In Reply to: Bali -----Not worth it. posted by Ronald on Tuesday, 27. April 1999 at 11:49 Bali Time:
Nice to hear that someone else has not bought into the whole "lost paradise" sales pitch being touted here and elsewhere. Like other third world areas, Bali has its share of problems. I marvel at the lack of hygiene and the general attitude towards littering....not to mention the hawking game. It is a bit naive to excuse these things away due to poverty. There are plenty of areas with worse financial and environmental cicrumstances where the trash and waste is handled better. Also not fair to blame the tourists for the trash--the system in Bali is ready to do what it takes to lure the visitors in, but unwilling to do what it takes to clean up after them. The hawking thing will probably burn itself out in time just out of pure economics at work. Everyone uniformly dislikes the high-pressure tactics and in time they will impact tourism enough to be squelched, not just kept off of Kuta beach. There are plenty of jobs in the market that offer a relatively decent wage for work that does not require such shameless methods to succeed. Greed, or in a more politically correct term, capitalism is at work here. The good news is that although it is disheartening to see farmers, schoolchildren, and young housewives turn away from their traditional roles, it can be eventually curbed if people don't respond to hawking that is done in an unscrupulous manner. The lives of some of these people may be desparate, but from what most Balinese have told me, it is not. Certainly the standard of living is low, but thanks to the extended family system, people would not actually end up starving to death or living on the street. My friends dislike hawkers, bar girls, cowboys, and beggars even more than we do, because they find them shameful and a social and cultural embarassment. Thanks to forums like this, travellers can establish a kind of solidarity to not respond to the pressure of aggressive salespeople and to flatly turn away kids who are sent to beg. The sex industry is a bit tougher to slow down, but enough folks have been "taken" by their new boyfriends and girlfriends that an air of long-overdue skepticism has sort of set in already. The dignity of the place is certainly in decline. Even if local forces can't seem to solve the problem, the pure economic force that tourists represent certainly could. Say NO to beggars and annoying hawkers--in the long run you are doing both the locals and the tourists a big favor!