Migrations

It’s late October and we are at the end of the dry season. Next month should bring the start of the rains – I hope so anyway. My family is due to return home tomorrow. My eldest daughter has asked them to stay in Bali for a few more days. She’s grown up in an Indonesian culture and before she moved back to our house in Bali to attend high school there, she had never slept alone and was very much the homebody. Now she’s living basically alone, and it hasn’t been the easiest thing for her, but she’s done a good job so far.

I’ve been receiving a lot of emails recently (generally I receive quite a few, but over the last few months, I’ve received even more than usual) from people wanting to move to Bali either to retire or start a business. A lot of the traffic comes from some articles that I wrote several years ago; the minority comes from my blog or the cyberbali.com website. I certainly don’t mind responding to most (I don’t respond to the ones that give a few questions with no other text, such as “how much does it cost to live in Bali,” or “How do I get a job in Bali”). Fairly rude as I see it. I do respond to the emails that start out with a hello, or a I really liked your article. I’m even more inclined to respond if they give some background information like, “I’ve vacationed in Bali six times in the last…years”

But besides the response issue, there’s this nagging question about why so many people want to move to Bali. I’ve forgotten the stats on the number of legal resident foreigners in Bali, but it was fairly significant for such a small island. (Then there’s a whole other world of illegal resident foreigners – the idiots who don’t bother to keep their visas current or abide by the national laws on immigration and residency.) Maybe I should be put up a poll on my website about immigrating to Bali.