Live From Amed

1:31pm Friday July 17th, 2009

Okay. Here we have to get into uncomfortable territory, where I talk about the elephant that enters the room whenever someone like me (middle-class, educated, white, American) travels to a third world country. I am not well-equipped to discuss this topic eloquently, and am bound to say ignorant things or trip over topics I don’t fully comprehend, or stuff both my feet in my mouth by the time I’m done, but here goes. So we are in Amed. It is a remote area of Eastern Bali, about 45 minutes beyond Candidasa (where were planning to stay originally based on some friends’ recent travels and enjoyment). Amed, according to my guide book, is actually only one village out of the several villages along the coastline here but savvy hoteliers have lumped them all together to lure tourists to “the Amed region.” My landlord Made insisted this was the place to come, said it is “paradise” and told us it is a relatively undeveloped, quiet coastal village, that it would be easy to find someplace small right on the beach to stay for about $40 US a night, including breakfast. We were told to expect to have the place to ourselves.

Instead, we spent 2 and a half hours trying to find a hotel that had rooms available, with nothing cheaper available than $65 a night –and that was at a private villa with a strange punch drunk European couple whose dog barked at us mercilessly and bit our driver so we opted not to stay. We chose the cutest and second-cheapest place we saw, a hotel with a series of little detached houses leading down to the beach. Ours has a queen bed downstairs and a loft upstairs with two twin beds, a nice bathroom and an outdoor shower. Its clean, nicely landscaped and has a pool and beach access, though there isn’t much beach to speak of, as most of it is taken up by the fishing boats that the rest of the village use to make their living every day. There is no place to “go” from here –its all hotels or beach, there is a hotel café that is overpriced and not very good, and the place itself is full of fat Australians, loud Italians, and their collective obnoxious offspring (okay, okay and two, late-twenties, pasty skinned, childless, judgmental and self righteous Americans). We had come too far to turn around and go home last night so we bought our driver dinner and stayed but both Austin and I lay awake feeling unsettled about what we had just set ourselves up for. We were expecting low key beach getaway, not this weird Club Med in Bali. We both fell asleep more out of defeat than actual exhaustion at about 9pm last night and were awakened through the night by the sounds of dogs barking and fighting, and then the bossy roosters that seem to be everywhere and have no sense of time or decency.

This morning, we ate the included breakfast, which was passable, if not inspiring, and then went to walk on the beach to stake out a place to sunbathe. We’d been on the beach maybe 3 minutes when we were approached by a Balinese guy carrying a pair of flippers. He introduced himself, asked where we are from, commented that we were in the “best” place to be seeing Bali for the first time, and offered to take us snorkeling or out in his boat to see an American warship wreck from WWII. We declined politely. He told us he lived next door to the hotel so we could come ask for him if we changed our minds. He seemed so earnest and desperate to make a sale and continued to make small talk, at one point mentioning that the hotel we are staying at is owned by an American. Austin stiffened at that –he had been particularly specific with our driver that he wanted to stay someplace Balinese owned. We assumed we were doing that and it was a bummer to learn we were not. I eventually had to suggest we keep walking before the guy with the flippers got the hint and let us continue on our way. We made it to the end of the beach and Austin was quiet next to me, I could tell feeling uncomfortable with being “American Tourists” and all its attendant implications. We made our way back the way we’d come and were greeted by a Balinese woman at the shoreline. Her shirt had holes in the shoulders and back. She introduced herself and asked if we’d like to buy a massage. Again we politely declined. She followed us back towards the hotel and she was met by a younger woman with a small child coming from the property next door to the hotel, where the man with the flippers said he lived. I looked beyond the two women and the child and saw there was a group of people on the property, working on something together. They were obviously very, very poor. The women continued to call after us as we walked to the hotel, trying to convince us to get a massage with them, but their calls stopped as we stepped onto the hotel’s pathway, and I got the sense that we were now “off limits” to them and I felt incredibly self-conscious.

Austin and I tried to sunbathe by the pool for a while, but he couldn’t sit still. He’d lie down for a minute and pick up his book, then go back to the room for a few minutes, then come back, then lie back down, then go stand at the hotel wall and look at the ocean, then come back. I finally asked what was wrong. He said he didn’t really know but he was having a hard time just being here. I agreed. We finally had to acknowledge that this sucks. We aren’t good at just laying by a pool, let alone at a really swanky hotel that we can’t afford, especially with people who have next to nothing waiting on the property line to beg to sell us something so their kids can eat. We aren’t impervious to the facts of the matter. I don’t know how to turn of my conscience for this kind of thing. This is not what we came here expecting. This is not what we thought we were signing up for.

The other tourists here seem content. They’re paying hotel staff to massage them by the pool, letting their kids splash the other guests laying out near by, not wandering off the property. Austin and I rented a motorbike for the day and cruised up the road. Everywhere that isn’t a posh hotel here is a slum. Cinderblock houses and warrungs and sundry stores. It’s a completely fabricated paradise. It is Las Vegas. Even the Balinese on the street don’t seem friendly like in the village where I live –which I am now realizing is far more affluent than I understood it to be. All along the road they scowled, instead of smiling. I would too, I suppose, if this is what had become of my home. I hate it here. So we’ve decided to go home. We’ll spend the night tonight, because it was too late to not pay for the room by the time we’d been honest with each other with how not into this we both were, and we’ll hightail it out of here first thing in the morning. What a bummer and a waste of money.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this discomfort. Because it’s not like I can just go hand Rupiah to each person on the street outside this stupid hotel, or like it would make much of a difference if I did. Or like this is the only place where terrible opulence sits in counterpoint to extreme poverty. I am aware that I am contributing to the problem by staying in this place, by coming for a beach vacation sight unseen without doing my research first, but staying one less night, or having not come at all doesn’t eliminate the problem either. Maybe I’m not giving the other tourists here benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’re all as disgusted with this as I am, but had paid in advance for a week’s stay and got the time off work to take a holiday with their families and they got here and found out that this isn’t a sleepy beach town with Balinese hoteliers feeding their families by hosting Europeans and Australians and Americans. Maybe they’re stuck here and are making the most of it. But I doubt it.

I have been wondering what my landlord thinks of me that he thought *this* was what I wanted for a weekend holiday? (A “honeymoon” he called it) I guess he assumes I want what other Americans or Europeans he’s hosted have wanted or enjoyed. But this isn’t paradise. This is embarrassing and shameful and I’m disgusted that we’re here at all, that I traded time in the clinic for this. There are no Balinese staying here, so I don’t imagine this is where he brings his family to vacation at the beach.

Sigh. Rant over. It’s a challenge. In short, don’t bother going to Amed. It’ll only bring you down.