Blimey. Ubud has changed in 10 years! It used (even for a tourist!) to have plenty of fake art and little Western-style cafes, but it also had local involvement and a bit of Balinese tranquility. Now it is ALL Western cafes - with loud booming rock music, reggae (that well-known South East Asian favourite!) and all the tourist-trappings there are for Westerners and Asians from abroad. In fact, Ubud - and a lot of Bali - has been shafted by insensitive tourism.
The experience brought up a whole bunch of questions, like:
- Where do you draw the touristic line between what boosts the economy of a country, and what destroys the rest of it? And how, in fact, would you define 'destroy'?
- What's with the Western idea of 'the Asian experience'?
- Which earplugs work best to drown out booming rock music at night?
- Where can you find any real, local food?
1. Tourism
OK another PhD topic here, probably, which I don't have the socio-economic knowhow to address fully. This is a personal blog, and it's based on observation. I'm not going to talk about sex tourism, or child-sex tourism and other damaging aspects which arise from the popularity of SE Asian nations as destinations - but needless to say those exist, catering to the naive, or the grim specimens who use their travels that way. It's a very serious problem, and very thankfully I have not experienced it. I'm going to talk about the tourism aspects that I have observed personally.
The core issue which loomed large on this holiday for us is that 'real Bali' is hard to find any more. I am sure it exists, but not in Ubud, Nusa Dua or other popular spots we visited. In just a few years, real Bali - or rather Balinese culture, led by Balinese people - has been replaced by what the tourists want instead (see below). And perhaps the slight irony with Bali, over other highly touristic places in the world where this has happened, is that the key draw of the island has always been its gentle Asian culture, nature, peace and tranquility. EDM, reggae sub-woofer, anyone?
And while Ubud now is undoubtedly a bit 'classier' than some other resorts.. this means it's 'classier in the Western way' which has nothing to do with Bali. Ubud is basically Hampstead (a posh, literary, district of London but you could probably sub in any other such area in the West!) transplanted onto an island in SE Asia, with a lot of tackiness added, plus a few local-looking touches to make it feel like a holiday. There are Hampstead shops, cafes, travellers, teen Gap-Yearers ...and prices. If you're from Hampstead, uncomfortable outside your local culture but travelling (yes this exists), you won't find this Balinese version of home too challenging. And I guess if you've never been to Hampstead or its compatriots, Ubud might be quite an interesting experience of Western life! But it's not SE Asia. And I had the strong feeling in Bali, that the locals viewed Ubud as a kind of 'Disneyland' - not a real town any more, but a theme-park workplace where you go to make money from visitors.
On the other hand - who am I to talk about 'real Bali'? And what is that anyway? Of course I am a tourist as well. I wanted to experience elements of local Asian culture that I already knew, and they weren't there. But so what?
To some extent, this 'preservation' thing is a very Western concept: a sort of middle/upper-class, romanticised nostalgia which educated Westerners like to see in countries they want to visit. A touch of 'oh how lovely and natural this old-fashioned, local lifestyle is!'. While not really taking on the realities of another modern nation. I'm fully aware of this.
In the UK (some time ago) parts of the country were completely transformed by single industries too (steel, for example, manufacturing..). It made them ugly, often polluted, and they lost their 'delightful rustic feel' - but it DID also generate transformative jobs and cash for the people / economy. To me, there's a certain loss of local dignity which goes with the tourism industry in particular (obviously excluding the aspects mentioned in paragraph one, which are far more serious than that).. And the pace of change - which is seemingly not led by a Balinese plan, for example, but simply by demand - seems to happen faster than people are able to think regarding possible consequences. So is this helpful progress or not? And in terms of economics, I am not 100% sure what the future holds for a country dominated by tourism. With manufacturing and other industries, the wealth and knowledge gained allowed the UK as a whole to take a big step forward on its economic path. Is the same true when the industry is tourism?
Bali has become a wealthy part of Indonesia due to tourism - and a whopping 80% or so of the island's economy depends it. You can completely see why people would be fairly prepared to put away 'real Bali' and cater to this lucrative market. But 80% is surely high-risk for an economy. What if tourism drops or stops? (Which has happened temporarily, in the wake of terrorism or certain natural disasters even within my lifetime.) Or if Bali's 'fashionableness' wanes, in favour of another destination? It has bounced back from the short-term disasters, luckily. But it's still doubtless a precarious position to be in.
2. White kids grow dreadlocks, wear ethnic trousers and go on holiday
(Possibly not in that order.)
This is another one where being mixed race (Asian / European) like me is either awkward - or perhaps useful, depending on your outlook.
When I was at university I rented a room in a large family house in London. They were a very nice family, in fact. English upper-middle class, with three smart, teenage children going through private education (I suspect my rent was to help pay the fees. We've already covered in this blog how class and money are not linked in modern UK culture). While I lived there, one of the children passed her A'Levels and got into a good university. In the UK (and I think other European countries too, possibly also North America and Australia?) if your family has a bit of money to offer, this can signal the 'Gap Year'. The Gap Year means that you take a year out before university to travel the world, learn about independence, get work experience, and most importantly LIFE experience, and awareness of other cultures. Life experience is very highly valued in the West. By employers and universities alike, not to mention peers, partners etc etc!
This girl was going on a Gap Year with a bunch of her friends from school. This kind of scuppers the 'independence' aspect, but from a parental angle, I guess you'd feel safer if your 18 year old daughter was not alone. But what seemed most peculiar to me was that these girls suddenly started storming around the house wearing ethnic clothing and thinking they were really cool. Shalwar Kameez, Indonesian batik.. It's doing no one any harm, but the concept that to be English wearing a Kebaya* was excessively cool was most peculiar (and slightly ridiculous) to me. And I think a lot of Asians might have found it slightly ridiculous! Even locals IN Malaysia / Indonesia, don't often wear Kebaya in the modern day. In short, what I realised was that this 'experience of Asia' - was not really about Asia at all, but a kind of fashionable, Western invention of it: 'Fake Asia'.
And, as the recent Bali trip proved - Fake Asia is still very alive today, pandered to by locals because they've spotted a lucrative market. 'Hey, they'll pay for Fake Asia - let's give them Fake Asia then!'
Fake Asia seems pretty uniform from what I've seen while living in SE Asia. It involves places with street stalls selling the same 'ethnic' t'shirts, batik trousers, hemp-woven bags etc etc. They're not indigenous crafts, but Fake Asia crafts, probably made outside the country of retail. Reggae and reggae culture is popular - despite the fact that's Caribbean, which is quite a long way from SE Asia - but hey, they're all tropical! There's a focus on 'spirituality' - but it's Fake. Because this is Fake Asia. There will be drugs (where there's no death penalty), other things provided recreationally that you might not get to do back home. You might indulge in a little charity work. Grow dreadlocks. You chill at the beach at night and do or watch Poi / glowstrings. And you hang at cafes, bars and raves with other people from London/the West who are just like you; who like and feel safe with doing the familiar, prescribed Fake Asia things. Until you go home.(FYI you don't need to be an 18 year old youngster to fuel Fake Asia!)
In some ways, Fake Asia does nobody any harm. ..Except for the potential issues outlined in Point 1. And I'm sure a lot of Fake Asia travellers are nice, even well-meaning, people. But the real key to all this is that it's Fake. This is NOT an Asian experience, and it's not learning about Asia: it's just 'Doing Fake Asia'. And because it's all about hanging with others-like-us (in a hotter country) it's arguably not really about independence either.
More confusingly, now, some young Asians are getting in on Fake Asia, in other parts of Asia, because they consider it's a cool, Western thing to do. Or because they want to mix and be seen with / date Westerners (a status symbol in some groups). Or perhaps some just want to see what Hampstead might be like? ^^
Locals are not unaware of Fake Asia. It's big business! And people were writing about it as far back as the 70's. You can check out Gita Mehta's amusing novel 'Karma Cola' for a bit of early insight!
(FYI I sound like I am very down on Westerners, in fact I am very proud of a lot of the sentiments of some Western nations - my own included! ..The things that never really get global publicity, but you notice and miss them when you live overseas. Fake Asia, however, is not among these!)
3. Earplugs
Some votes for the clear, sticky silicon kind!
4. Balinese food in Bali
We couldn't find any in Ubud, despite walking for miles examining menus! Having lived in Singapore for several years (and spent other years of my childhood growing up in this region) I was looking forward to introducing my friend to the great dishes of SE Asia. And Bali and Indonesia really do have some of the best. But in actual fact, you'll get better (and cheaper!) authentic Indonesian food in Singapore. The general deal in Ubud was either Western pizza and pasta, expensive fusion, or really atrocious, over-priced 'local-dishes-for-tourists-who-don't-know'.
The highlight for me was at a large, tourist-focused canteen at one site of natural beauty we visited. Our local guide was waxing lyrical about the authenticity of the local food there. At last! I ordered satays: marinaded, grilled meat skewers served most commonly with a delicious, sweet, sloppy sauce made with peanuts, chilli and a number of secret ingredients. Satays are one of the yummiest dishes in this region! You can get decent satays at the right Singapore hawker stalls, but they're not quite as delicious as the real deal in Indonesia and Malaysia. So imagine my delight when a London-priced plate of satays arrived, complete with a slop made from bottled BBQ sauce, bottled HP sauce, and chopped peanuts! :/ (My guess is that the guide's mates were running this terrible canteen, or he got commission for bringing tourists there.)
So if anyone's been eating 'local' food in Bali - you probably haven't, so please don't judge it!
Throughout the Bali trip, I longed to take my friend to the backstreet stalls and hawker centres in Singapore - where at least I knew we could try real Asian food from the region! (And much more cheaply than the rip-off prices in Ubud!)
I guess this last point holds a large key this article: if you want to experience 'real Asia' with easy access, go to the modern, developed cities of this region. Not the tourist theme-parks of Bali, Phuket and co.
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| Authentic satays in Singapore. No HP or Heinz BBQ sauce with these, from what I could taste! |
Further reading from this blog:
Unravelling the British Class System
Photo credits:Cartoon from The New Yorker.
Street photo: Angie Yip
Singapore satays: my own.
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