sakumabali wrote
I must say that I never had any serious problem on Bali. Balinese are friendly but this doesn't mean they like you or accept you. I had a friendly balinese neighbor for years. That changed in a second when I asked him friendly about his noisy dog (chained to his gate almost every night). His answer: if you don't like it here feck off
You bring up a very important point here. Indonesia, like many Asian countries, has a "saving face" culture. Losing their temper and confrontation is typically avoided at all costs. So it begs the question, what percentage of locals really hate our presence here but just never show it?
That's kind of the lazy way to look at it in my opinion. It's easy to say "Indonesians are anti-foreigners who are just putting up with our shit to make a few easy bucks." But in my experience, if you go the extra mile to adopt the culture, and learn the language, you will be rewarded with some level of acceptance.
I had a friend who's neighbor was burning trash. One day, he had enough of it, stormed over there and tore the guy a new asshole. The next day the neighbor made an even bigger trash fire and basically told my friend "fuck off to your country."
A few months later, he tried a different approach: "melukat remen." It focuses on open communication, understanding each other's perspectives, and finding a solution agreeable to everyone with the help of a mediator from the banjar. Just like that, the trash fires stopped.
So this is a long way of saying, yes, Balinese are tired of foreigners...foreigners who continue to disrespect the culture. But if these bule made even the slightest effort to assimilate, we'd see hate crimes go way down.
