Bali still smiles despite Indonesian agony

Bali still smiles despite Indonesian agony

By Kevin Morrison

KUTA, Bali (Reuters): The elderly couple from the west London suburb of Ealing seemed surprised when their waiter mentioned the bloodshed in Jakarta.

"How long's this trouble been going on then?" asked the wife. "I've not heard anything about it."

The empty tables in the hotel restaurant should have tipped her off. The sun-kissed island of Bali has escaped the violence elsewhere in Indonesia, but its effects are still plain to see.

Since Australian surfers discovered its rolling waves and crystal waters in the early 1960s, the mainly Hindu island of Bali has undergone a drastic transformation.

Australian visitors have been joined by package holiday tourists from Europe, Asia and North America eager to spend a week or two in paradise with everything laid on.

As tourists, they were welcomed by famously warm Balinese smiles. They brought prosperity to an otherwise neglected part of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago.

The Balinese smiles are still there, but they mask deep concern for the future as neighboring Java is gripped by unrest.

Over the past three decades Bali has turned from an agricultural economy to one where most of its four million people make their living from tourism, either directly through hotels and restaurants or indirectly through garment- and souvenir- making.

Now many of Bali's hotels and losmens, small family-run hotels, lie almost empty and restaurants boast more staff than customers for most of the day as tourists numbers, already at a seasonal low, are hit by reports of the Indonesian crisis.

More than 500 people died in riots, arson and looting in Jakarta last week.

A walk through the Bali's tourist center, Kuta, takes one past endless rows of shopkeepers standing around, flagging down the odd tourist. Most tourists just walk on by.

It has become a paradise for the budget traveler. Restaurants in the nearby resort town of Sanur, where there are rows of empty tables, offer a fish curry or a chicken satay dish for under Rp 10,000, or less than US$1.

A beer will cost even less and an day-long taxi-ride around the island costs around $5. A three-star hotel at Legian Beach offers rooms for $40 a night -- a couple of minutes' haggling sees the price cut by more than half.

Bali's storekeepers, hotel and restaurant staff spend more time reading accounts of the troubles in local newspapers than they do tending to their customers.

Ask a Balinese shop or restaurant owner why his place is so quiet and the answer comes in broken English: "Now is very quiet in Bali, maybe because of problems in Jakarta, but Bali have no problems. Balinese still smiling."

Last month, the Indonesian government revised down its 1998 tourist arrival target by 15 percent to 5.5 million due in part to the country's social unrest and economic crisis. That forecast now looks on the optimistic side.

Australia has been busily chartering planes to evacuate some 20,000 citizens who it says should leave Indonesia, but has consistently exempted Bali from its warnings.

"Visitors to Bali should keep themselves informed about developments, avoid any large gatherings or political demonstrations and exercise due care in their movements around the island," the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a travel advisory this week.

Balinese taxi drivers have a simple explanation for the lack of tourists.

"Soeharto no good," they say with a thumbs-down gesture of Indonesia's autocratic ruler, who resigned on Thursday under pressure for him to quit after 32 years in power.

"There is too much corruption," says one driver. "Soeharto's family has become very rich. Indonesian people are still very poor."

Sudema, an English teacher by day in the Bali capital of Denpasar and hotel taxi driver at night, said he has to hold two jobs because the Rp 200,000 (less than $20) he earns each month is not enough to feed his wife and two children.

"It is not possible to live on the money that I get from teaching, so I have to work in two jobs," said Sudema, who tries to make a little bit more by teaching foreigners Indonesian.

A journey into Bali's interior shows no trace of any of the upheaval that worries the island's tourism industry. The rice continues to be harvested in the island's fertile land. The rice paddies are fringed by lush coconut trees and giant elephant grass.

Another common sight in rural Bali is of women dressed in brightly colored sarongs walking along the roads on their way to a temple, balancing fruits and other gifts they will leave at the temple as part of a religious ritual.

The rituals are part of daily life in Hindu Bali and are practiced more widely in rural areas where the smiles are even broader than in the hotel centers of Kuta, Sanur and Nusa Dua.

The only positive sign for Bali's hotels are the increasing numbers of ethnic Chinese fleeing violence in Java who are taking rooms in Bali while they work out their next move.

One elderly Chinese descendant, who had lived in Jakarta all her life, said she and her family -- including 10 grandchildren -- had fled the capital after the May 14's riots and taken refuge in Bali, about 1,000 km (600 miles) to the east.

"We come to Bali, because Singapore is already full," said the woman, as she waited for a flight to join relatives in Sydney.

"I am traveling on my own because I am the only one that can get a ticket, because the rest of my family has not been able to get tickets yet."

At Bali's Denpasar airport, the departing German, Australian and Japanese tourists, some with wood-carvings and newly plaited hair, are joined by groups of Chinese fleeing the country.

"We are like refugees here," the elderly woman complained.