F&G: Ubud, Bali: Musing about religion and tourism

23 January 2013

After our brief stay in Yoygakarta, we took a short one-hour flight over to the island of Bali, a little more than a mile away from the eastern edge of Java. We had a wonderful time in Bali, stayed at a beautiful hotel, saw some lovely views, and went on a fun bike tour (all of which we'll write about in our next post). Before we get into those specifics, though, we have some musings and observations about our time there based on perhaps half-forgotten readings I’ve done and what we saw ourselves.

Based on the recommendations of several people who have spent lots of time in Indonesia, we went to stay in Ubud, a small town of 30,000 people in the middle of the island. Ubud is commonly described as “the real Bali” and is at least an hour drive from the nearest popular beach hangout. I’m not sure quite what we were expecting to see, but we weren’t really prepared for what we actually saw.

Before I dig in to our time, though, a little background: Bali is home to a distinctive culture that arose in part from its religion. When Islam swept through Sumatra and Java hundreds of years ago, many Hindus fled to Bali, where their beliefs mixed with Buddhism and indigenous animist practices. What resulted were a mixture of religions and a population of people who are deeply shaped by countless religious rites and ceremonies. These religious beliefs, in turn, translate into outwardly visible practices: for example, each home has its own ornate temple with intricate decorations. Because there are many, many important days (based on important dates of three separate calendar systems), there are lots of festivals, ceremonies, and other reasons for decorating the town and engaging in various parades or musical acts. Their music, in particular, has become well known throughout the world because of its distinctive virtuosity and gamelan ensembles that are quite different even from the music of its neighbor, Java.

Bali has become a tourist mecca in part because of this distinct culture. Back in the first half of the twentieth century, Bali began to become a tourist hotspot for Europeans in part because of the rumored liberal attitudes of the Balinese. Tourist brochures and posters for Bali commonly featured topless women and the young boys were known to be especially friendly. Several well-known artists moved to Bali to take advantage of these possible sexual liaisons and began spreading the word about the island. Tourism to Bali really started to take off in the 1950s based on other parts of this distinctive culture (music, art, etc.) and because of the island’s natural beauty.

Bali’s famous features, the rice paddies, white beaches, surfing waves, volcanoes, are really not all that different from other parts of Southeast Asia. The beaches of the Philippines, for example, are probably actually even more beautiful, and Java is also home to countless volcanoes and rice paddies. But no matter, since Bali’s tourism board has successfully sold the idea that Bali is geographically different from the rest of Southeast Asia and most tourists don’t go anywhere else to compare. Don’t get me wrong, Bali is beautiful, but so are many other places in the region.

Based on these two general characteristics, a distinctive arts culture born out of religious practices, and great natural beauty, Bali has become one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world (just not so much for Americans since it’s a bit of a hike to get there). The success of Eat, Pray, Love, which takes place in Ubud, has sparked a recent surge in tourism (one local called the book “Eat, Pay, Leave”).

In our travels in Southeast Asia, we have never really been to any areas that are known as TOURIST destinations, or been to places whose economy relies almost exclusively upon tourism. When we got on our plane in Yogyakarta we knew we were in for a new experience because it was full of white, English-speakers, mostly from Australia. When we reached Ubud, the streets were full of these types of tourists: the only Balinese we ever saw were the women working in the stores and the men hawking taxis on the street (again, not all that different from many places we've been). Based on the people we saw, walking through the streets felt like walking around a not-particularly diverse U.S. town center. It was very strange, especially because Ubud is not the main tourist destination of Bali and various taxi drivers kept telling us that it was the low season for tourism.

We decided that the best way to describe Bali is to liken it to a giant theme park: it seems as though that we saw a version of Bali that has been created explicitly for tourists. Perhaps there was a “real” Bali hidden somewhere beneath all the boutiques and fancy restaurants, but it was inaccessible to us. A few examples:

-A friend who has spent time in Indonesia says that the “Balinese food” that most restaurants serve foreigners is actually Javanese. The Balinese save their own cuisine for themselves.

-Bali is incredibly expensive compared to most of Southeast Asia (obviously Singapore is excluded here). Since most of the tourists are Australian, and their economy is doing incredibly well, everything has been marked up to meet their buying power. One of the drivers we had explained how none of the Balinese can afford to live anymore unless they get jobs in the tourist industry driving taxis, working in hotels, leading tours, etc. The person who drove us to the airport is from a town famous for painting but said that he didn’t really paint any more because he had to get a day job to support his family.

-The influx of money, though, also means that the infrastructure is very nice. Unlike many of the places we’ve been, the majority of the roads were smooth, the drivers followed the rules, and many places accepted credit cards. While this made things quite easy, it felt a bit strange compared with other places we’ve been.

-Even some of the “smaller” places that seem to be outside of the general tourist hang were often surprisingly entwined with the tourist industry. When we went to the town famous for its silverwork, we stopped in at a place on the outskirts of town. As we were arriving, a bus of tourists drove up and the workers at the store sent out their English and Japanese-language specialists to greet them. Needless to say, we couldn’t afford anything at this store.

-Several ethnomusicologists and anthropologists have written about how the tourism industry has dramatically changed local customs and performance practices. What used to be a multi-day ceremony or ritual dance performed only once a year is now performed every night of the week in an easily consumable 90-minute version. One of the more famous examples of this, is the kecak dance/chant. I think this was originally a chant used in exorcist rituals but one day a westerner heard it and thought that others would enjoy it, too (turns out this story is explained briefly here). This chant has now evolved into one of the more popular cultural performances and, at least in Ubud, was performed two or three times a night.

When we went to a kecak performance, we were seated behind a row of American students on study abroad. Australians made up the rest of the crowd. The version that we saw was part of this reworked kecak: it was a 45-minute spectacle with a clear narrative explained to us in an English-language hand-out and we were invited to come up and take photos with the dancers after the show. [I have a brief video of the performance here. Since it was dark and hard to capture the visual, these audio examples, here and here, might better capture the evening]. Other Balinese dances have been similarly reworked for easy consumption.

We had an interesting time in Ubud. It was fascinating to see both how religion can completely shape an island (population density, cleanliness, aesthetics, city planning, music, art, etc.) and also how these religious practices and other parts of daily life can be completely reshaped by tourism.

We’ll have another post with an actual narrative of our time Bali along with more photos soon.