Kintamani Tourist Tax

[begonia]

I had a friend who went to drop of a friend in a hotel in Ynuh Kuning and had to pay entrance ticket just because was entering the roads in Ynuh Kuning, I was so surprise and try to understand why, of course we always want to know why and try to understand things.
According to them the roads in that banjar belongs to the banjar, are private, not publics, so that it seems give them the rights to charge the cars entering the banjar.
For me it is hard to believe, when in that streets there is balinese houses, hotels and business, to me looks totally like a public street and is hard to believe that is a private street.
If that is true for me it is hard to understand that local people or banjars don't push the goverment to do the streets when is necessary and to me sound quite selfish to charge for cars to enter to the street, ok, if they parking to visit the monkey forrest and pay the parking, but to pay just to enter the road??? to drop off somebody and go out again?
In a country where probably people don't really pay much taxes if they pay at all, and goverment has not much money for public things, finally it seems like the people end trying to find their own ways to get money.

 

[Markit]

Has anyone else fallen fowl of the Kintamani Tourist Tax?

We went through there the other day and got stopped for 'tourist tax' 160,000!!! 6 of us in the car, made us pay for 5, I didn't have to pay as I was driving. Kitas holders with family. Even if you are just traveling through or not tourists, if you don't want to pay, you can take an alternative route! It seems this has been enforced for about a year and its absolutely outrageous. I then found out that many of our clients have also had to cough up this 'tax' when travelling through the area.

The other alternative we were offered was to pay 100,00 and not take a ticket. Well there's a surprise! So annoyed, who to write to? Like so many others, these punks are damaging tourism, something that most of this island not only survives on, but thrives on and dammed if I was going to put that sort of money in the pocket of these crooks working under the name of the community.

We've now gone through 3 pages of conversation, stress and bad feelings to come out the other side with some general understanding of the situation and I hope the OP has followed this on down. They also listed this same rant in FB and were supported by the usual endless list of agreeing sycophants that know absofeckinglutely nothing and talk even more.

 

[Mark]

All of you who are waving your raised fist of indignation about people charging for use of public roads should also understand that many roads here still belong to the banjars. Unless it's been formally turned over and accepted by the central government it will remain the responsibility of the local banjar - upkeep and repair. This can have the effect that on a straight stretch of highway the good tarmac can stop and moon landscape start without any reason.

If it is gov road then no charges should be levied, if it's banjar then they have to pay for its upkeep somehow.

Extremely unlikely that the road in Kintamani around Lake Batur is owned by the banjar - it is too well maintained and too long (i.e, no amount of tourist extortion would be enough to pay for the road upkeep). My experience (in central Bali) is that the government roads are generally in very good condition, while the (few) banjar-owned roads are poor. In fact, my understanding is that the banjars actively lobby the central government to take over the roads so that they can be maintained properly.

 

[Markit]

Unless it's a road they can make money on... surprise!

 

[geedee]

We've now gone through 3 pages of conversation, stress and bad feelings to come out the other side with some general understanding of the situation and I hope the OP has followed this on down. They also listed this same rant in FB and were supported by the usual endless list of agreeing sycophants that know absofeckinglutely nothing and talk even more.

This appearing on Facebook and TripAdvisor harm the robbers.
Their short term gain will have long term consequences but they don't seem to get that or care.
No matter what you think of Facebook it is powerful

 

[JohnnyCool]

...I didn't have to pay as I was driving. (From Post 1)

So, if driving alone, you don't have to pay the fee for looking at the view? Not in my experiences. And what if the passenger was Indonesian (like one's wife)? Still "free"?

Haven't been up that way for quite a while, but years ago, they even had a fee for each camera you had.

I know the area intimately (been there many hundreds of times since 1973). "Official" charging began maybe in the late 80s/ early 90s. There are three main routes from the South (one via Tampaksiring and two via Ubud). Two other routes are one from near Amlapura, a back road that eventually skirts Mt Abang and ends at the Tampaksiring junction at Penelokan. The last is the main road coming from the North which passes through Kintamani/Penelokan.

For the truly adventurous (or foolhardy), there is a small side-road just West from where a temple and large communication tower sit on a bend in the main North road which hugs the lip of the caldera.
From that, there's an even smaller, extremely steep "road" (gradient about 1:2) that ends in the vicinity of the Black Lava field. If you survive the descent, you can then worm your way to Songan village, turn right there and arrive in Toya Bungkah.

In the days before smartphones, I would often just accelerate my car, turn up the stereo and pretend that I either didn't see the guys jumping from their booths or hear their whistles.
It depended upon which way I was coming from. For example, if I joined the main road coming from Kedewatan (Ubud), I had a straight run. However, the other Ubud route (via Jalan Andong), ended at a T-intersection where you had to stop or get killed by a speeding bus/truck or motorbikes. Stopping also meant having to pay the fee (or explaining why you didn't have to), whilst bargaining for a chess-set or pack of postcards you didn't want.

For those wondering why I felt I shouldn't have to pay in the first place, it was like this:

1. The fee was supposedly to see the view (which I'd seen thousands of times already, sometimes before they were even born).
2. I spent 10 years privately sponsoring several familes/children who lived inside the Batur crater, (as well as several other ones from Ubud, Karangasem, Denpasar and North Bali).
3. An entrance fee for an "Objek Wisata" which you can only see by using a public road to drive past it, seems wrong to me. The banjars around Penelokan/Kintamani are not collecting money to fix the roads. I have yet to see evidence that any of it trickles down the the extremely poor villages inside the crater.

So where does the money go to?

 

[hadodi]

First of all I do not understand why the thread is called "Tourist Tax" and not how it should STREET ROBBERY. There is absolutely no legal base which would give those ... the right to stop cars and collect money. I do not understand furthermore, why the authorities do not stop this illegal behavior which damages the reputation of Bali immensely. Did any of the drivers ask for a receipt or call the police?

 

[Steve Rossell]

Recently had my son come to visit. It was his first time to Bali and I hadn't seen him in a while so I organised a driver for a couple of touristy day trips as well as me taking him to some lesser known spots. It gave me the chance to chat and catch up whist taking in some views.
Fee for entering Kintamani was a pissant charge. No problem, we were tourists for that day. Back in Oz if I go to a National Park I generally have to pay an entrance fee just as you do in many other 'developed' countries and it is a lot more expensive for the 'tourist' charges here. And that's even after some of my taxes go toward the maintenance of our National Parks and Reserves.
That road for the "foolhardy" Johnny C is a great little road that takes you to the lava field where you can have it virtually all to yourself for no fee at all. The price of admission though is dodging the trucks to-ing and fro-ing the switch-back road. There is also a nice temple down on the edge of the lava field with a view up to Batur and the crater that was formed from the last eruption in 2000. The road from Amlapura around the edge of the caldera is really something else and in my opinion has much better views than from Kintamani itself.
If I'm travelling through somewhere that charges a fee when on my own then I usually nod, smile and ride through. If I'm doing the tourist thing with visiting friends then I don't have a problem paying. The more experience I gain with where some of the 'gates' are the more off the beaten track I go and discover more hidden gems.

 

[geedee]

Recently had my son come to visit. It was his first time to Bali and I hadn't seen him in a while so I organised a driver for a couple of touristy day trips as well as me taking him to some lesser known spots. It gave me the chance to chat and catch up whist taking in some views.
Fee for entering Kintamani was a pissant charge. No problem, we were tourists for that day. Back in Oz if I go to a National Park I generally have to pay an entrance fee just as you do in many other 'developed' countries and it is a lot more expensive for the 'tourist' charges here. And that's even after some of my taxes go toward the maintenance of our National Parks and Reserves.
That road for the "foolhardy" Johnny C is a great little road that takes you to the lava field where you can have it virtually all to yourself for no fee at all. The price of admission though is dodging the trucks to-ing and fro-ing the switch-back road. There is also a nice temple down on the edge of the lava field with a view up to Batur and the crater that was formed from the last eruption in 2000. The road from Amlapura around the edge of the caldera is really something else and in my opinion has much better views than from Kintamani itself.
If I'm travelling through somewhere that charges a fee when on my own then I usually nod, smile and ride through. If I'm doing the tourist thing with visiting friends then I don't have a problem paying. The more experience I gain with where some of the 'gates' are the more off the beaten track I go and discover more hidden gems.
View attachment 2812 View attachment 2813 View attachment 2814

Nice pics.
Where was the middle one taken

 

[JohnnyCool]

I think you'd agree, Steve, that that "great little road" is definitely not for the timid.

At first, it hadn't even been surfaced yet. I tried to drive up it once in a Suzuki Jimny and the Jimny couldn't get further than the initial 100m or so.
Then I had to reverse back down on the gravel.

After it was surfaced, I went down from the top in a Daihatsu Feroza, trying to imagine what would happen if a truck laden with lava rocks was coming up the other way, given how narrow it is.
Not many spots where two vehicles can comfortably pass each other without engaging in who-has-to-reverse-first stuff, either back up or back down.
Both options are scary.

Down the bottom, the "road" between Songan and "the Black Lava" field has always been atrocious, but at least it's flat.

...There is also a nice temple down on the edge of the lava field with a view up to Batur...

I call it the "Black Lava Temple" (can't remember it's real name). It's tiny and like many temples in Bali, hardly spectacular unless there's a ceremony going on.

There's another steep track past it that gets you to just below the road down from Penelokan to Kedisan. Also not for the feint of heart.

I stopped once, early one morning, driving alone and navigating through the various little lanes I knew that eventually joined with a "bigger" one. Great view, but needed to relieve myself.
Nobody around. There was one small bush I blissfully irrigated. Looking down, there was snake hanging off it less than an inch from my pecker.

Not sure which one of us was the more surprised.

:icon_e_biggrin:

 

[Steve Rossell]

G'day J'Cool, the temple is Pura Bukit Mentik Ring Gunung Labah Batur (well at least that's what google maps calls it). It's where I took the middle photo from.
Here's a few more.

 

[hermit]

If you take the road from Bangli to Kintamani,you do not pass the tollgate.You arrive at the ridge just nex to the Lakeview hotel.Very nice and quiet road.The tollgate is,if i remember well,at the road going up from Pejeng,passing by Tampaksiring.
Some years ago i passed that road,and was asked to pay,but after protests that i was a resident and showing my Kitap,i was waved through.