A Bali moment: Children walk on the beach for the Melasti ritual at Kuta beach. JP/Stanny Angga

A young barber from Padang in Sumatra has been on the road for a decade. Now 25 years of age, Marcel Arde lives and works in Bali after spending a few years hard slog in the nation’s teeming capital, Jakarta.

At just 15, Marcel struck out on his own to try his luck in the big smoke, carrying with him his tools of trade, scissors, a cutthroat barber’s razor and the hairdressing skills he had picked up from friends in his home village of Solok on Padang’s outskirts. Riding buses and ferries and sleeping rough, Marcel was carrying on the traditions of his Minang culture, meranto cino, where young men leave the nest to seek their fortune in the wider world.

“I left Solok in 2000 and headed for Jakarta. I was looking for work and I wanted to study English. But I also wanted to experience life with people from other countries, so I came here to Bali and opened the barber shop. It’s going well,” says Marcel who trims up to 50 heads of hair a day in his traditional barber shop in Peliatan.

His barbershop is full most days, due — one client says — to his ability to keep up with trends while charging just 80 cents for a trim.

“I can earn up to Rp 6 million [US $540] a month and the cost of living here in Bali is much less than Padang, so I can save for the future,” says Marcel who plans to one day marry a girl from Padang and return to his village.

Marcel is just one of the hundreds of people from Indonesia’s many islands that head to Bali each year in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a pot of gold that can be found through hard work and an ability to overlook the daily hardships of loneliness, differing cultural practices and languages.
According to Ni Komang Erviani’s report in The Jakarta Post,

Bali’s population has increased by 20 percent over the past decade, most of this growth due to immigration from Java and islands to Bali’s east.

This migration to Bali from other Indonesian provinces is a byproduct of tourism, says soft furnishings manufacturer, 29-year-old Hermanto from Pemalang in Central Java. This softly spoken young man trained as a tailor in his hometown, known across the country as a center for excellence in tailoring. Hermanto explains its fame was also his downfall, with high competition levels that barred a young man any opportunities to open his own business.

“Because of the competition in Pemalang, I decided to come to Bali to find work and make a better life for myself. I started off working for a soft furnishing business in Denpasar. In Java I tailored trousers, so here I had to learn how to make soft furnishings. I saved every rupiah I could until I had enough money to open this home industry, Bagus Tailor in Lodtunduh,” says Hermanto who left Java with just bus fare to Bali and an SMSed promise of work. Several years on and Hermanto employs several machinists, also from Java.

“It is much easier to grow the business here in Bali because of the tourism. There are many villas and hotels that need our products and tourists also buy cushions, mosquito nets and bed covers as souvenirs,” Hermanto explains of the importance of tourism to his business.

There is enough wealth to share, says Hermanto, who has no fears of his staff setting up their own businesses. “There are enough customers for more businesses like this one,” he says.

Machinist at Bagus Tailor, 25-year-old Ratno, has lived in Bali for the past two years and is inspired by what Hermanto has achieved through self-sacrifice.

“I like living in Bali because it is so peaceful and more open than Java. For the future I would like to do as Hermanto has and open my own business. I do miss my home, but I feel good that I am trying to make a new life here in Bali,” says Ratno, who, like Hermanto, works a 12-hour day, seven days a week and sleeps on the floor by his sewing machine to save every rupiah he can to build his future.

Bali’s relative immunity from Asia’s 1997-1998 financial crisis drove 54-year-old Ibu Holip to Bali from Madura more than a decade ago.

“I moved to Bali during the crisis. Money was still ok here so I made a business selling nasi bungkus [packaged rice meal]. I’d walk from Tegas into Ubud,” remembers the tiny Holip who is still stick thin.

“I did well. From Rp 20,000 I could make 50,000 selling nasi bungkus. But other people got jealous and I was stabbed. I was in hospital for 14 days. But I’d made enough money to contract land down in Denpasar and built a little boarding house,” says Holip whose success has been up and down.

“The land owners wouldn’t renew the contract so I went back to Java. There someone put black magic on my son and he’s been sick for the past three years. So now I am back here in Bali selling bamboo blinds. I earn enough to pay for his medicine, which I cannot do in Java. So yeah! I am happier in Bali,” says Holip with laugh, adding it is Bali’s strong tourism economy that allows her make a living.

Bali’s tourism dollars are the lure for people from all over Indonesia who hope to find work and create the businesses that allow them to eventually retire comfortably in their hometowns, which is what Flores born Ellen Ogom and her husband Wasek are close to achieving.

“We came to Bali from Flores 14 years ago to create a business. It’s much easier here to make a living than in Flores,” explains Ellen who runs a traditional weaving business in Ubud.

However rising prices in Bali and a desire to return to her family has set Ellen and her husband on the road home.

“My husband is there now. Life is getting expensive here in Bali and my husband is working as a contractor building a new city in Nagekeo, Flores. So we are making plans to return,” says Ellen who is covering her bases in case tourism or weaving disappear.

“If we don’t have tourism, we don’t have a business and also young people don’t want to learn to weave anymore — it takes too long,” says Ellen, who has reached the end of the rainbow and can now return to Flores with her hard won Bali pot of gold that promises a comfortable retirement.

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