Indonesia, Bali
The Only Thing I Can Do Is Criticize
A Balinese journalist and NGO member on money that leaves the island as fast as it arrives, and a press column as his one working lever.
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What Paradise Cost Us
Before the 1980s, I Made Mangku says, life on Bali moved at the pace of the rice fields and the tide. A piece of fish, some rice, and people were happy. Then the island was marketed to the world as paradise, and paradise started filling up.
Read more →Indonesia, Bali — Kuta
Seventeen Hundred Taxis, One Phone Line
A Kuta taxi driver on a decade of tourism growth, a television bought on credit, and why he still can't afford a phone of his own.
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An Imported Elephant, A Vanishing Coastline
A local NGO worker and coastal engineer on beaches that are washing away, hotels that import their own food, and a fake elephant he doesn't actually mind.
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Why Does He Have to Say It First?
The secretary of Udayana University's Women's Study Centre on garment workers, literacy gaps between men and women, and a question about courtship she still can't let go of.
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Up at 4:30 for a Bucket of Water
A tourism professor at Udayana University on hotels that drink the water supply first, a three-story building limit under pressure, and guides who get the culture wrong.
Read more →Indonesia, Bali — Denpasar
A Stolen Motorbike, A Missed Home
A 22-year-old student on cremations sold for a few dollars, a room boy who earns more in tips than in wages, and a bike theft that now keeps her sleeping at school.
Read more →Indonesia, Bali — Kerobokan
The Floating Generation
A member of the Wisnu Foundation on rice fields switched to Javanese seed, a democracy Bali had before Suharto, and the young people he says are drifting without direction.
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