Planning your Trip:

The Best of Bali

A History of Tourism

Market – silver jewellery, elaborate statues of Hindu gods, bright – coloured mobiles, penis – shaped wood carvings, bushy – haired figures seving as CD – holders – the list is endless.



This buoyant ind ustry, mostly home-based, swallows a lot manual labour. With so many people absorbed in tourism and trade, the famed rice fields of south Bali are often cultivated by families coming from economically – depressed areas of Bali , Java, and Lombok . They can be seen camping in makeshit huts along the fields during harvest season. Tourism also absorbs a lot of workers from outside. And many of he hands carving crafts around Ubud – often belonging to children – come from the poorest village of Karangasem .

The drop in tourists arrivals following the Kuta bombing in 2002, reinforced by the SARS epidemic and a general climate of insecurity, has deeply affected the island, especially in the south. Many Bali nese think that this should be an occasion to work on the problems that plague the tourist areas – overpopulation, landscapes degraded by the anarchic construction of shopping mals, and growing water shortages. One of the most pressing issues is the lack of waste management sending tons of plastic garbage onto the beaches during the rainy season.

But investing in environmental management when income has dropped proves difficult. Meanwhile, the government and the tourism industry try to replace missing Europeans with tourists from closer destinations in Asia – although they tend to stay for shorter periods and spend less money. If the tourism pie fails to grow back, many fear reprisals of Balinese against migrants in a general context of increasing ethnic conflicts in Indonesia . As they have done before, the Balinese will have to draw on the strength of their culture and their sense of pride and ind ependence to find ways out of these challenges.