Bali: Expat’s heaven & hell

Someone told me once that when you first come to Bali, you love everything about it. After a year or so you hate everything about it, then after a some time things balance out. Tonight I was chatting with a longterm expat who was telling me about stuff that happened to him. As usual, getting ripped off, and the number of break-ins featured high on the list of complaints

Asia truly is a different place that the West. We read about it, but we don’t truly comprehend it until we see it in action. My friend went on about the moronic driving, where one guy on a motorbike with stop a whole line of traffic coming the other way. “They’ll pretend they don’t see you and you don’t see them,” he said. “Its like he’s gazing off into the distance.” I told him about my neighbor getting caught for 30m rp. He told me about a recent bank scam where one of the employees would get customers to invest, through her, in things outside of the bank’s activities. “These people would call me up,” he said “and tell me this woman was a friend of theirs.” “If they needed to pay someone she would take the money out of their account and send it over.” Needless to say many ‘bules’ lost money form trusting someone with their cash. I think the writing is on the wall out here regarding money. Don’t trust anyone.

My friend said “Look, Indonesians are lovely friendly people, its just that most of them have no education.” All across Asia there exists a ‘law of the jungle’ approach, whereby the rich families control a lot of what goes on in daily life, meaning, business, politics, police and deliberately keep the others down. When people from other islands come to Bali, all of a sudden they meet westerners who have money, and might actually treat them well. For some its too much temptation, and people can be pretty brazen about it. A friend of mine who’s house was broken into, said to me recently “See that little scumbag hanging around outside?” “I’m sure it was him who broke into my house, a lady friend saw him hanging around right before.”

Anyway, for all those people who don’t live in Bali, its a great place to live. The best way to live stress free out here, is to live simply, and don’t flash money around. 99% of people are very nice, and you are just as safe as in a western city.