Rabu, 06 April 2011

Holidays in Hell: Bali's Ongoing Woes


Andrew Marshall -
The annual monsoon transforms Bali. Rain sweeps across slumbering volcanoes. Moss thickens on ancient temple walls. Rivers swell and flush their trash and frothing human waste into the sea off Kuta Beach, the island's most famous tourist attraction, where bacteria bloom and the water turns muddy with dead plankton.
"It happens every year," shrugs Wayan Sumerta, a Kuta lifeguard, who sits with his love-struck Japanese girlfriend amid dunes of surf-tossed garbage. So why, in early March, did the Bali authorities warn tourists that swimming there for over 30 minutes could cause skin infections? The lifeguard tenderly strokes his girlfriend's naked leg. "I guess some people just have sensitive skin," he says.
Itchy ocean? Just add it to Bali's growing list of seemingly intractable problems: water shortages, rolling blackouts, uncollected trash, overflowing sewage-treatment plants and traffic so bad that parts of the island resemble Indonesia's gridlocked capital Jakarta. And don't forget crime.
In January, amid a spate of violent robberies against foreigners, Bali police chief Hadiatmoko reportedly ordered his officers to shoot criminals on sight. You've heard of the Julia Roberts movie Eat Pray Love, which was partly filmed in Bali? Now get ready for its grim sequel: Eat Pray Duck.
Most of Bali's woes stem from a problem that rival resorts would love to have: too many tourists. In 2001, the island welcomed about 1.3 million foreign visitors. Ten years later — and despite bombings by Islamic extremists in 2002 and 2005 that killed 222 people, mostly Australian tourists — the island expects almost twice that number. And there are millions of Indonesian visitors too.
Hotels, shopping centers and restaurants are springing up everywhere to accommodate them. The cranes looming over Kuta are building at least three malls and a five-star hotel. But the less glamorous stuff — roads, power lines, sewers, parking spaces — often remains an afterthought.
"The infrastructure is not keeping up with the development," says Ron Nomura, marketing director at the Bali Hotels Association. The island's lack of reservoirs, he says, is a case in point. "Can you believe there is this much rain and we don't have enough water ?"
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Holidays in Hell: Bali's Ongoing Woes

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