Now, now boys...'dissin my home when I'm not looking? Shame, shame...
Hawaii is, in my opinion, the ONLY place to live in the US. I say that as a former long-time resident of DC and the east coast. The upside is that the society here is very open, progessively minded (translation for Raf & JT: Liberal) and scenicly stunning and clean.
That said, Roy knows full well how I can't wait to flee Hawaii to settle in Bali in the hopefully not to distant future. While for several years running, the island of Maui was voted the number one island destination in the world by Travel & Leisure Magazine, Bali has claimed that title for the last two years straight...even after to terrorism incidents.
Back to the original topic of this thread... what will happen to Bali as world problems increase? I don't see anything changing, to be honest. if things get so bad that tourism is no longer a large scale industry on the island, the people will return to being balinese, growing rice and other crops, paying honor to their ancestors and entertaining their gods.
I don't see this really happpening, though. Two major incidents in three years and development continues along at a steady pace. Real estate seems to be moving and retaining value. New markets for tourism have been developed other than the previous focus on australia and seem to be drawing new vistors quite successfully. Sure numbers are still a fraction of what they were over a year ago, but they continue at a steady increase each month.
The Balinese, remember, are only 3...maybe 3 generations into a large scale tourism economy...international flights only began arriving in the 1970's. This culture, from my perspective, is extremely adaptable and if and when things change, they will do just that...adapt.