The Package Tour Experience

The parents, having fun &
 making sure I'm still alive.

Last week, my mom & stepdad visited. Well, they stopped in Bali for 3 days as the beginning to a 3-week Southeast Asia cruise, but it was really just for my mom to check up on me. So I took a few vacation days & met them at their resort in Nusa Dua, on the southeastern coast at the southern end of the island. While I could have sat on the lovely clean beach for the whole three days, my mom has different ideas & signed us up for a bus tour for the whole of Wednesday, and a late afternoon tour on Thursday. I did get to beach-sit on Thursday morning. The experience violently reminded me of why I avoid the package vacation (well that, & I can't afford them). The typical Balinese tour is particularly reminiscent of being squeezed through a sausage factory: many buses lined up at one stop, buffet meals at barn-size restaurants & about 5 hours on a bus per hour of sightseeing. We attended two kecak dances, both venues packed to overcapacity such that the dancers had to move members of the audience in between acts to allow them room to exit & enter the floor. One volcano, invisible due to clouds & rain (well, it is the off-season, since it is the rainy season), two temples - at one of these locations we were given half an hour to race down 315 steps & then race back up to the bus. And remember, the average age on these tours is probably between 70 & 75 - hale & hearty North Americans & Europeans, but still I had an urge to pack a portable defibrillator. (Honesty time: I skipped the steps & bargained for sarongs with some of the stall owners on the roadside instead). 

Kecak dancer at Uluwattu.

Excited tourists at Uluwattu. The sarongs must be
worn on temple grounds, and are lent out at the entrance.

All in all, the tours were unpleasant reminders of the rapid & unchecked expansion of the tourist industry in Bali. From my parent’s hotel you can see two other huge hotels under construction in addition to the newly opened 1000-room resort in the other direction. The beach is not privately owned by the resorts, but public access is discouraged - roads down to the beach are obscure & unsigned. The surfers know where to go. Throughout the Balinese southern peninsula and up the western coast of Kuta and Selinyak hotels are springing up like mushrooms in a damp lawn. I cringed when I accessed my mom’s resort on the internet describing the beach located “on a reclaimed mangrove forest”. No, guys, if it was reclaimed there would be mangroves there. (There aren’t.)

Another hotel under construction & a cleared section of cliff for the next one.

I certainly don’t begrudge Indonesians chances at better jobs & higher pay, which these resorts and tourist attractions bring. However, the island infrastructure is obviously not able to keep pace with private development. Concerns have been expressed by politicians about the strain placed on roads and water supply, but the government would have to move very quickly or place a moratorium on further construction immediately to attempt to deal with the issues, and there is little sign that this will happen in the near future. The Denpasar airport is currently being upgraded & enlarged primarily to accommodate more tourism, and a four-lane bypass from the airport directly to Nusa Dua is being built in the bay. And we can’t blame foreigners for all this - the unique Hindu character of Bali attracts millions of Indonesian tourists every year as well.

Luckily, Indonesia is a country of 17,000 islands, of which Bali is only one. There are far more beautiful beaches, mountains & forests on other islands (but I’m not telling where, just in case an hotelier is reading this). So hopefully, concerned Indonesians, of which there are many, will be able to preserve the natural beauty of miles & miles of coastline & acres of native forest before they're “discovered”, and site reasonably sized, eco-hotels away from the more fragile areas. And offer walking or small boat tours of mangrove forests. The temples & other historical sites - well, they’re a write-off for contemplative, quiet consideration. Worth seeing, yes, but sharpen your elbows & resign yourself to standing in long lines to see the architecture.  

After seeing the parents off to the rest of their vacation, I headed back “home” where today my friend Rita took me to 2 beaches outside of town on jalan-jalan*. We ran into 2 other people & listened to the waves.

*jalan-jalan = a trip, usually just for fun, to kill time

Selamat Tahun Baru! (Happy New Year)

Some random notes:

The rainy season has started in earnest; at times torrential for the last 3 days. My work partner tells me we can expect almost daily rain in January tapering off through February & March. Therefore, it’s rice planting season, & I’ve seen a lot of that activity. Mostly manual labour, the fields are first tilled with a kind of large rototiller pushed either manually or with a small engine attached, and the rest is all man- or woman- or kid-powered - hand planting rice plant seedlings. There are several different words for rice in bahasa Indonesia, depending on whether it's growing in the field, uncooked or cooked, or depending on the variety or colour. I have yet to learn them all - but rice growing in fields is "padi" - so calling a field a rice padi is like saying rice rice - don't do that.

Indonesia has 5 official religions, and while for example, the island of Flores is mostly Catholic, and Bali has a mostly Hindu population, Muslims are predominant throughout the country. “My” island, Sulawesi, is largely Muslim. In Jeneponto women choose to wear a jilbab (head covering, called a hijab in Arab countries) or not, but I have yet to see any woman in full burka. Apparently Aceh in the far west is host to a more fundamental kind of Islam. However, uniforms are very common; all government workers wear them; and women do consistently wear jilbabs as part of their uniform. School girls also wear them as part of their school uniforms, but the age at which they start to wear them can vary; 6 or 7 year olds are not always required to cover their heads (this may depend on the school they attend). The local Scout troop uniform includes jilbabs for the female Scouts. About three-quarters of women not in uniform will include a jilbab as part of their dress in this area. Younger women tend not to wear them unless they’re attending a special occasion, and in the larger cities you will see fewer women in jilbabs. 

One week in mid-December had several activities dedicated to “Darma Wanita” loosely translated as “Working Women”.  All the female government employees took part in a march to the main square, and for the special occasion, they all wore new uniforms that looked more like exercise outfits (stretchy & quite close-fitting). Each government department had its own colour & design of uniform (the forestry office ladies wore olive green) & there were many different departments. There must have been at least 400 women participating.

Darma Wanita marchers
(above & right)

The most obvious indication that I’m living in a Muslim town is the many mosques, scattered as thickly as churches in Fredericton. And every small village has at least one or two. Call to prayer can be heard from loudspeakers 5 times a day; at about 3:30 am, 6:30 am, noon, 3:30 pm and 6:30 pm. Don’t set your watch by them, the times can vary by several minutes. If the country’s TV network ever sponsors an “Indonesia’s Next Top Imam” or “So you think you can call to prayer” competition I’m entering my guy’s name. He has a mellow voice, with subtle variations and best of all, I can sleep through the earliest call. Staying overnight in Makassar (the provincial capital & largest city on Sulawesi) was a whole different experience - the closest mosque was very nearby, the imam went on for ages and sounded like he was yelling out his  grocery list. Tough to get back to sleep after that.

RIght now, the music in the air is mating frog calls, which started last night as a result of the fresh rain.