BALI DAILY : Empowered Expats of Bali

(Published in the Bali Daily Newspaper, March 2014)

Nowhere in the developing world do expatriates bang their own drums like they do in Bali. In Goa, Kathmandu or Tangiers they would be humanely culled and deported for racism.

A glance through Facebook’s Bali Expatriate page reveals the full horror of the situation. Imagine if Sydney’s considerable Balinese population started an expat page with postings such as: “Never employ a local: they start drinking beer at 4 p.m. and have appalling punctuation.” The Balinese would be beaten up on the buses!

Ten years ago I wrote an article for a Balinese magazine about the “Rise of the Super-bule”. I identified a rabid new sub-species of expat who drive S.U.V. aggressively, honk at temple processions if they get in the way and complain bitterly about the Balinese treatment of their dogs.

It was a satirical piece and I never imagined that the movement would grow to evangelical cult proportions. Super-bules now control great swathes of Seminyak, Lembongan and Canggu. They frequent restaurants with ex-pat maitre d’ and only eat cup cakes formed with white hands. For the most part they seem completely uninterested in Balinese culture.

They have their own magazines whose ads only portray Balinese as either masseurs or drinks waiters.

Expats used to settle in Bali to learn from the Balinese — many now only want to teach them. Bali now attracts more investors than artists.

To be fair, the Balinese are partly to blame for this weird mutation of the guest population. For decades they have allowed expat investors to run rampant through the rice fields, and to enter the small scale business market traditionally run by the Balinese. The Balinese tolerance has been interpreted as weakness and the guests are turning on their hosts. Plus the Balinese tolerance is straining at the seams.

The situation is exacerbated by the Balinese doing things to annoy their nature-loving expatriates. Some villages have recently started chopping down trees, for example, to fill in the sky with giant billboard-size photographs of politicians in pious attitudes. And they litter. ‘They litter’ is the most quoted phrase on FB’s Bali expat page. Followed by ‘They don’t look after their orphans/dogs/greenbelts/restaurant hygiene/homicides/break-ins.

It’s not that all the FB banging on is without results: the expat community’s Bali crime page (30,000 members!) has been partly instrumental in the placement of two new (empty) traffic police kiosks on Kuta’s Bemo Corner, for example.

Some funny paradoxes emerge when comparing the parallel universes. Mention odalan festival and expats froth at the mouth — “waste of money” many scream — but mention Ubud Spirit Festival and their hips start to sway. Expats think green while the Balinese think greenbacks — for too long all development has been good. The Balinese are embracing consumerism and urban sprawl with their trademark creative zeal while expats are embracing bamboo.

The giant red-brick Banjar Tuban complex — a masterpiece of Majapahit modern — now has the island’s largest digital advertisement display screen slapped onto its façade. Expats fear that the Balinese are fiddling while Bali turns into a cheap urban tourism paradise.

The expat community seems to be more concerned with environmental issues than the government. It is the expats who are leading the Balinese surfing community in a much needed clean-up of Kuta Beach, and spear-heading many environmental conservation education programmes, many sponsored by long-term expat companies.

There is no doubt that the expat community feels the need to empower itself in order to deal with the recent appalling spike in violent crimes directed at tourists and expats, and the perceived lack of efficiency by the tourist police. Social media hubs like Facebook Bali Expat page now provide a help center.

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Balinese, many of whom have day-jobs within the expat universe, are not affected by the cultural shift taking place and the universes rarely collide. Bali keeps up its culture, between the megamalls and budget hotels, and the expats have invented a full raft of amusements that just don’t involve the Balinese, except as masseuse, maids, drinks waiters and pedicurists. There are of course many notable exceptions, particularly in Ubud where the traditional and the expat community share many interests and cultural pursuits. But, still, you can count the numbers of expats who regularly attend their adopted villages’ temple festival on one hand.

The BBC Travel page on-line recently listed Bali’s up-coming Melasti processions of the gods to the sea as one of world’s top ten festivals to visit in March. Let’s see if the number of expat participants can rise to rival the usual two tourists in g-strings.

The expat’s spiritual needs are catered to by cakra-buffers flown in from California but their dietary desires have spawned a generation of Asian-confusion gastronomic excellence.

Meanwhile the Balinese have embraced Pizza Hut with a passion and are starting to worship at the altar of the Mall Mamon. The irrepressible creative energy of the Balinese perhaps needs a bit of re-direction, from community leaders committed to positive environment-friendly change.

And the more rabid expats need to put a lid on it — they are giving a bad name to the many who love the island.

Bali Daily: Rendering and Surrendering

(Published in the Bali Daily Newspaper, October 2012)


Spiritual tourism in Indonesia is expanding in the most weird and wonderful ways. 
Last week I stood at the entrance to a lateral condominium project near the Yoga Barn in Pengosekan, near Ubud, for example, and watched, gobsmacked, as a kaleidoscope of mankind filed past. There, young quasi-militant ‘Hungry Games Hippies’ and pedestrian convoys of albino pilates-fanatics with Kool-Aid green hair swept past. A phalanx of back-packers roped together with Tibetan prayer flags took up the rear.

Recently one ‘trend vigilante’ drew my attention to a blogspot called Bali High. On the blog was an article by an Australian karmic-warrior-woman about her experiences being stabbled repeatedy at a Barong Dance in Bongkasa. “This does not bode well for tourism” was my first reaction. She wrote of her most extraodinary experience in an article entitled “Surrendering like never before”.
“I was in the middle of the arena “she wrote,” with 1200 Balinese cheering, yelling and hooting at the Bule (white foreigner). Two men held each of my arms. I looked up and about 10 metres away a man in trance with a Kris was coming straight for me, full pelt, Kris pointed at my stomach”.

As a former wanna-be trancee I was impressed by her tone — it really had the ring of truth to it. I have once felt ‘the force’ while carrying the palanquin of a major diety from Pura Besakih to the sea and the account of the Sydney-born she-shaman sent shivers down my spine.
Old-time ex-pat. ‘culture-vultures’ attacked the born-again-Balian (faith-healer), mocking her on Facebook with taunts about the veracity of her lotus position and the scanty swimwear featured on her alarmingly commercial website. “Book now to re-align your crystals on 12-12-12“ sort of thing.

The Balinese are amazingly welcoming towards foreigners who show any interest whatsover in taking part in spiritual activities — many village temples now have a pale-face mascot. 
The comments posted on the Bali Cultural Discussion Facebook page by westerners were for the most part disparaging, but the Balinese gave her the benefit of the daubt.
“Whatever floats your boat” commented nautical expert and Ubud restauranteur Odeck Kren-habis.

Little by little, other expats — those buried deep into the spiritual fabric of the island — started coming out. One Chinese–American — who has, since 1980, been temple assistant or “parekan” at the mighty 10th century Pura Samuantiga at Bedulu, near Ubud — shared his innermost secrets about life inside the island’s most exclusive chorus line.  Another, a lapsed German aristocrat in the North West of the island, rang me and confessed to speaking in tongues during her raw food demonstrations.
And it’s not just in Bali: In Java last month the main square in front of the island’s oldest mosque, the Mesjid Agung Demak, was festooned with giant yellow and Sunni-Green Bali-ho (billboards) extolling the virtues of Pariwisata Spiritual.

I was in Java doing an architectural pilgrimage, visiting the 16th Century Hindu-temple-like tombs of the Islamic saints along the north coast. I discovered that young Muslims from all over Indonesia are fired up about spiritual tourism too. It is now very fashionable to make pilgrimages (berziarah) to the holy tombs. Domestic spiritual tourists experience “surrendering” or ‘mystical rendering’ but don't write home about it or send up flares : humility is considered the keynote in advanced spiritual knowledge. And the tombs are GORGEOUS, like Balinese temples before the craze for hard-edged Andesite face-lifts. Soon the Hindu-Balinese will be flocking to Java to see real MAJAPAHIT — Era architecture.

Since “Eat Pray Love” there has been a veritable stampede of soul-searchers — and mantras are being marketed like used cars. “Guruji’s Oatmeal Enema” one small sign read outside a monkey forest home, “$20. o.n.o. We accept all credit cards”.
Around Ubud, at least, it’s the dawning of a new commercial Age of Aquarius.

SOUNDS OF PARADISE

As published in BALI DAILY 1 July 2012

The most beautiful chorus in Bali is the post-dawn revellé of the birds —that soft tsunami of sound that crescendos for about ten minutes before fading into the dull rumble of morning peak hour traffic.

At night one can lie in bed listening to the twang of the giant kite strings, the knocking of wooden cow bells or the stampede of frogs and cicadas, before the thump-thump-thump disco beat of the girlie bars kicks in at around 11 p.m.

There are amplified sound­­­­­­­­s too: in Java there is the excessively loud call to prayer; in Bali there’s the reading of the holy Hindu manuscripts  that accompanying temple festivals and such, all via kampong-blasters.

“Middle class Indian can’t sleep,” I was once told by an Indian hotelier friend, “without the rattle of a faulty air conditioner”.

“And these are the people who invented meditation?” I asked, by way of a reply.

One must remember that most Asians are immune to noise pollution;  noise is a nuisance to the westerner but a comfort to many Asians.

In Bali no doctor’s waiting room, airport departure lounge or night bus is free from the trashy soundtracks of Indonesian soap operas or the bang and boom ofKung-fu movies.

For the Balinese the clashing cymbals and beating of gamelan metalophones at temple festivals induce a trance-like state of calm; for westerners the equivalent over dinner at a hotel dance performance can be as relaxing as a dentist’s drill.

Living in Bali in open pavilions one eventually becomes used to background  noise: dogs fighting, the roar of passing motor bikes, chainsaws felling coconuts,and the thunder of heavy monsoon rain.

Being woken by a passing procession at 6 a.m. during MELASTI season, when every village takes its gods to the sea, is one of the quintessential Bali experiences, such as being awakened by the blood-curdling shrieks of a sacrificial pig being chased around the compound, pre-dawn, on Galungan Eve.

The Balinese are naturally loud, compared to most other Indonesians; they talk loud, dress loud (flashy) and often think and read out loud. But loud is not the new tranquil: silence is still golden and even has its own holiday, Nyepi.

Then, why all this commotion?

Is it progress?

Buildings done by machines and not by hands?

The lack of adoration of the muffler?

Maximum treble maximum pleasure?

Some trendy West Coast beach hotels and clubs now blast tunes down the beach — one can’t hear oneself  sun-baking!

Should son et lumier shows towards the beach be banned or regarded as offerings to Ratu Baruna, God of the Oceans?

Balinese are all musicians, one way or another, having spent their formative years in temples and banjar halls surrounded by sound. As teenagers they get exposed to the classy western music played in the cafés and night clubs of Legian – Seminyak. It’s only in their adult years that the cheesy, vaguely Dutch-pensioner music — championed by Garuda Airlines for example —becomes synonymous with success.

I suspect that the supreme commanders at the helm of Garuda Airlines recently commissioned  Liberace's arranger and the Berlin Philharmonic to produce a recording of popular Indonesian tunes that sounds like the overture to “Prince Diponogoro’s last stand — the Musical”.

It is truly heroic of the national carrier to go to all this trouble but the problem with swelling overtures is:  they are designed to be listened to once, to get one all expectant-like. Listened to end on end, hour after hour, gets one overly pepped up.

One’s nerves would perhaps prefer some lighter fare, such as the Dharma Wanita angklung favorites that used to be piped into business class lounges and airplane fuselages across the country with soothing effect.

Music-wise, Bali is as rich as any culture in the world. The natural sounds are many and varied too: the sound of the wind in the coconuts, waves crashing on the shores, and the sporadic rumbling of volcanoes. All these sounds contribute to the general gorgeousness.

The big choice facing the Balinese as they face urbanization is which way to go with noise? Fight it, as they are trying to do in India (Honk three times if you’re Hindu) or follow the Iranian example and worship the sound of silence.

MOCÉ — Balinese art of overly ornate

My article in Bali Daily newspaper, 12 June 2012 

Moce Bali cabaret costume

Is the world’s most gorgeous culture becoming its most grotesque?

Has the stampede towards modernism driven classicism into reverse drive?

Is natural, beautiful Bali being buried under a tsunami of bad taste and environmental vandalism? Is Balinese Art and Culture becoming an Art shop culture?

“Look, Honey, someone blew up the art shop” one critic commented about Bali’s Garuda Wishnu Kencana Hindu Theme Park. 

Many art historians and anthropologists are blaming tourism for the loss of the lovely, but a more detailed look reveals that the slide towards the gaudy — what the Balinese call mocé (or ‘kitsch’ taste) — has been going on since the Soeharto Era when the nation’s taste slumped, and thousands of handsome Dutch colonial bungalows were given international school, neo-fascist facelifts.  During the 1970s the celebration of theme park culture — such as Mrs. Soeharto’s Taman Mini Indonesia in Jakarta — seemed to take over from the concerns for real culture. Cultured modernists such as theatrical impresario Guruh Soekarno and batik maestro Iwan Tirta struggled for want of government support as did museums, and other cultural institutions.

It is hard for the Balinese government to now start lamenting the lack of interest in the classical by the tourism sector when successive national governments have done little to promote cultural conservation. It is the village communities who have taken conservation of ceremonies and classical Hindu Balinese life-style seriously —   there has been a marked village-based renaissance in the past 20 years, with more and more youngsters involved in temple affairs.

This surge in interest in ceremonial activity has also, paradoxically, ushered in an era of architectural revisionism, all too evident as one drives around the island today.

The island’s classical architecture is fast disappearing : red brick temples of exquisite beauty are regularly replaced by formulaic ‘masterpieces’ fashioned out of black andesite stone often with gold paint trim, that seem to emulate cheesy Chinese temples. This follows a nation-wide trend in restless restoration that has seen the demise of ten thousand elegant Moorish mosques in Java and Lombok as well.

The Balinese have always been trendoid — fashion waves can be traced in classical Balinese architecture over the past 1000 years —  but only in the past ten years has the taste spiralled down, following the example of successive national trends for souped-up celebrity culture and commercial mall taste.
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Mocé Temple  Fashion

Ugly fashion trends which have entered the Balinese mainstream today include grotesque gate decorations, tacky dance costumes cheesy municipal street decorations and even overly theatrical priestly attire (the new ‘Glam-bram trend in high priests’ fashion).

’Polos’ (plain), once worshipped in Balinese culture with an almost Amish zeal, has now been replaced by a love for the loud.

Today’s must have architectural accessory is an overly ornate door in the Javanese “Kudus” style which is applied, like a postage stamp, to the facade of suburban bungalows.

Are the Balinese just following national trends?

In Java, the cradle of classical Hindu culture and traditional arts, the national  dress, the sarung-kebaya, has all but disappeared from the street — replaced by more Islam-appropriate attire. With the demise of the sarung-kebaya, appreciation of traditional batik is now confined to the palace courts. Even the sexy sinden singers on Indonesian television’s most popular program — the outrageously ribald Opera Van Java — have, over the past year, deserted the slender sarung-kebaya for upholstered costumes that are a travesty of traditional dress, all in the name of fashion (in this case, courtier Raden Sirait’s ‘warrior woman’  fashion).

Balinese beauty warriors, famous throughout history for their restraint and elegance, have adopted these trends and turned them into capital crimes against fashion with particular Hindu-Balinese zeal. Denpasar weddings are now horror shows of excessive make-up and appliqué; brides can barely move for the beads and baubles, the grooms look like circus performers.

Of course in the middle of this plague of bad taste there’s a lot of Bali high style : the beautiful classic kites of Sanur beach flying majestically over the McVillas of Mertasari modernism, for example; and the grand old temple guardians at the temple festivals still being celebrated with great verve across the land.

“Jazz up the Barong Dance” screamed a government tourism agency recently —, “to make it more attractive”.

Please don’t!

Miss World and world leaders may now be taken to see the cabaret-Bali style shows in Nusa Dua instead of the real thing (deemed too shocking and too Hindu) but please leave something of the classical to inspire future generations.

Mocé “BALI STYLE” Architecture

Australian-born writer and designer Made Wijaya is a cultural observer and author of many books on Balinese architecture and culture.