In Ubud there is no shortage of every kind of wanker. New age parents dangling 2 year olds on the back of scooters in a bid to build "all natural" immunities. Yoga girls extradited from San Francisco for being too insufferable. Let's not forget the Digital Nomads, looking thoughtfully at their Macs considering the next quippy sentence in their mundane Travel blog.
Oh.
Before entering Bali I had an image of it conjured by the reports of those who visited prior. A paradise of unrivalled beauty, hosted by welcoming locals and so abundant in cheap delights that I wouldn't know what to do with myself. This is all true... from a certain perspective.
Ubud is a fascinating and beautiful town. The locals know it. The tourists know it. The settled wankers know it. And therein lies the problem. As the cultural capital, it may once have been the stunning jewel of Bali; comprised almost entirely of bewilderingly beautiful homes and temples the likes of you simply cannot comprehend in the west.
But then came the initial wave of tourists, paying money the locals couldn't believe for simple pleasures likes tours and fresh coconuts. I mean what's wrong with these people they thought? Those grow on trees.
So money came in. It built nicer hotels and guided tours for tourists, which attracted more tourists, which brought more money etc. When the island's internet got good enough it attracted the wankers, who like to talk about finding inner peace but seem to find it a lot quicker with comparatively expensive, arty cafes, fancy smoothies and great wifi.
So that is what Ubud looks like today. Maybe a thousand beautiful temples, each on its own merit able to rival anything you would find in the British Museum. But now buried under a mound of discarded plastic bottles and messy infrastructure built hastily to accommodate the sheer weight of outsiders and the needs that come with them.
So every other building now is a touristy Warung (cafe), hotel, massage parlour, market stall or tour company, each calling after you as you pass down the street; "massage?" "Taxi?" "T-shirt?" Nothing here is for the locals, who are working on such a different economic scale that your lunch could cost what they make in a day (or three).
The end result of that... depends on you. On the face of it, this could be all you ever want - a busy cultural hub, with all the creature comforts, cheap goodies and visual experiences that will be a huge hit on the gram.
But if you take a look behind the marketing... out in the real rice paddies north of Ubud or even just behind one of the many massage parlours and spy the workers taking a break, you see the relative poverty which makes this paradise possible. Smiles return when facing a potential customer, but in between the sales pitch is a people whose culture has been decimated by its own success.
Then again, the museum in Ubud which depicts the development of Bali is called the "Museum of Marketing 3.0." So maybe this was the plan all along.
Yorumlar