Posted 4 years, 5 months ago in the early morning by oso
I’m in Bali right now and if it were not for all the work I have to do in the next week I’d be bloody bored. You can imagine the reactions I get when I tell people I’m bored in Bali. “Oh, poor baby, having to suffer by the beach in Bali.”
To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand the Western obsession with this small little island. The people here are very nice, this is true. But I disagree with those who say that Balinese are ‘much kinder’ than other Indonesians. Really, in South East Asia you just don’t find many assholes. And yes, the mix of indigenous animism, majority Hinduism, and minority Islam does make for a unique religious atmosphere, but then I’ve never really been drawn to religious atmospheres, unique or otherwise.
Booger and I are sitting at a restaurant in Ubud with free wi-fi – who woulda guessed. She’s ordered the salmon pasta and I’m going for a big bowl of gado-gado – steamed vegetables covered with peanut sauce. On our way over here we elbowed our way through an ill-tempered crowd of sarong-sporting westerners with straight elbows raised over their sweating foreheads. They were capturing a cremation ceremony with cameras and camcorders and cell phones pointed at banging drums, and traditional garb, and parade float horses about to be burned. At least 100 digital devices recorded the event. One of the Balinese spectators took a photo of the Western spectators taking photos.
Once the crowd started to thin out Booger says, “I love how all the white people are wearing Sarongs and all the Balinese people are wearing western clothing.” It’s true.
Tourists come to Bali – and especially to Ubud – in search of something different, something ‘traditional’, something ‘authentic’. In fact, authentic is one of the big keywords in all the tourist brochures here. Tourists and expats alike debate each other about who really knows Bali. Every foreigner seems to have a special circumstance which allows her or him a glimpse into that real, secret, hidden, never-revealed Balinese culture that no one else sees.
Apparently, I’m one of the many who don’t experience it. What I experience when I peer into glowing homes and observe daily life are kids and adults watching television, playing video games, fixing up motorcycles, and learning the lyrics to Nirvana and Bob Marley songs. Those foreigners who claim to know Bali even better than the Balinese would tell me that I’ve never managed to penetrate the touristy side of the island. That, up in the hills, there are villages where women balance giant hand-woven baskets perched on top of their head and spend all day selling fruit and fish in straw-thatched markets.
They are right – these scenes of Bali do exist. I’ve experienced them many times myself. But even at those authentic markets, the t-shirts they sell are covered with mis-spelled American slogans and portraits of Kurt Cobain and Jon Bon Jovi.
I’ve expressed this thought many times before – as have so many others – but each encounter I have with East-meets-West tourism leaves me amazed at how often we we talk right by each other while simultaneously trying to imitate one another. Sometimes, communication by imitation seems like the only way we interact at all.
As a constant confrencer, do you find it hard to...
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Tourism-fueled globalization sucks… and there’s nothing we can do about it. =(
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Hmm … white guys in sarongs. You mean like this?:
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Posted from France … WTF? That IP table definitely needs updating …
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Ha!
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!
I liked Bali, but only when away from the hoards of tourists and the locals chasing them down trying to sell the trinkets. No, I did not find the eden or pristine paradise those were already gone when Clifford Geertz was writing about the cockfight. I did find some beautiful scenery and some nice people, though. And the food and black sand beaches were cool. But I agree, I found those elsewhere in Southeast Asia as well.
My visit there was before my current stint as an anthropologist, but I did engage the locals in interesting conversation (in English, although I would have loved to learn Bahasa Indonesia). I was curious to hear their thoughts on a certain Wolfowitz because he had been the ambassador there. In a twist, he became my boss a few months later.
You need to shed your touro-cynicism…
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White guys in Sarongs, sound not bad!
Well, all Asian are kind but people are different !!!
Foreign country is not the zoo la, at least people can talk to u in a language or express themselves in a way, though u don’t understand.
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Xolo,
Wolfowitz, your ex-boss? Why don’t these stories make it to your blog?
Oh Xolo, you know there’s nothing I enjoy more than a heaving helping of cynicism. Try as I may, I just can’t picture myself posting a photograph of a leaning palm tree and expounding on the pleasantries of Balinese massage and oh-my-god-to-die-for lychee martinis. I realize that tourism is a (the) key component to Bali’s economy, but the culture of third world island tourism is too nakedly post-colonial for me to enjoy myself.
And, for the record, I’d like to publicly state that Abo and I had to wear the sarongs in order to enter some or another temple. In fact, there’s an embarrassing number of photos of me wearing a sarong about to enter some holy place.
Pagna,
If you organize another Cloggers’ Summit I’ll come in a sarong.
I completely agree about language – that’s another reason I never really feel comfortable traveling in countries where the national language is something other than English or Spanish. I think it’s time I learned a third language … I’m not sure what though.
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I’m glad you bring this up David. I have always felt torn between the damage and good that travel brings. What I’ve realized through my travels is that the most important aspect of traveling is the local connections that I make. Sharing experiences locally rather than just hanging out with other tourists or expats. This is also why I still recommend people to travel to Myanmar, a controversial travel destination – to meet as many locals as they can, but to make sure to take these stories outside.
But travel is just so easy nowadays. How DO you get the majority of people who travel to realize the importance of being respectful? Where it is ok to take a picture and where it is not. Indigi-Net looks at travelers as an extension of the digital network – a troop of people going to and from connected spots, of whom most speak English and have relatively easy access to technology. I guess I realize that traveling will always have bad effects on local communities. It makes the assumption that people are not going to stop traveling. And that is precisely why it is extremely important to figure out ways for more positive effects from travel.