In Reply to: On the whole I feel very safe. posted by Fiona on Tuesday, 13. December 2005 at 12:39 Bali Time:
I found the Chrissie thing a bit much also. Talk about shoving it in the face of fundamentalists.
My favourite spot (Zanzibar/Lanai) to watch the sunset and have a binnie/meal concerned me. All those bikes parked along the street, cars/trucks going very slowly (through necessity) past, even though the road leads nowhere much. Every person on the bikes had a backpack, most bikes a pannier. I took to going upstairs at the Lanai, felt safer, but probably even worse.
Seeing the area around Menjangan being patrolled by machine gun toting water police did not give me a sense of security, rather brought home the seriousness of the situation.
The other question of whether the Balinese are doing anything themselves I can't answer. I didn't see or hear anything to make me think so. As I have posted before, the locals I talked to seemed more interested in blaming Govt travel warnings for the turndown than the actual events that provoked the travel warnings. I spent quite some time trying to explain the reasons, but really I could see I wasn't getting anywhere.
S;~)