Responsible Service of Alcohol..

[Adam]

JC,

As always, wonderful words of wisdom and all too true. After initially reading this post I thought back over the years to far too much time haunting Jalan Legian to the wee small hours. I think nowdays the percieved increase in loutism is more a product of sheer volume of people as much as anything. I remember back to pre and post bombing days and there were occasionally nights you could graze cattle down Jl Legian if you wanted to, it was that quiet and empty. I tried to think of all the really bad stuff thats happened to me and came up with an answer of very little. I've witnessed lots of not too pleasant stuff but trouble has a way of searching out trouble and the arseholes looking for trouble seem to find it wherever they are in the world, not just Bali and not just from one particular nationality.

Kuta/Legian has a bad reputation, but honestly I've seen less frequent but far more serious stuff go down in Seminyak than Kuta, where the flavour seems to be more northern hemispherites indulging in narcotics rather than southerners filling their stomachs full of alcohol. A trend that is especially noticable is there seems to be more younger people nowdays than ever before (or maybe I'm just getting older....) and the youngsters definately seem less capable of handling their grog now, or at least are less mindful of trying to behave themselves. The thought of Bali becoming a schoolies destination scares the sh*t out of me and I am totally puzzled at what thought processes are actually going on in the brains of the parents that send them there.

Saturday nights are especially ugly and I don't go out on Saturday nights anymore for one reason - the locals. My wife even hates saturday nights because of the locals and she is a 'local'. I'm a pacifist by nature but of the very few altercations I've had in my life, all bar one has been with 'locals'. Nothings uglier than a Balinese out of control, with a chip on his shoulder that your invading 'his' island and several of his mates standing behind him like a pack of sewer rats making him feel 10 feet tall. They've usually consumed half of Karangasem's annual output of arak beforehand so they don't have to buy a drink once they're there. Not a pretty sight.

At the end of the day, I still think Bali is pretty tame in the grand scheme of things, or at least no worse than anywhere. Nightspots are ugly all over the world and have a natural attraction to the low life and scum of society. London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Ibiza, Thailand, Sydney, Perth - wherever - has exactly the same sites as what you witness in Bali, if you go looking for it. Quite simply, Bali is a tourist party destination and it keeps may, many people employed. Don't like it - get over it or don't go there, simple. Keep your brain in your head and you'd be surprised how much fun you can have there too.