Trampling Through Bali - The Catch 22 of Tourism

We visit the places that stroke our imaginations only to find out that thousands of people have shared our dreams and now our dream is ruined. We read about a near deserted perfect beach in our two year old Lonely Planet and when we arrive it is teeming with European hippies and British families. We stroll down country lanes and are harassed to buy trinkets or take transport to the point that we feel harried and annoyed. Idyllic little islands are now covered in the plastics and trash necessary to keep young travelers in the comfort that they demand, and the beaches are murky with the sewage of a thousand extra people per night.

It is the communities that have the most tourism that are the wealthiest, but in order to gain that higher standard of living they also must give up their traditional way of life. Out go the local restaurants and green areas, in comes the Billabong shop and the bars hosting foam parties. On the other hand, it is easy for us to gripe about the loss of “authentic experiences” when we get to go home with full bellies to our sleek modern homes in the West. If tourism equals money, which in turn equals a better life, they want it at almost any environmental cost.

On the Perama bus from Seminyak to Candidasa yesterday I was privy to a variety of outrageously ignorant conversations. A young tennis playing stud from London told a wide eyed German girl that if “you go to South America, they've never seen blonde hair and on the bus they will cut off your ponytail to keep it! Seriously!” They then went on to discuss how gross squat toilets are. A Scandinavian dude dressed like a member of Blink 182 with a wide brimmed cap and neck tattoos exclaimed how happy he was to finally “get to the Gilis so I can get fucking wasted.”

Most disturbing were the women seated behind me – at first glance they seemed like nice typical middle-aged crystal gazers, perhaps headed to the beach for some yoga or meditation. “Ugh, I know. They way that they try to sell you things is disgusting. Don't they know that it annoys us? People will stop coming, you know. It is shameful how they carry on...”

Those women were lucky that I hadn't had a glass of wine and wasn't in a pub rather than drinking warm water trapped on a bus with them. See, if circumstances had been different, I would have been quick to call them out, maybe mention that the mere sight of the wads of cash we carry, the exorbitant sums we waste on Western food, the casual way we overpay for just about everything – it must make locals mad.

Well, not necessarily mad, but it would certainly make them think. We barge into areas like Bali waving handfuls of US dollars and demand a perfect holiday while staying at hotels and eating at restaurants owned by foreign investors or the local elite. But when the people who actually live there get uppity enough to start trying to get a piece of the pie we get annoyed. We call them shameless.

I'm willing to bet that they don't give a damn what we think. Taking no for an answer when selling keychains sounds well and good, but remember that the money that is worth practically nothing to us (they know what the conversion is and that we are paying pennies for things that cost dollars at home) can literally feed their family for the day. Maybe Grandma can rest instead of working. Their kids can go to school. And the more they sell, the more of those silly pieces of paper practically falling out of our wallets they can get, the happier and healthier their lives will be. If this was the case for you, would you care about annoying some washed up hippie's delicate sensibilities by pressuring them to buy a magnet?

Tourism drags ancient cultures from their traditions and disrupts the way of life and the environment, yes (there are responsible ways around this, but from what I've seen over the past year those are mostly a myth unless you have a lot of money....) but it also puts food on the table for people who might go without otherwise. While it's well and good to patronizingly dream that people are completely sustained by their quaint customs and should be willing to stay poor in order to keep them exactly as they have been for centuries that's just not going to happen. Especially if you are one of the willing masses who want to pay to see those customs in action. See what I mean? We could go around in circles forever. If we go, we ruin it. If we don't, people lose jobs. What is better?

It boils down to this - locals want the things that we have, both luxury items and basics such as our educations – and they are willing to piss you off to earn them, one keychain at a time.