Im beginning to think South Bali is in its death spiral. Prices are rocketing in restaurants, quantities are going down. One small eatery in Legian has raised prices more than 80% in the last 3 months. Six friends have roiling stomach upsets after meals at Legian and Seminyak eateries - all in the space of 2 weeks. Hygiene standards appear to be slipping badly. Rubbish piling up on beaches has overtaxed local efforts to clean up. Drains, rivers and beaches are choked with plastic. Sewage, complete with unsavoury lumps, is flowing into the ocean from irresponsible hoteliers, villa owners and residents who believe its their right to connect toilet outflows to storm-water drains. Adventure activity promoters, such as ATV rice paddy tours, previously charging about 650,000 Rp, now insist on being paid in USD or Rupiah equivalent, which has raised their price to 950,000 Rp in the space of a year. Our Rupiah is low, so you must pay in USD was the mantra. Opportunistic and greedy - their expenses are in Rupiah, not American dollars.That in itself wouldnt be so bad if their vehicles were up to scratch, but theyre not. On my last excursion on steep hillsides and rough tracks, all ATVs supplied had bald tyres, different sized wheels on the same axle, stalling motors, seats coming off, loose chain drives, slipping centrifugal clutches and sloppy steering. All these things made it almost impossible for even an experienced rider to control the machine. When my front brake cable snapped at the top of a steep descent, the organisers said: Um ... keep going - just drive more slowly ... Yeah right. I lived through the hair-raising descent using rear brakes that were either totally ON or totally OFF, fishtailing all the way - but only just. Traffic is impenetrable, the new airport terminal is an unfinished, understaffed disaster, non-Bluebird taxis have become even more feral and abusive, levels of service are slipping, police continue to target bules for imaginary infringements and cell phone and internet service is slower than ever. Despite vastly reduced demand, villa owners still ask for unrealistic rental prices. Hotel rates are more expensive than in Singapore and KL. I have spoken to perhaps 30 visitors here over the last month. Almost without exception, and without prompting, they say that it is unlikely that they will come back to Bali until conditions improve. Of course, being silly enough to write about this will bring the usual vitriolic emails saying the usual things: If you hate it here so much, why do you stay? And we dont need your negative comments - if you cant say something positive, why dont you shut up? I would love to stay positive about Bali because there are so many wonderful things about life here. But unless the infrastructure problems are addressed, and unless the endless greed on the part of some here is toned down, people WILL complain - and then they will stop coming altogether. The average stay here has dropped to 3 days. Do we really want it to drop further?
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 06:34:11 +0000
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