Whatshot
Travel
Travel
Balinese only use 4 names. Since most Balinese areHindus, most names areSanskrit, while others still use native Balinese one. Regardless of being male or female, each person receives one of four names based onbirth order. Though there are significant variations in the four names of Balinese people, some due tocastemembership, and others due to regional customs and variations in the Balinese language between the North and the South of the island, there are four names in Balinese culture that are repeated frequently. The firstborn is "Wayan" or "Gede" or "Putu", second is "Made" or "Kadek", third is "Nyoman" or "Komang", and fourth is "Ketut".
But I guess the romance stops there.
Travel to Sanur, or Kuta or Jimbaran or Seminyak right down to Uluwathu and you will see the familiar sight. The revellers who come on cheap flights from Australia and some parts of Europe. They're easy to spot because the dads have lots of tattoos, mums have beer guts, and the kids have corn rows in their hair.
It's no wonder locals feel Bali is in danger of losing its identity in its bid to chase the tourist dollar.This is most evident on the streets of Kuta, where bar after bar is packed with loud and obnoxious tourists drinking all night long. When bars close in the early hours, they spill noisily into the streets, some passing out in the streets. Then they wake up the next day and do it all again.
At night, we got sick of taxi drivers trying to rip us off. Roadside stalls that used to sell local delicacies now hawk bumper stickers with slogans like "Mark is Gay" or "Pete is Gay", and "Big Fat Pussy".
It doesn't matter if you stay in a fancy hotel or an expensive villa, it's all a mirage, because just a few metres from the fancy resort walls, horizon-edged pools and manicured lawns give way to shacks and rubble where entire extended families live in two cramped rooms.
Our last villa was in a little rural village just outside Seminyak. We loved our back garden rice paddy, and the fact that we shared our back wall with a Balinese farming family who lived in squalour just meters from our opulent abode.
In my bathroom I could hear the mother singling softly to her baby at night, which reminded me of myself as a young mother. Many times I tried to climb the four meter wall to peep at the life behind the wall but was not able to climb that high eventually I went on foot around the block only to find the most sever example of poverty I had ever seen.
That night I heard their soft melodic voices and could see in my minds eye their daily hardships. I cannot explain how it made me feel to think that our daily rent on the villa was equivalent to a month's wage for an average Balinese. Even though I felt ripped off everywhere I went by most individuals I had dealings with, I slowly started realising that beyond the plush interior of the tourist spaces, there lies a sad reality of adverse poverty and human degerety.
I spoke to one young lady in a shop who told me she earns 2mil Rupiah a month, which is about R2000. She has a young daughter and she and her husband live with their in-laws to save money. She doesn't think they will ever be able to afford their own place. "My mother-in-law, she makes me uncomfortable," she said with a sad shake of her head.
Most Balinese youngsters have very little prospect of affluent future. You will find them hanging out in gangs lying around in these rudimentary makeshift pavilions chain smoking and behaving like juvenile delinquents.
The sad reality is that the Balinese need our tourist dollars, but it comes at a high price. The wealth that's pouring into the country isn't shared, and it's just forced the majority of workers into low-paying manual service jobs.