World heritage dump: Garbage is piled up in Mount Batur geopark in.

Now Pristine beaches and seas are now littered with plastic waste, footpaths and roads in several tourism areas are in dangerous states of disrepair, mountains near world heritage listed parks are being quarried out of existence, forests of billboards have replaced jungles, rivers are riddled with trash and traffic is almost at gridlock. Welcome to Bali 2013.

Unbridled development, coupled with inadequate infrastructure and a lack of law enforcement is crippling parts of Bali, once known as the island of the gods, but Bali may well be at a tipping point that could push the international holiday destination into a failed tourist hub, say locals, expats and visitors alike.

Worryingly for the tourist industry, international arrivals to Bali dropped almost 15 percent in January, and while some tourism agencies believe this is driven by the economic crises in Europe and America and therefore temporary, others believe it is because tourist areas of Bali have become “trashy and dirty”, says one holiday maker at Ubud, a town that three years ago was voted best city in Asia by Conde Nast and “more expensive than New York”, says another of a US$250 dinner for two in Seminyak.

Bali is at real risk of collapse as a tourist destination, says Sulasa Jaya of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) if the provincial and local governments do not act swiftly and jointly to halt development until a master plan for Bali’s tourism, that establishes “how to make Bali Bali”, is formed.

Harmonious coexistence?: A women enters a temple garden. In some parts of Bali, development overshadows culture and history. “What Bali needs is all people to sit together and plan Bali’s tourism into the future. Now it is growing like a wild horse as investors wait for rain to fall from the sky (manna from heaven). We need tourism, but not out of control. Regent heads currently don’t care about other areas, they just go their own way and we can’t manage Bali like that,” says Sulasa, pointing out that hotel occupancy rates across Bali are hovering between 50 to 70 percent, yet planning departments of local government continue to grant accommodation building permits, impacting Bali’s landscape and infrastructure even further.

Sulasa explains that inaccurate data on occupancy rates and room numbers across the province leaves the door open to these planning permits.

“According to provincial statistics there are approximately 65,000 rooms available in Bali, but when we do the calculations, based on double occupancy this would mean that of a total number of rooms at 65,000 we would be, theoretically at 105 per cent occupancy. But in fact occupancy is, let’s say, 70 percent, so there must be more than 90,000 rooms, suggesting there are at least 24,000 unregistered rooms,” says Sulasa. The blurred figures on accommodation availability in Bali lead local government to allow further development, adding to the already massive environmental problems facing the island without true consideration of development needs and the society’s welfare. “One analysis I have read suggests that tourism has not yet given prosperity to the people of Bali. This came as a surprise because our government says tourism makes money for the development of Bali, but prosperity cannot be measured only on money,” says Sulasa, who would like to see a grass roots movement feeding ideas into tourism planning into the future.

However, if government and other stakeholders don’t step into overdrive to address Bali’s traffic congestion, overdevelopment and extreme environmental impact there may not be a tourism future for Bali to plan. One young business woman from Seminyak, who requested anonymity, says she is deeply concerned that tourism to Bali could soon collapse.

“For us every day there are less people and more complaints as everyone is saying Bali is now more expensive than Europe. We keep inviting friends from overseas to come and visit Bali, but they say ‘why come to Bali when we can go to Thailand which is cheaper, cleaner, has less traffic jams and the food is better.’ Rents and land here now are so expensive because people are willing to pay any price. Soon local people will never be able to afford to buy here — it’s impossible. People get greedy because they need more money to live, so it’s a circle where you can’t find the start or the end,” said the young woman, adding that people committed to Bali were packing up and leaving the island, because of the extreme degradation occurring. “A friend who retired here and lived here for years got to the point where she said “enough” and went back to Switzerland. “Can you imagine planning to retire in Bali like it was heaven on earth, but in time it became a hell. It is so sad,” she said.

Road to development: On a daily basis, trucks transport sand and rocks quarried from near the Mount Batur world heritage site to southern Bali. Others who visit Bali to see family say the changes wrought to the island in just a few short years are so upsetting they no longer want to visit beaches or towns such as Ubud.

“I come to see my elderly uncle, who lives near Ubud. I don’t go into town, it’s just too awful. There is nothing there for me,” says Cheryl from the US. Jasmine from Melbourne says while visiting family in Bali she visited several beaches, but could swim in none of them. “We went to Sanur for the day, but the water was filled with plastic and all sorts of rubbish, so we tried Padang Bai, and that too is destroyed. We have decided we won’t go to Bali for a family holiday again, because when we left our accommodation to go out for the day, we saw Bali is just trashy and dirty — there’s nothing of the tropics left,“ said Jasmine via Skype. The young mother added that she felt Bali had become a “disposable culture” where “entrepreneurs develop land without caring about the consequences.”

While visitors to Bali say environmental degradation is their major turn off, the head of Bali Tourism Board, Ida Bagus Ngurah Wijaya, says he feels traffic is the greatest problem facing the island; a problem he believes will be addressed with the completion of the Kuta bypass.

“There is a problem with access from the airport to Kuta, but this should be settled within three months. I don’t feel Bali is failing as a tourist destination, but we do have problems in south Bali. There is still a lot to see in Bali, in the western parts of Bali, but the problem is access in getting to these other parts of the island,” says Wijaya, adding he hopes for better days in the future. “I speak with regent heads, asking them to change their minds [on rampant development], to change the way they think, so it’s like it was five years ago,” says Wijaya from Sanur, one of the few tourism areas that has maintained its Balinese charm.

One man who has made Seminyak home for the past 15 years is pragmatic about the state of Bali.
“I love it. Every day I go to the beach — beautiful sunsets, easy places to sit and chat. It’s fabulous. Just this morning I was riding my bike and thinking how very beautiful Bali is. I stopped at a temple and met seven old men, they were wonderful. Yes, there is rubbish. I travel a lot and see there is rubbish in Thailand, in China, in India. In all of Asia there is rubbish. I feel Asia needs education on rubbish management, not just here in Bali,” says a man seeing beyond the dross into the still beating heart of a Bali in need of intensive care.

Paddywhacked: Bali’s rice fields are a major draw for tourists, but annually many hectares are lost to development.

Redemption road: The peaceful green Bali can still be found off the beaten tracks.

— Photos By JP/J.B.Djwan