What About Bali in 2009?

The start of a new year, and the rhythms of life continue on. School has started again, and the kids are slowly gearing up for another semester of work and study. People in the neighborhood have been using the good weather the last few days to make repairs on their houses before the next round of storms come in. Stores and government offices have been opened and closed and opened and closed with all the holidays that we’ve had in the past few weeks. They’re all closed again today as this is a Balinese holiday.

So what about the next 12 months in Bali? Despite the economic crisis, it seems that Bali is going to see continuing immigration from both foreigners and Indonesians from other island. The island seems to be increasingly crowded, and yet, there are still large expanses of green up in the mountains and along the east and west coasts. The clearing of agricultural land for villas, hotels, and shopping malls is putting pressure on water resources, and it is not uncommon to be essentially without water for a few hours a day. There have been rumblings that the government is going to put restrictions on development, but so far building goes on, and the south of Bali resembles a large construction zone.

Mayhem on the roads continues as more and more vehicles compete for space on the crowded roads and gridlock is common in the south of the island, especially in the main tourist area of Kuta-Legian-Seminyak. Reports are that one person a day dies in a traffic accident, and if you drive around the island a lot, you’ll see numerous accident scenes. On the positive side, the helmet law seems to be working at least here in Singaraja, although small kids seem to be exempt, and you routinely see tiny little ones clinging to their parent or sibling not wearing a helmet. Will road mayhem get better? Not likely as the pleasant, patient demeanor of the Indonesian people seems to vanish once they get in a motor vehicle. I stay off the roads as much as possible.

The imported alcohol problem continues on and a bottle of Red Label costs almost $60. This is bad news for the tourist industry, but doesn’t really affect locals much as even at the old regular price of around $20, it was still too expensive for most Indonesians to drink. The upside – good news for the Indonesian beer and wine companies which will probably see sales increase this year.

Health care continues to improve, and we can get relatively complete physicals done in the north of Bali these days. Still, people with money continue to get major surgery done in Singapore or Bangkok. It will be interesting to see if market forces contribute to an upgrade of medical care. The example being a local dentist whose reputation has spread by word of mouth and who is drawing a continuing numbers of patients away from other dentists. Will they upgrade their skills and facilities to compete? It will be interesting to see what pans out this year.

Rumors suggest that changes in property ownership laws for foreigners make appear on the books this year. This could be good news for expats who want to feel more secure in the homes that they lease; it may not be as welcomed for Indonesians who are in the business of acting as nominees for expat villas and houses.

Despite the changes that Bali is undergoing as it seeks its way through modernization and tries to cope with continuing rampant and unregulated development, life in the villages and neighborhoods continues on with the cycles of ceremonies, work, and more ceremonies.

The End of the Year in Bali

It’s the last day of 2008 and, as usual, we have all sorts of stuff going on here in our house in Kampung Bugis. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of my marriage to my wife and today I had to pay my annual marriage tax. My wife asked for a new refrigerator and considering that we have had this one for 10 years, I considered a new fridge to be a good gift. We went over to our usual electronics’ supplier and after a lot of looking and measuring and pricing, bought a LG that is a little larger than our old model. So that was one thing that we did today.

My wife is having the beach house renovated slowly using money that she saves from her annual house budget. So the old fridge was moved to the beach house, and while I was watching the move, I noticed new tiles on the stairs to the second floor, a new window in the kitchen, another small fridge that I didn’t know that we had (I rarely go into the beach house), and new fittings on the windows (for those that might think that we have some luxury villa, our houses here in Kampung Bugis are very basic – a fair amount of space but basic in terms of building materials and design. We definitely won’t win any Bali design awards or end up in one of the coffee table books that highlight Western buildings in Bali, but our houses are functional and comfortable. We have seven children and four adults living in these two houses along with the children’s friends, a pembantu, and the rest of our family that lives in the kampung and they all tend to hang out here.

So we have the new fridge, and then we’ve been cleaning up from yesterday’s big storm. I won’t let anyone change the third floor which is where I live most of the time, and as it’s open, when we get big storms water flows down from the third floor to the second floor and then down to the first floor. It only happens when we have really big storms and yesterday we had one.

I wandered around the Beach House looking at old photos of Su and me when we married, and some of the kids when they were small and my adult son the last time that he was here visiting us. I did get a flash of “my god, I looked so young then.”

And now, another 6 hours before 2009, all the women in the family are in the Beach House kitchen cooking up a feast for the end of the year, the men are moving refrigerators and fixing holes in the roof, the kids are playing , and I’m writing and watching the kittens.

Happy New Year to all.