Back to Bali: Bombs, cocktails and surfers

Back to Bali: Bombs, cocktails and surfers

I managed to hop over to Bali for a few days last week in
order to both soothe my metro madness and also to see how the old
island was faring after the recent bombings. Lion Air did the
honors for about Rp 900,000 return, which is pretty good value, I
guess, although anyone hovering around the six-foot-tall mark
will have a few comfort issues to deal with when trying to
squeeze into their cattle-class seats. After 90 minutes with my
knees around my chin we touched down at Ngurah Rai airport in the
rain and a taxi whisked me down to Legian.

Tourist numbers are perhaps down, although there seemed to be
a healthy amount of people on the beach: tanning, surfing,
flirting and rubbing sunscreen into their firm, pert, young ...
erm ...right. Anyway, a quick evening burn down to the main Kuta
strip accompanied by my trusty South African housemate and valet
proved interesting. I've always marveled at the sheer density of
tourist-related businesses in Bali, around the Kuta area in
particular. There are simply millions of them. It would take
several years to have a meal and a drink in every bar or
restaurant. I've never been able to work out how all of these
places manage to survive at the best of times, let alone in a
post-terror slump.

However, far from being run-down, Bali's restaurants and bars
are increasingly more stylish and chic. Most of them have been
here for years but a gradual process of renovation and
improvement is transforming them from spit and sawdust backpacker
boozers into nouveau yuppie fashion fests.

Down at Kuta ground zero there is still a huge space where the
Sari Club stood and opposite that there is a monument to the bomb
victims. Apart from that though, it's business as usual. Slump or
no slump, there'll always be enough tourists to fill out the bars
in the densely packed, central area around the ex-Sari. The aging
Bounty Club is still doing a roaring trade plying highly
inflammable, local Mansion House cocktails to tanned and tipsy
Australians. If there was ever a bomb outside the Bounty, the
volume of Mansion House in the place would probably cause it to
go sky high.

Anyway, pressing on with our travelogue, my Springbok
colleague and I settled down at the bar and plumped for the least
disagreeable drink on offer: Mansion House vodka mixed with Hero-
brand pineapple and coconut syrup and a dash of napalm, all
served in a huge goldfish bowl. We scanned the bar. Yes, it's
still packed in downtown Kuta after dark. There can't be many
places in the world where you can find yourself standing at a
urinal next to a man in flip-flops, a sarong, some kind of
skydiving crash helmet and an "Osama Don't Surf" T-shirt. I
zipped up and headed back to the bar. Everyone was trashed. Young
bules on holiday are a fearsome prospect; there must be more
booze consumed on this 100-meter strip of street in Kuta every
evening than there is in the whole of the rest of Indonesia
combined.

Several MH cocktails later we staggered into Kuta's current
busiest club, which is situated right next door to the Bounty,
again just next to ground zero. I could hardly see the bugger as
the Mansion House was beginning to affect my optic nerves, but my
comrade told me the place was called, "M Bar Go" (I bet they gave
themselves a pat on the back after coming up with that name). We
partied until dawn with a packed club full of Australian surfers,
Japanese hipsters, rich Jakartan flipsters and some really quite
jaded looking local ladies of the night.

The next day we headed down to Jimbaran, a pleasant beach just
south of the airport. I was sad when I heard that Jimbaran had
been bombed as it's a chilled out and friendly little place: a
beach containing a promenade of seafood restaurants with tables
and chairs in the sand and a nice calm, surfless strip of sea to
swim in. It's a great place to go if you're after an easy to
reach break from the hurly-burly of Kuta.

A waiter that we met there had just got out of the hospital
after the blast, which had apparently embedded a load of ball
bearings in the poor guy. It wasn't as big a blast as the first
Bali bombing, but 11 corpses lying on the beach sure ain't good
for business. And what has happened to Bali's business since the
second bombings? Well, as if in answer to Mr. Noordin Top and his
proto-Hamas gang of jihaders, Air Paradise, Bali's low-cost air
link to Australia, recently announced that it was ceasing
operations, which will surely be a substantial blow to tourism on
the island. Any more bomb attacks would, in my estimate, presage
a permanent downsizing of Bali's tourist industry.

Are more bombs likely though? Unfortunately, what with
Indonesian fundamentalists making Palestinian-style guns-and-
balaclava suicide videos and terrorist websites instructing
locals how to be bule snipers and take out westerners as they
cross pedestrian bridges on Jl. Sudirman, I wouldn't bet against
it. Tourism in Bali probably also hasn't been helped by the
central government's short-sighted scrapping of the free visa on
arrival policy in favor of a reduced period visa that has to be
paid for.

At the end of the day though, the Balinese probably have it
better than Indonesians who live on the breadline in Lampung or
East Java, for example. At least you've got a chance with
tourism. There are problems, sure, but tourism is a pretty
egalitarian industry in comparison with the other forces of
global capitalism that buffet the poor of this country. Tourism
provides a true trickle-down economy in which the money goes
straight from the tourists to the locals without being
sidetracked by corrupt officials. Here's hoping the Island of the
Gods manages to weather the storm and continues to induce life-
threatening hangovers in tourists for many years to come. -- Simon Pitchforth