Bali: Culture-Shockier than even Japan!

Hi all! I'm doing well here in Bali. Most people here speak passable English, so it's somewhat surprising to be able to talk with random passersby on the street. Unfortunately, most Indonesians you meet here in Kuta are so desperate to earn a buck that conversations attempted are invariably steered toward a sales pitch of some sort. It's never fun to tell poorer people no thanks, especially after an earnest and well-intentioned sales attempt in asecond language, so I've learned to simply ignore all the Indonesians who greet me as I wander the streets. Don't look, don't talk, don't entertain the notion I'm interested buying anything. So I go from Japan, where everone ignores me because I can't speak Japanese, to Bali, where I ignore everyone even though they can speak English and don't ignore me. The desperate hawker-to-tourist ratio is approximately 1:1. which is a tad depressing.

At first I blamed the sorry state of Bali's economy to capitalism run amok. Too many first world country tourists (e.g. Australians, Franche, German, etc. Americans are exceedingly rare here.) treating the Balinese as cheap inhuman servants had led to a population comprised mostly of servile near-beggars. Or so I thought, wondering if I was finally turning into an anti-capitalism leftist.

Then I had a conversation with a taxi driver in which I expressed my surprise at Bali's kind but overwhelming salesman culture. Balinese people are generally all-smiles, happy-go-lucky types, but after I mentioned this the driver snarled with disgust. "It didn't used to be like this," he said angrily. "The bombings have completely changed Bali." He was referring to the Al-Qaeda bombings of 2002 which killed a couple hundred (I think that was the death toll) tourists and Indonesians at a few dance clubs here in Kuta. After the bombings, my driver told me, tourists stopped coming altogether and Bali's economy pretty much collapsed. Multiple hotels and resorts shut down, instantly unemploying thousands and leading to the aforementioned desperate hawker-to-tourist ratio. Since this conversation, I've talked with many other local people, and a clear consesus has emerged: goddamn those bastard terrorists for what they've done here.

This is all kind of interesting to me. At first I was shifting lefty anti-capitalist, and now I'm turning back rightward to my old "kill-the-bastards" frame of mind. Keep in mind, it's not as if all on the political left are buddybuddy to terrorists (although many are, unfortunately). But while the political right issues condemnation (often blind condemnation, which is stupid, to their discredit), the left pretty much offers mealy-mouth exculpation, in the form of self-flagellating speeches on "root causes" or the asinine mantra of "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." So, I'm feeling fairly conservative here in Bali. Whodathunk.

Anyhoo, here's a picture I took. Have a great day!

A rare beach view that doesn't show throngs of sunburnt Australians (they were reclining behind me as I shot this). Most of the beaches here are full of topless women, but if I posted a picture with that sort of scenery all my regular readers would have to upgrade (via Visa or MasterCard) to the "Crepuscular Ray Gold Membership Package."