Balinese Utopia Lures Foreigners

"When I found this beautiful place, I was entranced by its magic," the Bavarian-American lady said. "I quickly made up my mind to build my little house in Bali. It would be Balinese in spirit and Western in comfort. Here I would stay and enjoy life." She paused, looking around, then added. "That was three years ago, though. Now, after all this time spent in Ubud, I find myself lonely and homesick."

This is from a person who has lived in at least ten different countries. She now felt the tug of her homeland. A few days later I discovered that she was gone. She had given in to her homesickness, leaving behind her house in Bali.

Lush rice paddies, white beaches, and pretty dancers, Bali delivers. It has been the inspiration of many clichs:  "Morning of the world," as Nehru put it, or "Paradise Island," as the brochures have it.

Bali is not lacking for ways to define its image and meaning in the eyes of the world. Hordes of foreigners come to Bali looking for their dreamland. Most come for a short visit, but others become so enchanted that they decide to stay. To all, Bali is an idyllic place where beautiful people are thought to live in peace and harmony with nature, far from the hassles and worries of the world.

It is the pursuit of this clichd utopia that sees more and more people eager to get into this island of the East and settle, to join the natives in their paradise luxury, complete with 21st century modcons and post-colonial servants; preferably at pre-colonial prices. Ubud and Sanur are just two examples of places with sand, surf, and beaches, rice fields or riversides that have become the preferred choices for Western expatriates.

Some expatriates have legitimate work, others find a reason to hangout legally. When they are not multi-national workers, they run NGOs, write articles, sell cookies, prepare Ph.D.'s and design garments. In brief, they fulfill both Indonesia's needs as a newly arrived industrial tiger and their own personal needs as long established hedonists.

"I have lived abroad twenty years," explained a British woman living in Peliatan (Bali), naming Goa, Kathmandu, Mykonos, Saint-Tropez, and Cancun as her past fare. Twenty-two places in all. She had been looking for her utopia, her own perfect combination of feeling and reason. A dream place where she could, at last, rest and fear none of the dangers of the outside world and, in particular, none from that inner world, her spiritual self.

She is still searching. The place she dreams of is found in the word escape itself, in the idea of the "far away" and its imagined virtues
and idealized people. 

This search for the "ideal" becomes an urge to travel, to find a new place where life can be defined in ways totally new. And more importantly, in ways totally different from how they are defined conventionally, with its Jones to be kept up with, career concerns, tax bills, and demanding lovers. It is this search for the "different" and for new experiences that has given birth to the new wave spirituality of our time, blending marginality, openness, and sexual freedom.

Ketut Surajaya---not his real name---knows how to use the Bali clichs to their greatest advantage. And in Ketut's case, to their greatest financial advantage, too.

Seven years ago, an American, one of those lost souls mentioned above, we'll call him John Derrida, wandered into the Campuan-Ubud restaurant. He met Ketut and, before long, he just knew Ketut could build him his dream home in Bali. Needless to say, Ketut knew it, too.

As an orang asing (foreigner), John could not own a land title, not even a single grain of sand, in Indonesia.
Therefore, he decided to rent. From whom? From Ketut, of course, who just happened to own a nice piece of land only ten minutes away, just up the road from the villagers preening their gaming cocks in the village streets of nearby Penestanan.

The location suited John. It was magical, with Mount Agung soaring into the sky, beyond the vibrant greens of rice paddies and palm trees.

John paid cash for a twenty-year lease on 400 square meters of tropical paradise. Of course, you can't put out a contract for paradise, so no papers were signed. "Business  in Bali relies upon friendship," Ketut reassured him. Once finished, the two-story house was "home" to John, like nowhere on earth. It was a traditional Balinese wanfrlan building. With its a/ang-a/ang, thatched roof, and coconut pillars, just like the one put up by Walter Spies, the "inventor" of Balinese painting. John's long dreamed of place of escape!

John enjoyed his paradise for five years, in perfect harmony with nature and Bali, and his landlord a friend.
Then he was called back home for family affairs. Before leaving, though, he entrusted the house to his good friend Ketut and even gave him some cash for maintenance. Once gone, his stay in California being longer than expected, he regularly sent money and letters. He knew he would return to the rice field landscape, the song of crickets, and the smile of Ketut.

But Bali had changed since that time of 1930s when Spies, Bonnet, and other artists first shaped the myths and clichs on which our modern expatriates still live. In the mythical and pre-tourist times of Bali, land had low economic value and could be given away as a gift. However, with the effects of rapid economic growth being increasingly felt, and tourism being the Trojan horse of capital investment, the Balinese perception of land is changing. Spurred by hotel construction, especially in the southern part of the island, land, in the hands of the natives, has become the most valuable commodity. The scarcity of land has created a gap between the landowners and landless Balinese. And that has changed the way people think. The times when land could be given away are long gone. The price of land is now often higher than the price of friendship. Land speculation, with all its social and personal consequences, has become one of the main features of modern Bali.

In the rush for land, the losers include dreamers like John Derrida. John came back to Bali four months ago, after spending two years in California. When he arrived, his dream-house had not changed outwardly, the rice fields were still green, and the gambling cocks sparked reds and blues, and Mount Agung forever the majestic pinnacle. The house was well kept, too, and as comfortable as ever. There was a problem, though: there was an Australian inside, who had rented it for twenty years, paying in cash, and without a contract; like John. John had no home and no legal leverage to get it back.

Previously published in Bali Today: Modernity, 2005, Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia. (Jean Couteau, editor).