“Is Bali Dead Now?”
Dani the bar keeper at the Kubuki Bar on Poppy 1, Kuta, made this remark to an English tourist who was sitting two chairs away from me. They had been talking quitely, but I could not help listening to the rest of their conversation. The woman shrugged and said there had been six Westerners on her AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur. Six. There used to be dozens—perhaps hundreds on any given day.
The bar was nearly empty. Across the street, clothes fluttered from railings in shops without customers. The wide open surf off Kuta beach was almost deserted. Looking around the bar, I saw that staff outnumbered the guests about 3:1.
Bali doesn’t deserve this. After the scare of the October attacks, the bomb that went off in Palu on Dec 30th seems to have been the last nail in the coffin for many tourists. But that attack was the result of long-simmering local sectarian violence. I shook my head: “This is crazy. The attack has nothing to do with Bali—it’s like comparing London with Northern Ireland!” Then I realised that this was perhaps the wrong comparision to make.
Today I went to Ground Zero, the monument that marks the site of the 12/10/2002 bombing. The names of the dead are displayed on a solemn plaque of polished black granite. All around, life goes on: the shops are bustling and the never-ending traffic snakes its way down Jl Raya Legian. There’s a Dunkin’ Donut almost next to the monument.
But impressions are misleading: this is one of the world’s top surf destinations, yet the majority of people on the side walks are locals. In the busiest part of Kuta, there are fewer travellers than at a slow autum weekend in Newquay, Cornwall. Tour groups are staying away because there is a travel warning against the whole of Indonesia and insurance companies no longer cover many tours. But as I have said before on the forums: where is the sense in this for people who come from London or New York? It is more likely that you’ll get run over by a car than become the victim of a terrorist attack, whether in Bali or at home. This is not to belittle the events—like almost everyone else living in the London area I know somebody who knows somebody who was killed in the 7th July bombings. But I cannot shake off the feeling that the real victims here in Bali are the locals. They are the last to complain, but it is evident in people’s faces, and from remarks like the one I overheard in the bar.
If it is bad in Kuta, in areas outside Kuta the sense of desperation is palpable. In Lovina, the weather was too bad for me to stay, but before I returned to Kuta, I bought a dress (which doesn’t fit) from a woman in a stall in a prime location on the grey, windswept beach. She was pleading for my custom, telling me that she had had no business for three days. I bought a T-shirt as well. It felt like an act of charity even though I realise I may have paid too little.
Tags: SE Asia, Tag Index
Denni