With all respect, as I was reading that article it was clear to me what the agenda was. Low and behold, the very last sentence; Indonesia is looking for an extra 35 billion in overseas aid through the UN.
Bali struggles with ‘COVID-poor’ as Indonesian cases hit record
Malnutrition has long been a problem in the island’s east, but the collapse of tourism means more are now going hungry.www.google.ie
This is the problem with a lot of influencers in Bali, they clearly don’t pay any taxes and they only eat in western restaurants. So they live their cheaply and give zero back to the economy of the country!
also your face and hands gets really dirty driving a bike but anyone living in Asia would know you need to wash them straight after!
I’ve been to small villages in Karangasem, as recently as last month. And whilst it’s true, many people are struggling without tourists, karangasem has never been a tourist destination (it even says so in the article). The people there already know how to survive without relying on income from tourism. The banjar for each village (like a local council, each village runs itself) take money every month from residents in exchange for providing services. This has stopped this year, or the amount decreased, to help villagers.
But I know for a fact that many banjar have huge sums of money saved up that they will spend on ceremonies for holy days (which occur most weeks in Bali). They will also use the money to help people in the community, where needed. Inside the temples, hidden and locked away in the tower sections, they have stock piles of gold which they invest village money in to keep safe / grow the return.
There are absolutely people struggling to afford to eat in Bali, but the hardest hit communities are not the ones that already know how to survive without tourism.
Of course influencers don’t pay taxes in Bali. You cannot legally work here without a KITAS visa, which has to be sponsored by a company, for certain specialist job roles. It’s designed to protect local workers and stop foreigners taking a job that could be done by a local person. You can’t come here and work behind a bar, for example. Working online is a grey area, because although the work is being carried out in Bali, it’s not taking any jobs away from locals and the money being paid isn’t coming from within Indonesia (usually). The government havent clamped down on this because they know that it’s far too difficult to prove, it’s not hurting local workers and in fact digital workers absolutely do contribute huge sums of money for local people.
Even if they “only eat at western cafes”, those cafes will have ALL local workers, even if it’s owned by a foreigner. Most of them are locally owned though because setting up a business here for a foreigner isn’t particularly easy and you need help from a local to do so.
Most influencers have to keep up appearances, so they hire these ridiculous nmax scooters, which are the most expensive bikes to hire here. You can get a little Honda 125 for 450.000 rupiah, where as nmax start at usually 1 million rupiah per month (often cost more than this). These will almost exclusively be owned and hired from locals that have scooter rental businesses.
They rent villas, every month, and yea, in comparison to the western world, the rent is significantly lower. But you cannot compare the two. If an influencer spends 10 million rupiah a month on a rental, that’s maybe €500. Which isn’t a lot if you’re earning a western salary. But the average income for a local in Bali is 3-4 million rupiah, they can never afford these kinds of places.
These villas, again, are almost exclusively owned by locals because it is LITERALLY impossible to buy land here if you are not Balinese. Even if you’re Indonesian and from Java, sorry, only Balinese.
Hopefully you see my point, that even if an influencer is a complete bleep (and most of them are), they will always, in one way or another, contribute massive amounts of money to the communities here.
From some one that works online in Bali (and no, I don’t pay tax).
