How Bali Has Been Westernised Until Now
Walking amongst trees and grassy shrubs, admiring Indra effigies and other gold-gilded architecture. You can’t deny how wonderful Bali is; it is a place that is well-preserved for its abundant forest and crystal-cleared water resources. Bali is one of the places that people want to spend time in. Nowadays, the island is fraught with different tourists from around the globe, but westerners are the majority group to be seen. And it is no surprise at all, as it has gone on since colonial times had emerged when the Dutch landed at the northern part of Sanur Beach; Bali has never been the same.
I’ve heard about Bali since I was a teenager. The advertising did reach my country about how lavish and peaceful the island was. So I said to myself one day I would go to Bali, which I really did not so long ago; however, everything was not what I had expected. It was a fine trip
A must-visit region that every traveller chooses to go to is Gianyar, where Ubud is located. Ubud is like the centre of almost everything about cultural attractions, crammed with hotels, resorts, shops, and quite a number of temples. I chose to stay in Gianyar for 4 days, in the centre of Ubud, where I could easily walk out on a crowded street. Then this came into my mind:
“Why are there so many tourists? Mostly westerners.”
At first, I was compelled by seeing small shrines and other Balinese-styled temples, but I was also surprised by how they were located amongst hotels and restaurants, which were made perfectly for westerners. I have no offence towards them, but believe me, most of the menu was western cuisine. You can’t deny it.
There were a few local vendors available in Ubud — if you look carefully — which I didn’t find any tourist sitting and eating. Everything is so expensive that you have to be more sober when you buy something. And things will be much cheaper if you go outside town for a bit.
However, the waterfalls were great and splendid: the water was cold and clean, and the views were amazing. The trees were super green and colourful with some floras. I’d had a good time there, really. Still, while I was there I felt that things were a little bit off; something was missing from Bali, the so-called island paradise, which could have been much better if not for tourism. I believe Bali is ruined by being westernised. Yes, it is not their fault; it is just the consequence of the Dutch intervention in Bali decades ago.
Bali is the land of Hinduism, to be specific, it is a religious sect called Agama Hindu Dharma, which has been rooted for almost a thousand years. There are no certain records of how Hinduism spread to Southeast Asia, but historians speculate they carried the religion along with them while trading in the period of the Chola dynasty, a Tamil empire in Southern India, around the 10th century. Reasons why the Balinese are Hindus and not Muslims remain obscure; there are so few historical facts: probably the Mataram kingdom—sultanate kingdom—had grown strong enough to invade the Gegel Kingdom—which was Hindu—but they couldn’t due to the advent of the Dutch in the 17th century, and without doubt, they succeeded in subduing the Gegel kingdom, which was separated into six small kingdoms at that time, and subjugated them under one of their colonies called Dutch East Indies in 1908. The Dutch tried to conquer Bali six times in total: they started the first military campaign in 1846 and subsequently in 1848, 1849, 1858, 1906, and 1908. The Balinese died from being killed by over 1,000 people; the palace of the raja, or Dewa Agung Jambe, in Klungkung burned down.
In the Dutch’s view, Bali was an untouched island, exotic and somehow inspirational. Accordingly, a few wanted to explore more about cultures and traditions; Heer H. van Kol was one of them. Kol was considered to be the first tourist and scholar who came to learn several things in Bali and published a book, “Uit Onze Kolonien” (Out of Our Colonies) in 1902, a massive 826-page travel account which includes 123 pages of interesting information about Bali. He also noted that if one wants to travel here, one must have a laissez passer through the good offices of the Resident, who would have to approve a request in person, advising the local rulers to get their concurrence. The process might take many days, weeks, or months. So travelling to Bali is not an easy task, let alone other issues like the weather, unknown insects, and facilities.
Tourism in Bali really began between the 1930s and the 1940s, after which foreigners, including the Chinese and the Japanese had occasionally come and gone. They hadn’t stayed for long due to lack of proper facilities and transportation, while the Dutch realised a good opportunity to gain profit from tourism, so they schemed to construct all new infrastructure and a good hotel in Denpasar, which is now the Inna Bali Heritage Hotel, founded in 1927. They also advertised the island with fancy posters posted around towns, as if saying it was a good getaway. Mostly the posters depicted a bare-chested woman, a tropical forest, and a Balinese shrine. This made a few artists desire to see what they had never seen before.
One of the important artists is Walter Spies, a German painter and composer, who came to live in Java in 1923, then resettled in Bali by 1927. He is famous for his dark-toned paintings depicting daily life in Bali: verdant groves, Balinese people working on their farms, and rice fields. Some sources informed that he was responsible for creating a Balinese traditional dance, Kecak, which is believed to be one of the most viewed dances in Bali. The source told us how he collaborated with a native dancer, Wayan Limbak, in making the dance into a drama based on the famous Hindu epic, Ramayana. However, there is no solid evidence in this regard.
Willard A. Hanna noted that there were 100 visitors coming to Bali per month in the 1930s, and it increased in great numbers later on, as did travel agencies and tourism businesses. Even though the Balinese gained their independence in 1946, tourism has continued until now. Hanna also noted that tourism greatly affects the environment on the island and said, Bali was a place with “too many people, too little land, and too few job opportunities.” According to some estimates, around 65 percent of Bali’s entire water supply goes straight to tourism-related properties, chlorinated for huge swimming pools and also made showerable for almost 90,000 hotel rooms. The rice fields, which once made more restrained use of the natural water supply, have started to vanish. Around a thousand hectares of agricultural land are transformed each year into other uses, much of it directly related to tourism. Meanwhile, the Balinese people depend their lives on tourist businesses, for there are no other jobs than producing crops and livestock.
From my own perspective, the Balinese don’t have their own cultures developed and can’t supposedly express themselves as they were meant to because of their ways of life; they try to create them anew as attractions to lure tourists to admire. When I was strolling around Arjuna Art Market in Ubud, there were tonnes of the same souvenirs in every corner, all of them were not originally made by each shop owner but were made in mass production by the factory. Moreover, most of the goods were insanely expensive, except that if you buy them around suburban Ubud, you will get a fair price. On the other hand, there are still villages outside the attraction point where the locals live solitarily and peacefully — except keep hearing noises from exhaust pipe every day. They are not completely ruined, if that’s one way to put it, we could see that they don’t notice how they are being harmed in any ways. I just feel ashamed that Bali is just another attraction, no less than other places like Phuket or Pattaya. Such places don’t seem to represent their authentic cultures and customs, if at all.
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