and figured he’d be easy to find. Foolish me, I asked these few taxi drivers past the customs area if there was a Mr. Sama among them. They politely told me to look outside the terminal since he’d likely be there. I was expecting the usual few or maybe few dozen people bearing signs looking for arriving passengers. What I wasn’t expecting were literally hundreds and hundreds of people, lined up several rows deep along a lengthy barrier, all waiting to greet incoming arrivals. How would I ever find Mr. Sama among this mob, the likes of which I’d never seen before in all my travels over the years? I started walking down the line, scanning quickly through the signs being held up, and much to my enormous surprise I found Mr. Sama holding up a sign with my name on it just a short way down the line. My joy must have carried across to him as my right arm shot up, my index finger pointing straight at him, a big smile on my face.

Once ensconced in Mr. Sama’s SUV, technology wasn’t done with its torture. The exit gates from the airport parking wouldn’t open as they were supposed to when people touched their magic parking cards to the reader, delaying our departure from the airport as one driver after another fought with the recalcitrant machine. Finally we managed to escape, and picture my further surprise to find the massive traffic, a toll-road, and (no surprise with this one), of course, the hordes of crazed motos. None of this fit with my vision of Bali (except maybe the motos), but all of it once more convinced me that technology, as it was being applied, was not making life better, only worse.

Galungan

By one more sheer coincidence, which seemed to follow me through several countries on this trip, I arrived in Bali during the week of Galungan, a religious holiday celebrated by the majority Hindu population of the island. On the trip to Sanur, Mr. Sama explained that Wednesday would be the actual day of Galungan, and the streets would be full of flowers. As it turned out, people put flowers and other religious offerings on the sidewalks (such as they are) all the time, with just a few more appearing that Wednesday in Sanur. Apparently the biggest Galungan celebrations happen in more religiously focused towns, such as Ubud in the interior of the island.

It is not uncommon finding little offerings in Bali, such as the one in the photo above, and one has to be careful not to step on them. These offerings can appear anywhere, as demonstrated by the Galungan Day offering with which someone decided to decorate their front license plate, shown in the featured image. One has a sense of a religious presence on the island with people being deeply focused on their belief system. Balinese Hinduism is distinct from the Hinduism practiced in India and elsewhere on the Subcontinent, and focuses on ancestor worship, a kind of local animism, and even reverence for Buddhist saints. Not being acutely aware of either Hindu or Buddhist practices, to me Balinese Hinduism seemed more akin to Buddhism than Hinduism.

Most of Indonesia’s population is Muslim, and it is the most populous Muslim country on earth. Bali’s Hindu population represents just a very small percentage of the country’s total population. It was hard for me to put out of my mind the Islamist bombings that took place in the Balinese town of Kuta, which is located near the airport, killing 202 people from 21 countries and injuring more than 200 others, in October 2002. I didn’t realize those bombings had taken place 23 years ago, the time seeming to be much less than that, but in speaking with regular visitors to the island it appears the threat of further violence may remain. They spoke of many people coming to the island from the main island of Java, a Muslim island, and bringing their own views with them.

Given the libertine nature of the activities engaged in by many of the island’s foreign visitors, and the targeting of night clubs frequented by foreigners in the Kuta bombings, I’d have to believe those activities might more likely remain the target of any future violence than the local Balinese population. I claim no expertise on internal Indonesian political or religious dynamics, so the reader should take whatever I say on the subject as a very unexpert view of things and close to pure conjecture.

A softness to the island

With the exception of attempting to cross the main street of Sanur, always a near-death experience, I felt a softness to life on Bali. There was a ready smile on the part of people I met, a kind greeting, a thank you expressed with hands held in a praying position and a bow of the head. Along with those small offerings placed on sidewalks and steps, there is an attention to detail one seldom sees elsewhere. Like the rooftops captured in that view from my balcony in the Agustri Homestay, few things are left to purely utilitarian purpose. One comes across statuary, such as the stone beasts dressed and sporting hats in the photo below, and other signs of life holding a higher meaning to people.

I also can say I did not have a bad meal the whole time I was in Bali. A bit more expensive than in some of the countries I visited, not unexpected given the extent of touristic presence, I had delicious Balinese satay, an excellent French bistro baguette sandwich lunch, and perhaps the best snapper filet I’ve ever had. Live entertainment is a nightly staple of many of the restaurants along Sanur’s main drag, and I got to buy beers for and share conversation with two local musicians — big Eagles fans, judging by their performance — who joined me at my table at the end of their last set. I got big smiles from them and a handshake when I correctly guessed their ages — 69 and 48 (okay, I guessed 45 in the latter case, but that pleased him even more). Judging by the disastrous state of their teeth, I also guessed dentistry might leave something to be desired on the island. These guys were clearly good friends and very happy. The older one had been one time to Australia, the younger one said he would be too afraid to go to another country. But they were not afraid to drive back to their homes in the city of Denpasar, half an hour away, riding motos with their instruments aboard.

One thing I did not encounter, which some Australians I met on Langkawi promised me was unavoidable in Bali, was gastroenteritis. Other than a couple of days with a scratchy throat, I escaped unscathed without any illness of any sort, not just in Bali but throughout the 11 weeks of my travels. No complaints in that department.

Relaxation, not relocation

On my last full day in Bali I got to relax a bit on the beach. I mean, if you can’t do a beach thing in Bali, where can you do it? It was my last opportunity for a beach thing on my trip, so I wasn’t going to let it go by.

The water, as you can see in the photo above, is crystal clear. There is an offshore reef where the incoming waves break, so the water closer to shore is fairly calm, but also fairly shallow. Bali is surrounded by what is called the Bali Sea, which is an offshoot of the Indian Ocean. Which means I’d been in three of the world’s great oceans, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian, on this trip. Actually, I’d been in the Andaman Sea, which also is an offshoot of the Indian Ocean, when I was on Langkawi in Malaysia, so this was my second foray into it on this trip.

After the reports I’d gotten prior to my visit, I was skeptical about Bali being a prime choice in my search for a place for relocation. I was willing to give it a fair assessment, nonetheless, but a number of factors have mitigated against the island being high among my preferences. For one, as laid back as it is, and while I want a place that keeps me a bit on the edge, Bali seems to go further in that direction than I am willing to go. Infrastructure, evidenced by the blackout that occurred on my first night on the island and apparently is a common occurrence, is less than ideal. Hey, if I want blackouts I can live in Albania (where I have lived, a few times). Or California. Also, while not all the countries I visited are paradigms of democracy and freedom of expression, my misgivings about the Indonesian government go a bit deeper than in other cases.

I also did some preliminary investigation on both property purchase prices as well as rents, and in both cases Bali is not a cheap place to live if one is to have a reasonably Western level of residence. Further complicating matters, many properties are not freehold but are offered on land leases, in many cases as short as 25 years. This just doesn’t seem like a good investment to make. So, while I might well return to Bali sometime for more relaxation, I don’t see it as a place for relocation.

One more country to go. Watch for my account of my visit to the Philippines in coming days. Meanwhile, eat your heart out seeing me taking in the afternoon sun on the beach at Sanur, below.

Featured image, automotively marking Galungan Day

A dreaded QR code

Sidewalk offering

Ornate rooftops, Sanur

Dressed-up statues

Boats, beach, and clear water at Sanur

Relaxing on the beach, Sanur

All photos by the author

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