Bali: paradise for whom?

I cannot imagine Bali without tourists. Tourists get great value, courtesy of the exchange rate. We seem to have taken over the island. Even the remoter parts, like Lovina Beach in North Bali where I have come on study tour with RMIT University, need tourists to sustain the local economy by booking into its hotels and dining in its wurrungs. A symbiosis between locals and the tourists seems embedded in the island’s soul. But the inequality is palpable, and I resent the subservience. Tourists waving their wads of rupiah are the unquestionable lords and masters.

It is possible to engage with the locals in other ways, in creative, intellectual ways that engender interaction on equal terms. This is what we did with students of the creative writing course offered by Ganesha University, Singaraja. A satisfying, rewarding, humbling experience. The story assigned to me needed only a touch of spit and polish to bring out a perfectly formed, quirky tale. I wish my mind could come up with something like that.

On to Ubud.

Hill countries, even in the tropics, suggest cool morning and evening air and the edge off the heat even when the sun is directly overhead. Not so in Ubud. Searing heat and sapping humidity eat into your energy reserves and force you to gouge an afternoon or two of a packed Writers Festival program for a mandatory chill out.

I turn up at the festival hub to pick up my4-day pass to the festival. I descend a set of stone steps into an enclave of white, elderly women. Some of them work behind the counter of a thatched pavilion. Others form a queue that hugs the shaded boundary of the roof. Two ladies sit on high stools at the counter. One looks like she has moved in for the day. She asks question after question before being dragged off by her companion.

‘I want it all,’ she says, arms outstretched.

‘There’s a long queue waiting to be served,’ her companion chides.

‘I don’t care,’ she replies.

At this breathtaking sense of entitlement, I exchange a glance with the woman behind me. All I think to say is that such behaviour is probably never written about because it leaves everyone gobsmacked. Even authors.

I look for locals. I see them stacking books, standing around, answering questions, directing people. But their roles are background ones, not the important ones like ringing the tills, handing people festival passes and answering highbrow questions. Is the Ubud festival going to be no different to the Melbourne or Bendigo in terms of culture and demographics?

Was an Asian country being hired out for a Western festival with the lure of tourist money?

Back in my hotel, I count the ‘People You’ll Meet’ in the festival program booklet. Sixty-six Indonesians out of a total of one hundred and sixty seem a fair local representation.

I attend riveting conversations with fascinating people. I realise that many successful authors don’t just write books. They are journalists, they make movies, they make documentaries. They are driven by a passion to tell their stories, to convey their view of the world, to impart their truth to a widest possible audience. Skillful interpreters are on hand to translate the Bahasa comments of Indonesian writers, a considerate gesture to people like me, burning to know what they are saying.

It never occurs to me until later that similar consideration is not being shown the other way.

Walking home after lunch, my festival lanyard dangling around my neck, I strike up a conversation with Rudi who sports the same lanyard. He has attended the session Writing Domestic Spaces moderated by RMIT’s very own Astrid Edwards.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ I ask.

‘Yes, but I could not understand most of it. They talked too fast.’

‘Would you have liked an interpreter, like the one for the Indonesian lady on the panel?’

Rudy thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t know. But maybe they could remember that English is not our first language.’

I couldn’t come up with a solution either. In the years since the festival’s conception in 2003, originally conceived to bring tourists back to the area after the ‘Bali bombings’, surely someone could have figured out a way of making it more inclusive for Indonesians. Opening it up to locals at reduced rates seems little more than tokenism. On an equal footing, Westerners could learn much from these warm, cultured, intelligent, humble people.

The country cannot afford a drying up of the vital foreign money that gushes in. I understand why no one appears to be complaining.

I don’t know about you, but it makes me sad.