In Reply to: So many changes posted by rorope on Monday, 21. May 2012 at 15:42 Bali Time:
The much loved Bali experience of times gone by has sadly ended. That is that. Now it is an extremely unpleasant place to get around with too many grasping & hassly shopkeepers & touts & beggars. Every few minutes, if not seconds, there is someone hassling. Taksis beeping constantly - horrid noise.
Infrastructure? What infrastructure & with all the building going on things will only get worse. Ever flown in during the day & seen the brown effluent trails into the ocean from the hotel areas around the main tourist strip? That will get worse, too. Planning on swimming off the beaches from Jimbaran to Seminyak? Not a good idea.
I am so tired of being seen as a walking $ sign. Yet we tourists are being blamed by the government for not spending enough money there! Hey, make it easier for me to get around to shops & I will spend.
It's getting too hard to go beyond the immediate area of your hotel because of the traffic. I spend time in Legian/Seminyak & do things in that area then move to Kuta etc to avoid spending hours in traffic.
I do enjoy going to Bali for the great food, shopping, cheap glasses etc & a mandatory wonderful respite in the mountains to heal from the pain of the coastal tourist strip. The main reason I go to Bali now is because my husband surfs for a few months elsewhere in Indonesia & we have some R&R in Bali.
Last year we went elsewhere in SE Asia & what a delightful change that was. No surf though. Later this year again going somewhere different in SE Asia.
If Bali wants to keep tourists coming it would do well to limit high rise hotels & improve the roads & infrastructure.
We lived in Bali for a year in '83 & were married there in a traditional way (as well as the legal formalities - unlike silly Jerry Hall) so Bali is/was very special to us.