In Reply to: Tipping at the hotel posted by joelle on Friday, 4. March 2005 at 17:02 Bali Time:
You can call me mean, but the average monthly wage for someone on Bali is about 500,000 rupiah if they are lucky - and of course if you are living in Bali this is a perfectly good income as everyone is in the same boat. Life is extremely cheap there for a local who has a job. To tip someone half of their months wages is ridiculous - they are only doing their job and if you have that much spare cash, why not give it to one of the many thousands of people who dont have a job.
I estimated that the value of my pounds sterling was ten times higher than in Bali so I divided everything I gave as a tip by ten to give a sterling equivalent - so for a journey that I would tip a taxi driver in England £1, i would tip a taxi driver in Bali 10p or 2000 rupiah - in that way I tried to keep tipping in the local context.