Do NOT accept Bali for what it is.
To one of my past posts, a comment was made that was indicative of the “cheap stuff” attitude adopted by so many, to wit, the sanctioning of a practice in one location to make it legitimate in another.
Fraud is fraud, corruption is corruption. Making the remark that this is the state of affairs throughout Asia is worthless, as clearly, if indeed it be so, that in no way condones the practice in Bali or even supports it as a viable monetary system, and yet without that ethic, the point was meaningless.
Accepting a malpractice in any shape or form is commiserate with it’s continued existence, for which you have no complaint. The system of negotiable pricing in Bali is a prime example of this. Some adopt a “fixed price” strategy, but for the remainder, you may barter down to an acceptable price.
For most, you may get 10 – 20%, but little more. Others, bargaining hard, might achieve a third off the price. However, what few off you realise, is that the price of the product is often flexible, according to the type of person displaying interest. It is common, very common indeed, for the Balinese to be offered a reasonable price, but for everybody else, the price ascends, until, if you are Bule ( Caucasion ), then it is highly likely that the price you are initially offered will be FIVE times the price at which they begin to make profit!!!!!
Why does this occur?
Quite simply because, you let it.
You allow yourselves to be “ripped-off” at every turn, by accepting the practice and collapsing under the weight of their argument.
Walking away with a “Look dear, I did really well. I got 30% off!!!”, does not alter the fact that it was worth less than 20% and you’ve just been conned.
Me?
I don’t do it. I won’t do it. I refuse to do it. I will NOT bargain ever. NEVER.
I look at the product. I decide what it is worth and then tell them what I am going to pay for it.
Example, “50,000rp or nothing – what do you want?”
If they start remonstrating and explaining, just walk away. Don’t negotiate. Refuse to accept a corrupt practice. Refuse to condone the “it’s just the way it is in Bali” ethic.
Let them know, that “yes you will” fly all the way to Jakarta to buy that product at a fair price, no matter if it costs you ten times more, because “they” are honest, and you are not.
Now, you might think that this is suicide, but look at it more long term and to a greater extent, and then you will see the Balinese pricing structure collapsing, as fair competition rears it’s wonderful head.
One particular commodity in which I was interested, was way overpriced in Bali, so I flew to Jakarta. Returning with over 20 items, I found to my great delight, that together with the cost of the flight it had only cost be 200,000rp more.
And yet why was I so delighted?
Because, quite simply, I stuck to a principle.
The price ultimately did not matter. Fraud and corruption did.
You fight the system by adopting sanctions based upon principles. Indonesians generally, cannot understand principle; it flies way over their heads. They cannot understand how you can challenge 5000rp in one location, yet spend 300 million rupiah in another without apparently even batting an eyelid; it is completely beyond their reasoning.
That gives you, the tourist, ultimate power to challenge everything based upon principle, the principle that what I am interested in purchasing, I will only purchase at a price I consider to be fair. If not, I will walk away, and never, ever again, return to that establishment.
You see, Bali is a fraud. It portrays itself as “The island of the Gods” and a most beautiful place to visit, when in reality, it is trying to suck you in with it’s sickly, subservient smile, and gently and discreetly disarms you of your incredibly hard earned money, for which your return will be one of deception and deceit, falsehood and a standard of quality that in reality, is so poor, so base, that impact euphoria is all you have left when you return home to the litter free streets, the level pavements, the clean fresh air and the wide open spaces, orderly queues and the ultimate satisfier, honesty.
One Balinese tour guide I recently spoke to, used to work for the “Bule” that took that infamous photo of Tanah Lot bathed in an orange sunset. “Oh, that was eight years ago,” he said, “and I’ve never seen as good a one since”.
So, because of one night, eight years ago, you think Tanah Lot is incredibly beautiful. It is not. It is a crumbly old rock with cheap stuff constructed buildings, accessed via litter strewn streets and a vast array of cheap stuff commodities at highly inflated prices, none of which you need. Herded and cajoled through a got to pay entrance, including the parking, the “one’s that know” arrive via the alternate route and completely free entry. Guess which nationality they are!!!
Deal with it.
A woman in Bedugal was selling a “blue lily”. As is typical of Indonesia, they cannot get anything right. It was not a blue lily, but in fact an Agapanthus, which is not a lily, however falsely alluded to by some. Lillies are from the genus Lillium, and from no other, irrespective of local names. Whatever, she was selling it at 35, 000rp, but said that she could do a special deal for me at 25,000rp. As you might imagine, such “cons” are like water on a duck’s back to me, and I paid it no deliberation. I told her that I would pay 5,000rp, which she refused, beginning then to offer explanations. I walked off, telling my Balinese friend to tell her that my 5,000rp was NOT an offer. It was the price I was going to pay her, or nothing. That’s it.
Now that’s how you should use a “that’s it” in Bali.
Ps – She sold it bye the way, for 5,000rp, so I went back and bought some further stock from her, because she knew, as well as I did, what I would have done had she not, and so do you, don’t you? That’s right. Walked away without it.
There’s only one thing you always need in life, that’s your health. Everything else you can temporarily do without, and for most of it, permanently.
I came across this rather succinct ideology many years ago:
“Anything is only of value by the value apportioned to it by the valuer. In itself, it is valueless until that occurs, and only exists as long as the apportion”.
Same can be said for Bali.
Addendum
Recent news of two dutch tourists who died off Kuta beach, dragged down by the waves.
Aware folk will shrug a yet again “know it” grimace, and others less knowledgeable will raise an eyebrow and imagine, ever hopefully and gullibly, that they were just unlucky.
In reality, the truth is devastatingly incompetent, for, as recent news items demonstrate, there is massive erosion occurring on the east coast of Bali, environmentalists blaming global warming and subjects of similar ilk. What is less well known, is that when the subject of extending the Ngurah Rai Airport runway was first muted, the cheaper option of extending into Kuta Bay, rather than Benoa Bay, was chosen, with no regard to the environmental knock-on effects that this would cause. Resultantly, tidal currents in Kuta Bay have become substantially more dangerous, evidence of which exists in the increased number of fatalities since the runway completion, and the need to import sand from Java by the lorry load, and to use a mechanical digger to raise the beach to road level, to maintain it for the tourists because of erosion. Yes, Kuta beach is a very dangerous location, and whilst the flags would tend to indicate it is safe, it is in fact only mildly safer – not safe. The outgoing tidal currents are extremely powerful, and should any of you have ever had the misfortune to fight against such a phenomena and lived to tell the tale, I am sure you would attest to the fact that the “live in cuckoo land” mentality of the perceived world is far different to reality. In truth, your bodily muscles are insufficiently strong to fight such a current, and once pulled under the yip and yaw of a bucking crest, your fight will be one for oxygen, as rapidly diminishing seconds yield little supply to the aching burn that renders your muscles useless, no matter how big and powerful they are, in fact more so, as bigger muscles need greater oxygen, evident in the fact that in so many events of this type, weaker humans survive, and yet the more confident, experienced and more bodily competent, perish. Attest to the fact that drunken people are less likely to break bones than sober ones, and babies bounce far better than adults.
The Balinese Tourist Board have recently proudly announced that since the October 1st bombings, Bali is now safe.
Well BTB, I have news for you rather than you for us. In recent history, Bali never was safe and has become increasingly less so, not because of the bombs, not because of the pollution or indeed the lack of hygiene, but because of the mindset of the Balinese themselves, who whilst you might think them to be a nice people with their sickly, subservient smile I so often allude to, they are generally speaking selfish and lazy, and are interested in only one thing, that of making more money at any cost. Your welfare is of no consideration to them at all, simply because they have no consideration of each other, less alone you.
Their Hindu masters demand their contributions with psychological pressure or worse, being interested in one thing and one thing only – money, from whatever source, be it theft, bank loan, selling of assets or whatever.
This is what drives the Balinese; what drives them to suck money from whatever source they can, even within their own families. Everything in the Balinese way of life centres around this concept as ordained by the “masters” themselves, and it is you, the tourist, who will suffer at every turn.
I recently had a very prolonged and very intense discussion with a long standing Balinese Hindu, who at one point, in a desperate attempt to defend his religion, said, “But the masters themselves receive no income. Contributions go to their families, not them!”
I wish I could have offered him a pair of short sighted spectacles and rammed them with the lower palm of my hand firmly on the bridge of his nose, just to knock some sense into him.
Now, the Hindu religion itself has as much credence as any other religion on this planet, and if millions of people worldwide wish to practice a whole load of mumbo-jumbo in a self gratifying, brain – washed medium, then so be it, and far be it for me to even begin to criticise something that is, at the end of the day, only a belief, but the manner in which the Hindu religion is manipulated in Bali is fraudulent, and it preys on the weak and the gullible, to the extent that the people themselves are left with no self respect, no worthiness, and see themselves as just “small” people whose lives are meaningless other than to serve their masters. I see so much in their religion today of what the British and the Dutch enforced during their occupations.
Yes, the Balinese are the way they are because of what our ancestors did to them, so the responsibility to change that lies firmly in our laps.
“This is how it is in Bali” is not the way the Balinese want it, but indeed the way they think they want it, because of the psychological, social and political influences of the past. Not accepting Bali for what it is, is taking the responsibility for our prejudice and ignorance of the past.
It is our fault Bali is the way it is, not theirs, and as with Indonesia who invited the west in post WW2, so Bali too has to realise that with that invitation comes all the unwanted baggage too, but they will in the short term never do that, for what they perceive as their way of life, is but a corrupted form of the result of colonialisation, but without the developed management skills of the west.
Bali is corrupt, ill managed, fraudulent and about as close to a leech as you will get, but I wonder just who’s fault that is, and what it will take on your part, the tourist, to change that, because one thing is certain, if you allow Bali to suck you in, to promise you nirvana and to try to satisfy those happy hormones, all you will have left at the end of your journey is what you were offered at the start of it............
Nothing, for that really is the truth behind the apparent glossiness and glitz, the Bintang beer and the thumping sounds, the counterfeit technology and the “well, that’s what we call a Cappuccino” philosophy. None of it is worth anything at all, for at the end of the day, when you hold Bali up to the standards we expect, to the quality we take so for granted in our own countries, what you find is that Bali is left severely wanting, literally because, we ourselves, in the past, cast it aside, left it as a not worthy to proceed with entity, something that really was not worth fighting for, something that seemingly promised so much, yet delivered very little.
And here we are, hundreds of years or decades later, and as we can witness...................nothing has changed. The Balinese do not want to change because they think that it is their way of life. It is not. It is our legacy, and now we don’t like it. They don’t care if it is not straight; they don’t care if it is not level; they don’t care if your food has got chilli in it and it wasn’t mentioned in the menu. Simply put, they don’t care. They don’t care because they have no sense of worth, of worthiness, of being valued, of having anything of value or indeed, apportioning an effort to a result.
And all this is because, that’s how we treated them in the past. That’s how we saw them. We ruled and dominated them, and it penetrated deep into their psyche.
Today, they will still call you “Boss”, and what they revered in us during colonialisation, they use as the role model for the management of their society.
Yes, they may well call you “Boss”, but have no doubt at all, it is they who think they are the bosses. And why shouldn’t they? It’s their island, their country, and they will make you pay for serving them, just as we did to them.
To one of my past posts, a comment was made that was indicative of the “cheap stuff” attitude adopted by so many, to wit, the sanctioning of a practice in one location to make it legitimate in another.
Fraud is fraud, corruption is corruption. Making the remark that this is the state of affairs throughout Asia is worthless, as clearly, if indeed it be so, that in no way condones the practice in Bali or even supports it as a viable monetary system, and yet without that ethic, the point was meaningless.
Accepting a malpractice in any shape or form is commiserate with it’s continued existence, for which you have no complaint. The system of negotiable pricing in Bali is a prime example of this. Some adopt a “fixed price” strategy, but for the remainder, you may barter down to an acceptable price.
For most, you may get 10 – 20%, but little more. Others, bargaining hard, might achieve a third off the price. However, what few off you realise, is that the price of the product is often flexible, according to the type of person displaying interest. It is common, very common indeed, for the Balinese to be offered a reasonable price, but for everybody else, the price ascends, until, if you are Bule ( Caucasion ), then it is highly likely that the price you are initially offered will be FIVE times the price at which they begin to make profit!!!!!
Why does this occur?
Quite simply because, you let it.
You allow yourselves to be “ripped-off” at every turn, by accepting the practice and collapsing under the weight of their argument.
Walking away with a “Look dear, I did really well. I got 30% off!!!”, does not alter the fact that it was worth less than 20% and you’ve just been conned.
Me?
I don’t do it. I won’t do it. I refuse to do it. I will NOT bargain ever. NEVER.
I look at the product. I decide what it is worth and then tell them what I am going to pay for it.
Example, “50,000rp or nothing – what do you want?”
If they start remonstrating and explaining, just walk away. Don’t negotiate. Refuse to accept a corrupt practice. Refuse to condone the “it’s just the way it is in Bali” ethic.
Let them know, that “yes you will” fly all the way to Jakarta to buy that product at a fair price, no matter if it costs you ten times more, because “they” are honest, and you are not.
Now, you might think that this is suicide, but look at it more long term and to a greater extent, and then you will see the Balinese pricing structure collapsing, as fair competition rears it’s wonderful head.
One particular commodity in which I was interested, was way overpriced in Bali, so I flew to Jakarta. Returning with over 20 items, I found to my great delight, that together with the cost of the flight it had only cost be 200,000rp more.
And yet why was I so delighted?
Because, quite simply, I stuck to a principle.
The price ultimately did not matter. Fraud and corruption did.
You fight the system by adopting sanctions based upon principles. Indonesians generally, cannot understand principle; it flies way over their heads. They cannot understand how you can challenge 5000rp in one location, yet spend 300 million rupiah in another without apparently even batting an eyelid; it is completely beyond their reasoning.
That gives you, the tourist, ultimate power to challenge everything based upon principle, the principle that what I am interested in purchasing, I will only purchase at a price I consider to be fair. If not, I will walk away, and never, ever again, return to that establishment.
You see, Bali is a fraud. It portrays itself as “The island of the Gods” and a most beautiful place to visit, when in reality, it is trying to suck you in with it’s sickly, subservient smile, and gently and discreetly disarms you of your incredibly hard earned money, for which your return will be one of deception and deceit, falsehood and a standard of quality that in reality, is so poor, so base, that impact euphoria is all you have left when you return home to the litter free streets, the level pavements, the clean fresh air and the wide open spaces, orderly queues and the ultimate satisfier, honesty.
One Balinese tour guide I recently spoke to, used to work for the “Bule” that took that infamous photo of Tanah Lot bathed in an orange sunset. “Oh, that was eight years ago,” he said, “and I’ve never seen as good a one since”.
So, because of one night, eight years ago, you think Tanah Lot is incredibly beautiful. It is not. It is a crumbly old rock with cheap stuff constructed buildings, accessed via litter strewn streets and a vast array of cheap stuff commodities at highly inflated prices, none of which you need. Herded and cajoled through a got to pay entrance, including the parking, the “one’s that know” arrive via the alternate route and completely free entry. Guess which nationality they are!!!
Deal with it.
A woman in Bedugal was selling a “blue lily”. As is typical of Indonesia, they cannot get anything right. It was not a blue lily, but in fact an Agapanthus, which is not a lily, however falsely alluded to by some. Lillies are from the genus Lillium, and from no other, irrespective of local names. Whatever, she was selling it at 35, 000rp, but said that she could do a special deal for me at 25,000rp. As you might imagine, such “cons” are like water on a duck’s back to me, and I paid it no deliberation. I told her that I would pay 5,000rp, which she refused, beginning then to offer explanations. I walked off, telling my Balinese friend to tell her that my 5,000rp was NOT an offer. It was the price I was going to pay her, or nothing. That’s it.
Now that’s how you should use a “that’s it” in Bali.
Ps – She sold it bye the way, for 5,000rp, so I went back and bought some further stock from her, because she knew, as well as I did, what I would have done had she not, and so do you, don’t you? That’s right. Walked away without it.
There’s only one thing you always need in life, that’s your health. Everything else you can temporarily do without, and for most of it, permanently.
I came across this rather succinct ideology many years ago:
“Anything is only of value by the value apportioned to it by the valuer. In itself, it is valueless until that occurs, and only exists as long as the apportion”.
Same can be said for Bali.
Addendum
Recent news of two dutch tourists who died off Kuta beach, dragged down by the waves.
Aware folk will shrug a yet again “know it” grimace, and others less knowledgeable will raise an eyebrow and imagine, ever hopefully and gullibly, that they were just unlucky.
In reality, the truth is devastatingly incompetent, for, as recent news items demonstrate, there is massive erosion occurring on the east coast of Bali, environmentalists blaming global warming and subjects of similar ilk. What is less well known, is that when the subject of extending the Ngurah Rai Airport runway was first muted, the cheaper option of extending into Kuta Bay, rather than Benoa Bay, was chosen, with no regard to the environmental knock-on effects that this would cause. Resultantly, tidal currents in Kuta Bay have become substantially more dangerous, evidence of which exists in the increased number of fatalities since the runway completion, and the need to import sand from Java by the lorry load, and to use a mechanical digger to raise the beach to road level, to maintain it for the tourists because of erosion. Yes, Kuta beach is a very dangerous location, and whilst the flags would tend to indicate it is safe, it is in fact only mildly safer – not safe. The outgoing tidal currents are extremely powerful, and should any of you have ever had the misfortune to fight against such a phenomena and lived to tell the tale, I am sure you would attest to the fact that the “live in cuckoo land” mentality of the perceived world is far different to reality. In truth, your bodily muscles are insufficiently strong to fight such a current, and once pulled under the yip and yaw of a bucking crest, your fight will be one for oxygen, as rapidly diminishing seconds yield little supply to the aching burn that renders your muscles useless, no matter how big and powerful they are, in fact more so, as bigger muscles need greater oxygen, evident in the fact that in so many events of this type, weaker humans survive, and yet the more confident, experienced and more bodily competent, perish. Attest to the fact that drunken people are less likely to break bones than sober ones, and babies bounce far better than adults.
The Balinese Tourist Board have recently proudly announced that since the October 1st bombings, Bali is now safe.
Well BTB, I have news for you rather than you for us. In recent history, Bali never was safe and has become increasingly less so, not because of the bombs, not because of the pollution or indeed the lack of hygiene, but because of the mindset of the Balinese themselves, who whilst you might think them to be a nice people with their sickly, subservient smile I so often allude to, they are generally speaking selfish and lazy, and are interested in only one thing, that of making more money at any cost. Your welfare is of no consideration to them at all, simply because they have no consideration of each other, less alone you.
Their Hindu masters demand their contributions with psychological pressure or worse, being interested in one thing and one thing only – money, from whatever source, be it theft, bank loan, selling of assets or whatever.
This is what drives the Balinese; what drives them to suck money from whatever source they can, even within their own families. Everything in the Balinese way of life centres around this concept as ordained by the “masters” themselves, and it is you, the tourist, who will suffer at every turn.
I recently had a very prolonged and very intense discussion with a long standing Balinese Hindu, who at one point, in a desperate attempt to defend his religion, said, “But the masters themselves receive no income. Contributions go to their families, not them!”
I wish I could have offered him a pair of short sighted spectacles and rammed them with the lower palm of my hand firmly on the bridge of his nose, just to knock some sense into him.
Now, the Hindu religion itself has as much credence as any other religion on this planet, and if millions of people worldwide wish to practice a whole load of mumbo-jumbo in a self gratifying, brain – washed medium, then so be it, and far be it for me to even begin to criticise something that is, at the end of the day, only a belief, but the manner in which the Hindu religion is manipulated in Bali is fraudulent, and it preys on the weak and the gullible, to the extent that the people themselves are left with no self respect, no worthiness, and see themselves as just “small” people whose lives are meaningless other than to serve their masters. I see so much in their religion today of what the British and the Dutch enforced during their occupations.
Yes, the Balinese are the way they are because of what our ancestors did to them, so the responsibility to change that lies firmly in our laps.
“This is how it is in Bali” is not the way the Balinese want it, but indeed the way they think they want it, because of the psychological, social and political influences of the past. Not accepting Bali for what it is, is taking the responsibility for our prejudice and ignorance of the past.
It is our fault Bali is the way it is, not theirs, and as with Indonesia who invited the west in post WW2, so Bali too has to realise that with that invitation comes all the unwanted baggage too, but they will in the short term never do that, for what they perceive as their way of life, is but a corrupted form of the result of colonialisation, but without the developed management skills of the west.
Bali is corrupt, ill managed, fraudulent and about as close to a leech as you will get, but I wonder just who’s fault that is, and what it will take on your part, the tourist, to change that, because one thing is certain, if you allow Bali to suck you in, to promise you nirvana and to try to satisfy those happy hormones, all you will have left at the end of your journey is what you were offered at the start of it............
Nothing, for that really is the truth behind the apparent glossiness and glitz, the Bintang beer and the thumping sounds, the counterfeit technology and the “well, that’s what we call a Cappuccino” philosophy. None of it is worth anything at all, for at the end of the day, when you hold Bali up to the standards we expect, to the quality we take so for granted in our own countries, what you find is that Bali is left severely wanting, literally because, we ourselves, in the past, cast it aside, left it as a not worthy to proceed with entity, something that really was not worth fighting for, something that seemingly promised so much, yet delivered very little.
And here we are, hundreds of years or decades later, and as we can witness...................nothing has changed. The Balinese do not want to change because they think that it is their way of life. It is not. It is our legacy, and now we don’t like it. They don’t care if it is not straight; they don’t care if it is not level; they don’t care if your food has got chilli in it and it wasn’t mentioned in the menu. Simply put, they don’t care. They don’t care because they have no sense of worth, of worthiness, of being valued, of having anything of value or indeed, apportioning an effort to a result.
And all this is because, that’s how we treated them in the past. That’s how we saw them. We ruled and dominated them, and it penetrated deep into their psyche.
Today, they will still call you “Boss”, and what they revered in us during colonialisation, they use as the role model for the management of their society.
Yes, they may well call you “Boss”, but have no doubt at all, it is they who think they are the bosses. And why shouldn’t they? It’s their island, their country, and they will make you pay for serving them, just as we did to them.
