Bali is portrayed as “The Island of the Gods”, and an idyllic isle worthy of any tourist vacation.
In truth, the real Bali it would seem, is one of a decaying infrastructure, corruption, incivility and victimization.
Essentially, Indonesia is poor, and the Bali inhabitants appear to do everything they can to encourage the tourists to spend exorbitant amounts of money at every opportunity.
Package holidays might seem a good deal, but many companies are “locked in” to certain establishments to get their cut of your business. Even the local transport drivers who pester you relentlessly for business, will be getting their “bonus”, “reward”, “in kind” benefit, from your visits to tourist spots. You are taken to where THEY want to go, because that is where they have an arrangement, have no doubt about it. You will never be told that what you are taken to, and pay most handsomely for, is probably available at maybe half the price elsewhere, or even free!!!
Certain silverware shops in Ubud, offer the transport drivers a free packet of cigarettes, drink and snack, which they discreetly collect from around the rear of the shop, after they have dropped off their tourists, which of course means, that the tourists have indirectly paid for these unknowingly.
That clearly is deceit.
Very few people are your friend in Bali; most having an ulterior motive of extorting as much money from you as possible – even the highly respected Doctor will charge you double the price of others - friendship remember, is free; it is the only thing in life that is. There exists in almost everything, the “local” price, and the “tourist” price, the difference usually being a multiple of five!
Simply put, a trip to Nusa Penida will cost you 1.5 million rupiah, but for a local, usually less than 300,000rp.
A further example is jewellery in Ubud, retailing at 170,000rp, is immediately reduced to 70,000rp if you are local, and further discount is available, such is the real value of what they produce,ie. almost worthless, save the pitiful profit margin, yet you will be encouraged to pay big money for it.
Even on the seedier side of the fence, what would cost a “local” 200,000rp, will cost a white man, 1,000,000rp!!!
A major woodcarving establishment in Ubud sells it’s wares at hugely inflated prices – thus the reason why the “boss” drives a Toyota Landcruiser. The wood is NOT hardwood, so the villagers can carve with ease, and reproduce hundreds of similar articles at will, which they store most conveniently out of sight. Your incredibly expensive major purchase will crack and split within a few years, and be worth nothing, even visually.
Transport drivers at one establishment are told that for every one million rupiah spent, they will get 1%. Very encouraging to a low paid driver, as it doesn’t take too many tourists for him to be able to eat for a day, free!!!
Many countries in this world have some stringent means of enforcing vehicle safety, so that people are driving vehicles that have met government safety standards. Indonesia has none – absolutely nothing, which means that any form of transport, be it tourist bus, car, motorbike, taxi or coach, may be potentially lethal on the road. The most vulnerable are rented motorized transport, that are continually abused and seldomly serviced unless a problem occurs; rectification usually by the most cheapest and substandard means. Nobody cares if your rented vehicle doesn’t make it around the bend because the brakes have failed, and you are more mangled than the wreckage that surrounds you. The owner has taken your rent money first, so you become expendable, and anyway, the vehicle is probably over 10 years old and worth virtually nothing, and even if it does get bent or chopped in half, “we’ll just weld it back together again, fill it with some poor quality petrol, clean up the old spark plugs and stick some Radweld in the radiator. That should keep it going for another set of foolish tourists!” Don’t believe me? Official statistics inform us that 35 people are killed every day in Indonesia on the roads – the largest proportion in Bali, and yes, they are tourists. Who cares? Indonesia doesn’t, or they would have rectified the problem years ago, so why should Bali?
Rent property in Bali as part of a housing complex? Don’t be surprised if a proportion of your money goes towards their ceremonies, corruption payments and wasted energy recourses. Management will often do nothing to help you financially. Residents, leaving their lights on mistakenly in absence, will return to find the same lights still blazing away, and have been, 24hrs a day, even for as long as a whole week!!!
Own a property, and in your absence you will need “heavy duty” security, or otherwise anything internal or external could go missing. If it is sellable, then many Indonesians will take it if they can. It is common to find a branch of your favourite Kamboja missing; locals blaming it on evil spirits and the like. In truth, it was blatant theft.
Stop to help a local lad who has just fallen of his motorcycle? At your peril. From every perceivable corner, locals will appear ready to accuse you of causing the accident, using threatening behaviour and even physical contact. React forcibly against it, either verbally or physically, and you run the risk of some serious injury, or ultimately death – and it wasn’t even your fault!!!
Local government is ridden with corruption. Almost every signature requires bribe money to see your “application”, or whatever, proceed. Virtually no rule is sacrosanct, sufficient money allowing almost anything to occur.
Fall and slip on a wet floor? Your fault; you did not see the water. Break your wrist or whatever in such a type of incident, and you can give up trying to seek compensation. The notaris surely will help you seek such, but ultimately you almost certainly will not win. The notaris will walk away with your money; you will lose the case or give up long before it comes to court, notwithstanding your continued requirement to return to Bali for countless signatures to documents; every flight costing you, not them.
Build a house in Bali, and almost every contractor will charge the full amount for a regurgitated set of plans, that leaves you with a property alike so many others. Try to design one yourself, and at almost every turn you will find your architect culpable of professional negligence, as most are completely incapable of perceiving anything in three dimensions. Eventually, due to their mistakes, costs will become astronomical; all of which you have to pay. During the build process, many orders will be delayed or go missing, or be of such poor quality that they are almost useless to use. Short cuts abound, from putting earth into cement, using lower grade steel, no interlinking between walls and pillars, lorry loads dumped off down the road so friends can collect a proportion of what you have already paid for, and countless other thefts of which you will probably never know, because your contractor will hide all those extra costs in the total bill for your build.
This will also happen with the “bribe” payments to authorities, where your building breaks regulations. The powers that be, love these, as they can ask for more money. Perhaps the most common, is the failure of many properties to be built the correct distance from the road. You the owner, will probably never know the amount that you were “forced” to pay; it being hidden in the total cost. Don’t forget, when your contractor adds 20% to your bill as his fee, he is also doing that to your “bribe” payments!!!
Restaurants universally, except for a pitiful few, charge large amounts for small amounts, and often provide the cheapest “cuts”. Beds of lettuce, larger plates, longer glasses filled with ice, lots of “cheap stuff” rice, are just but a few of the tricks they adopt to con the tourists into believing that they have been served a quality meal. “Eat as much as you like” establishments know all to well, that whilst some men can eat a considerable amount of food, most do not, and neither do women and children, and they will quickly encourage you to order your drinks first, without ever telling you, until you find out for yourself when you get to the end of the buffet, that coffee and tea are “free”, and part of the service for which you have already paid. That is equally deceit!
A rummage through a Bali Advertiser newspaper reveals an article from di Mare’s restaurant, concluding with these last two statements:
1 – Always a 20% discount for local residents, and
2 – dimare.com.au
So, it would seem that the owner and/or manager is perhaps Australian, and is cheating the Australian tourists out of 20%, after all, if you can easily offer a discount to some, then it is somebody else who has to pay for it, so not only do the tourists have to pay full price, but they are also subsidising the locals to a tune of 20% unknowingly. I wonder how many tourists would confirm in the positive when asked, “Would you like to pay an extra 20% for your meal so that we may offer the locals their meal 20% cheaper?” Of course, if your answer to that question is “NO!”, then you really have to consider whether Bali is the place for your holiday, because, for the majority of establishments where you eat, that will be exactly what you are doing.
High class establishments are often discovered by mistake, when having eaten your meal in considerably shorter a time than most, with it’s wonderful presentation and sickly subservience of the waiter, you are presented with an inordinately large bill, with all the respect of a grovelling pauper.
Many restaurants offer a “bribe” to the transport driver, so it becomes almost impossible to be taken to the finest restaurant in Bali, where the incredibly diverse menu is served according to your choice, on simple tables in basic surroundings, but with a taste and flamboyance that defeats every establishment, at prices that will leave a group of four with far more money than most others can manage with one. In this restaurant, there is no “bribe” available to drivers, because “locals” know, by reputation, of it’s quality, quantity and economy. It is, at you might imagine, always well supplied with customers, and upon leaving, you will notice that your stomach has been very well supplied too, with a considerable amount of wonderful food - cheaply.
Food preparation techniques are positively appalling, with unwashed, unprotected hands being used in filthy surroundings, sometimes with mould growing on the walls, and adjacent to open sewers. Hands also, that can be doing a range of other uncivilised, disgusting activities. A little extra observation when viewing relevant TV programmes will confirm this.
Of course, if you happen to be proximate to a Ngaben ceremony, when they are burning the bones of a deceased person, you may well, as they do, be breathing in the airborne ash as you eulogise over the apparent quality of your dinner. That, whichever way you look at it, unknowingly or not, is cannibalism!!!
Almost everyone will ask you what your business is, so that they may be part of it, or establish ways of receiving an income from it.
Countless businesses fail, the proof of which is evident throughout Bali in closed down establishments, decaying buildings, and deserted hotels.
Nobody cares either. The locals just find other people to rip off before they move onto the next. Let us not forget the “cheap stuff” video shops either. Sure, we all know that they are illegal copies – or at least most of us do, the others perhaps caring not even to think about it – but at least we expect them to work. Really? A significant number do not work at all; others have bad sound, or a poor picture, or both, and of course, for many of the tourists, they only find this out when they return home to their native countries, and what are they going to do about it then? Now, if you think that’s bad, certainly the video shop owners, and sometimes the senior staff or even assistants, are well aware of which copies are good and which are not.
Will they be telling you though? I think not. That is fraud.
A trip to see the Dolphins off Uluwatu will cost you about 90 US dollars each, or approximately 900,000rp. So a husband and wife pay 1,800,000rp and the cost of transport, probably a minimum of 50,000rp. Total = 1,850,000rp. Get a driver to take you to Lovina in north Bali, and you can get to see the Dolphins for less than 100,000rp, plus the transport. Maybe a total of 350,000rp. But then the tourists are not readily told about the Lovina Dolphins. Why? Because the transport drivers get bigger cuts for the Uluwatu Dolphins!
There again, tourists are always taken to the office, where they pay full price. Indonesia, being so corrupt, is open to special deals. Take aside a “rep” who has told you 3 times that you must go through the office, and he will happily do a special deal with you, maybe even lowering the price by half, some of which of course, goes to him. And they still make profit – but nobody’s going to be telling you that, are they?
One of the biggest mistakes foreigners make when encountering the locals, is perceiving them as poor, dishevelled people, who are extremely short of money, and only able to eat at roadside food stalls, known as Warungs. Indeed many are like this, but unlike the staff of many businesses, the owners are able to drive around in expensive cars; enjoy flights throughout Indonesia; pay considerable sums of money to family and friends, and frequent the finest Hotels and restaurants. Yes, you are making some very rich people, richer!!!
Whichever way you look at it, tourists are used and abused and fleeced of as much money as possible, as the long term development of Bali is of no personal interest to most Balinese; short term personal gain is the only agenda.
If it is not forthcoming, the possibility of retribution follows. Only recently, a tourist was murdered in the Seminyak area, and another in Tabanan brutally hacked to pieces by his assailants, his head and legs remaining unfound. More recently, another mutilated body was discovered in the mangroves near Ngurah Rai airport.
Whilst in every society there is the good, the bad and the ugly, the viscous brutes of Bali, act and deliver like animals, as an uncivilized, uncontrollable force of vengeance, so if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, little mercy will be shown, but a considerable amount of aggression will be.
A visit to Kintamani/Batur will require you – the tourist - to pay for an entry ticket to the area, whether you stop or not, because you are seeing the “view”, even though there are many other routes in, that do NOT require payment. Clearly written on the ticket is the word, “retribusi” – the Indonesian word for “retribution”, ie. a punishment. Interestingly, if the cloud is so dense and so low, that no view is available, you still have to pay!
Maybe you have stayed away from Bali because of the bombs, but the honest truth of the matter is, that no significant proportion of tourists are ever directly influenced by anything explosive. Far more prudent a stance would be taken, if out of principle, you objected to being manipulated and having your dignity subversively removed, which for almost every tourist who arrives in Bali, is clearly the result of the interaction with the Balinese.
Only the other day, a friend of mine unfortunately fell off his motorcycle. Badly shaken and bruised, with lacerations down his leg, a painful knee and pulled chest muscle, he was left to struggle back upon his motorcycle and make his own way back home. Only when arriving home did he realise, that the zip pocket on his shorts was now open, and the contents gone. Yes, even when lying there dazed and battered, the local Balinese took full advantage and removed his wallet.
Yes, if you want to visit Bali, then you will be punished, one way or the other, whether you know it or not!!!!!
In truth, the real Bali it would seem, is one of a decaying infrastructure, corruption, incivility and victimization.
Essentially, Indonesia is poor, and the Bali inhabitants appear to do everything they can to encourage the tourists to spend exorbitant amounts of money at every opportunity.
Package holidays might seem a good deal, but many companies are “locked in” to certain establishments to get their cut of your business. Even the local transport drivers who pester you relentlessly for business, will be getting their “bonus”, “reward”, “in kind” benefit, from your visits to tourist spots. You are taken to where THEY want to go, because that is where they have an arrangement, have no doubt about it. You will never be told that what you are taken to, and pay most handsomely for, is probably available at maybe half the price elsewhere, or even free!!!
Certain silverware shops in Ubud, offer the transport drivers a free packet of cigarettes, drink and snack, which they discreetly collect from around the rear of the shop, after they have dropped off their tourists, which of course means, that the tourists have indirectly paid for these unknowingly.
That clearly is deceit.
Very few people are your friend in Bali; most having an ulterior motive of extorting as much money from you as possible – even the highly respected Doctor will charge you double the price of others - friendship remember, is free; it is the only thing in life that is. There exists in almost everything, the “local” price, and the “tourist” price, the difference usually being a multiple of five!
Simply put, a trip to Nusa Penida will cost you 1.5 million rupiah, but for a local, usually less than 300,000rp.
A further example is jewellery in Ubud, retailing at 170,000rp, is immediately reduced to 70,000rp if you are local, and further discount is available, such is the real value of what they produce,ie. almost worthless, save the pitiful profit margin, yet you will be encouraged to pay big money for it.
Even on the seedier side of the fence, what would cost a “local” 200,000rp, will cost a white man, 1,000,000rp!!!
A major woodcarving establishment in Ubud sells it’s wares at hugely inflated prices – thus the reason why the “boss” drives a Toyota Landcruiser. The wood is NOT hardwood, so the villagers can carve with ease, and reproduce hundreds of similar articles at will, which they store most conveniently out of sight. Your incredibly expensive major purchase will crack and split within a few years, and be worth nothing, even visually.
Transport drivers at one establishment are told that for every one million rupiah spent, they will get 1%. Very encouraging to a low paid driver, as it doesn’t take too many tourists for him to be able to eat for a day, free!!!
Many countries in this world have some stringent means of enforcing vehicle safety, so that people are driving vehicles that have met government safety standards. Indonesia has none – absolutely nothing, which means that any form of transport, be it tourist bus, car, motorbike, taxi or coach, may be potentially lethal on the road. The most vulnerable are rented motorized transport, that are continually abused and seldomly serviced unless a problem occurs; rectification usually by the most cheapest and substandard means. Nobody cares if your rented vehicle doesn’t make it around the bend because the brakes have failed, and you are more mangled than the wreckage that surrounds you. The owner has taken your rent money first, so you become expendable, and anyway, the vehicle is probably over 10 years old and worth virtually nothing, and even if it does get bent or chopped in half, “we’ll just weld it back together again, fill it with some poor quality petrol, clean up the old spark plugs and stick some Radweld in the radiator. That should keep it going for another set of foolish tourists!” Don’t believe me? Official statistics inform us that 35 people are killed every day in Indonesia on the roads – the largest proportion in Bali, and yes, they are tourists. Who cares? Indonesia doesn’t, or they would have rectified the problem years ago, so why should Bali?
Rent property in Bali as part of a housing complex? Don’t be surprised if a proportion of your money goes towards their ceremonies, corruption payments and wasted energy recourses. Management will often do nothing to help you financially. Residents, leaving their lights on mistakenly in absence, will return to find the same lights still blazing away, and have been, 24hrs a day, even for as long as a whole week!!!
Own a property, and in your absence you will need “heavy duty” security, or otherwise anything internal or external could go missing. If it is sellable, then many Indonesians will take it if they can. It is common to find a branch of your favourite Kamboja missing; locals blaming it on evil spirits and the like. In truth, it was blatant theft.
Stop to help a local lad who has just fallen of his motorcycle? At your peril. From every perceivable corner, locals will appear ready to accuse you of causing the accident, using threatening behaviour and even physical contact. React forcibly against it, either verbally or physically, and you run the risk of some serious injury, or ultimately death – and it wasn’t even your fault!!!
Local government is ridden with corruption. Almost every signature requires bribe money to see your “application”, or whatever, proceed. Virtually no rule is sacrosanct, sufficient money allowing almost anything to occur.
Fall and slip on a wet floor? Your fault; you did not see the water. Break your wrist or whatever in such a type of incident, and you can give up trying to seek compensation. The notaris surely will help you seek such, but ultimately you almost certainly will not win. The notaris will walk away with your money; you will lose the case or give up long before it comes to court, notwithstanding your continued requirement to return to Bali for countless signatures to documents; every flight costing you, not them.
Build a house in Bali, and almost every contractor will charge the full amount for a regurgitated set of plans, that leaves you with a property alike so many others. Try to design one yourself, and at almost every turn you will find your architect culpable of professional negligence, as most are completely incapable of perceiving anything in three dimensions. Eventually, due to their mistakes, costs will become astronomical; all of which you have to pay. During the build process, many orders will be delayed or go missing, or be of such poor quality that they are almost useless to use. Short cuts abound, from putting earth into cement, using lower grade steel, no interlinking between walls and pillars, lorry loads dumped off down the road so friends can collect a proportion of what you have already paid for, and countless other thefts of which you will probably never know, because your contractor will hide all those extra costs in the total bill for your build.
This will also happen with the “bribe” payments to authorities, where your building breaks regulations. The powers that be, love these, as they can ask for more money. Perhaps the most common, is the failure of many properties to be built the correct distance from the road. You the owner, will probably never know the amount that you were “forced” to pay; it being hidden in the total cost. Don’t forget, when your contractor adds 20% to your bill as his fee, he is also doing that to your “bribe” payments!!!
Restaurants universally, except for a pitiful few, charge large amounts for small amounts, and often provide the cheapest “cuts”. Beds of lettuce, larger plates, longer glasses filled with ice, lots of “cheap stuff” rice, are just but a few of the tricks they adopt to con the tourists into believing that they have been served a quality meal. “Eat as much as you like” establishments know all to well, that whilst some men can eat a considerable amount of food, most do not, and neither do women and children, and they will quickly encourage you to order your drinks first, without ever telling you, until you find out for yourself when you get to the end of the buffet, that coffee and tea are “free”, and part of the service for which you have already paid. That is equally deceit!
A rummage through a Bali Advertiser newspaper reveals an article from di Mare’s restaurant, concluding with these last two statements:
1 – Always a 20% discount for local residents, and
2 – dimare.com.au
So, it would seem that the owner and/or manager is perhaps Australian, and is cheating the Australian tourists out of 20%, after all, if you can easily offer a discount to some, then it is somebody else who has to pay for it, so not only do the tourists have to pay full price, but they are also subsidising the locals to a tune of 20% unknowingly. I wonder how many tourists would confirm in the positive when asked, “Would you like to pay an extra 20% for your meal so that we may offer the locals their meal 20% cheaper?” Of course, if your answer to that question is “NO!”, then you really have to consider whether Bali is the place for your holiday, because, for the majority of establishments where you eat, that will be exactly what you are doing.
High class establishments are often discovered by mistake, when having eaten your meal in considerably shorter a time than most, with it’s wonderful presentation and sickly subservience of the waiter, you are presented with an inordinately large bill, with all the respect of a grovelling pauper.
Many restaurants offer a “bribe” to the transport driver, so it becomes almost impossible to be taken to the finest restaurant in Bali, where the incredibly diverse menu is served according to your choice, on simple tables in basic surroundings, but with a taste and flamboyance that defeats every establishment, at prices that will leave a group of four with far more money than most others can manage with one. In this restaurant, there is no “bribe” available to drivers, because “locals” know, by reputation, of it’s quality, quantity and economy. It is, at you might imagine, always well supplied with customers, and upon leaving, you will notice that your stomach has been very well supplied too, with a considerable amount of wonderful food - cheaply.
Food preparation techniques are positively appalling, with unwashed, unprotected hands being used in filthy surroundings, sometimes with mould growing on the walls, and adjacent to open sewers. Hands also, that can be doing a range of other uncivilised, disgusting activities. A little extra observation when viewing relevant TV programmes will confirm this.
Of course, if you happen to be proximate to a Ngaben ceremony, when they are burning the bones of a deceased person, you may well, as they do, be breathing in the airborne ash as you eulogise over the apparent quality of your dinner. That, whichever way you look at it, unknowingly or not, is cannibalism!!!
Almost everyone will ask you what your business is, so that they may be part of it, or establish ways of receiving an income from it.
Countless businesses fail, the proof of which is evident throughout Bali in closed down establishments, decaying buildings, and deserted hotels.
Nobody cares either. The locals just find other people to rip off before they move onto the next. Let us not forget the “cheap stuff” video shops either. Sure, we all know that they are illegal copies – or at least most of us do, the others perhaps caring not even to think about it – but at least we expect them to work. Really? A significant number do not work at all; others have bad sound, or a poor picture, or both, and of course, for many of the tourists, they only find this out when they return home to their native countries, and what are they going to do about it then? Now, if you think that’s bad, certainly the video shop owners, and sometimes the senior staff or even assistants, are well aware of which copies are good and which are not.
Will they be telling you though? I think not. That is fraud.
A trip to see the Dolphins off Uluwatu will cost you about 90 US dollars each, or approximately 900,000rp. So a husband and wife pay 1,800,000rp and the cost of transport, probably a minimum of 50,000rp. Total = 1,850,000rp. Get a driver to take you to Lovina in north Bali, and you can get to see the Dolphins for less than 100,000rp, plus the transport. Maybe a total of 350,000rp. But then the tourists are not readily told about the Lovina Dolphins. Why? Because the transport drivers get bigger cuts for the Uluwatu Dolphins!
There again, tourists are always taken to the office, where they pay full price. Indonesia, being so corrupt, is open to special deals. Take aside a “rep” who has told you 3 times that you must go through the office, and he will happily do a special deal with you, maybe even lowering the price by half, some of which of course, goes to him. And they still make profit – but nobody’s going to be telling you that, are they?
One of the biggest mistakes foreigners make when encountering the locals, is perceiving them as poor, dishevelled people, who are extremely short of money, and only able to eat at roadside food stalls, known as Warungs. Indeed many are like this, but unlike the staff of many businesses, the owners are able to drive around in expensive cars; enjoy flights throughout Indonesia; pay considerable sums of money to family and friends, and frequent the finest Hotels and restaurants. Yes, you are making some very rich people, richer!!!
Whichever way you look at it, tourists are used and abused and fleeced of as much money as possible, as the long term development of Bali is of no personal interest to most Balinese; short term personal gain is the only agenda.
If it is not forthcoming, the possibility of retribution follows. Only recently, a tourist was murdered in the Seminyak area, and another in Tabanan brutally hacked to pieces by his assailants, his head and legs remaining unfound. More recently, another mutilated body was discovered in the mangroves near Ngurah Rai airport.
Whilst in every society there is the good, the bad and the ugly, the viscous brutes of Bali, act and deliver like animals, as an uncivilized, uncontrollable force of vengeance, so if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, little mercy will be shown, but a considerable amount of aggression will be.
A visit to Kintamani/Batur will require you – the tourist - to pay for an entry ticket to the area, whether you stop or not, because you are seeing the “view”, even though there are many other routes in, that do NOT require payment. Clearly written on the ticket is the word, “retribusi” – the Indonesian word for “retribution”, ie. a punishment. Interestingly, if the cloud is so dense and so low, that no view is available, you still have to pay!
Maybe you have stayed away from Bali because of the bombs, but the honest truth of the matter is, that no significant proportion of tourists are ever directly influenced by anything explosive. Far more prudent a stance would be taken, if out of principle, you objected to being manipulated and having your dignity subversively removed, which for almost every tourist who arrives in Bali, is clearly the result of the interaction with the Balinese.
Only the other day, a friend of mine unfortunately fell off his motorcycle. Badly shaken and bruised, with lacerations down his leg, a painful knee and pulled chest muscle, he was left to struggle back upon his motorcycle and make his own way back home. Only when arriving home did he realise, that the zip pocket on his shorts was now open, and the contents gone. Yes, even when lying there dazed and battered, the local Balinese took full advantage and removed his wallet.
Yes, if you want to visit Bali, then you will be punished, one way or the other, whether you know it or not!!!!!
