The Year Bali Tourism Stopped | Foreign Correspondent

[Music] bali is one of the world's most popular holiday destinations but has it become a victim of its own success tourism start to explode more people's coming in from outside than the peoples living in here decades of unhinged tourist development has come at a cost the island of gods had become the island of trash now mostly close to the outside world does bali have a chance for change a chance to reset bali tourism industry based on these two things nature and culture we cannot sacrifice them [Music] normal temperature please wear a mask i arrive in bali via a domestic flight from indonesia's capital jakarta for almost a year the international airport has been shut tourism has come to a grinding halt please wear a mess [Music] walking through the international airport here place i've been through many times in my life is just quite surreal it's normally bustling with international tourists coming to the island of the gods but today so quiet i can hear the air conditioner that's the only sound can be summoned [Applause] on [Music] [Music] over the past decade the number of visitors to the island grew rapidly from two to six million around eighty percent of the balinese economy was generated by tourism [Music] bali has been shot before the 2002 kuta bombings and the erratic eruptions of volcano argung hurt the tourism industry but ultimately it bounced back this time no one knows when the pandemic will end [Music] in the beginning we thought this is going to be one month two months maximum it's now been 12 months for marcelo aria farah and the lifeguards of kuda beach their job has changed dramatically not 50 000 as normally 50 people maximum 100 include the lifeguard [Music] the beach are dead there's no activity lifeguard still come if something happened lifeguard have to be there go [Applause] the activity of the lifeguard never [Music] stopped this beach is usually crammed with tourists touts and hawkers today kuta and nearby seminyak are empty who sell massage or merchandise in the beach i heard they all go back home to their village very sad situation because many friend of mine i don't see them around i hope they're okay you know i hope they're still for the past year government handouts have helped but they haven't gone far enough the balinese are relying on each other to make sure those going without get fed i'm giving the food to the man need the food and some homeless people in bali everything but i'm happy to be to be giving all the free food i'm so happy i'm glad for that the thing is we need to be grateful for what we have at moment thank you homeless people we always cry and we believe in in god thank you everyday i am selling here and i hope tomorrow will be better yeah tomorrow will be better thank you [Music] whatever [Music] it's weird it's just no one it's like ghost town i miss bali getting busy in traffic i miss traffic [Music] as the tourist centres of south bali grapple with economic collapse i want to find out how the balinese are coping in more remote areas i'm standing on the beach here in sonora on the east coast of bali and very shortly i'll be jumping aboard one of these high-speed boats to cross the badung strait to nusa lembongan please prepare your boarding pass use your face mask take off and keep your shoes now last year there were more than 20 boat companies operating off this beach sending thousands of tourists back and forth to the island every week but now there are only two boats and two trips a day for decades this cluster of islands off the east coast of bali remained sleepy backwaters with little tourist development mr lembonga remained for a long time bit of a hidden secret over the last five years that's sort of changed hotelier troy sinclair has spent the past 18 years here he's seen tourism explode we're talking you know a massive change in in volume and in the numbers coming in [Music] here on nusa lembongan the rapid growth brought jobs most of the locals found work in tourism [Music] almost everyone here has been impacted by the shutdown no money no that's all villas and bungalows all along the hill there all pretty much empty with no money coming in staff have been let go and maintenance is on hold uh this one went down the other day pontoons are day trip businesses more up against these big pontoons and they then go into the island for tours to the instagram shorts this pontoon under normal circumstances would have guys on it every day checking it diving on it looking at it and you know obviously in these conditions they simply don't and a small leak can can lead to this very quickly you know i've been here a long time my staff are essentially family instead of you know letting things fall away or shutting up shop how do we ensure that they have jobs to come back to a short motorbike trip from lombongan is the island of chenegan every day people cross this bridge to earn a living in lombongangan's tourist trade too much for generations the channel was used by local families to farm seaweed but with the arrival of tourism this industry died off the farms made way for day clubs and selfie swings [Music] the seaweed farms have returned because most on the island are now out of work [Music] my name is wayan i'm come from tuning an island from 1984 something like that in my family they work at a seaweed farm at low tide wyon and his parents harvest [Music] seaweed working by day or by night it's tough [Music] work my parents doesn't want me to do it farm because this is very hot very very we hard nothing to eat so we have to back to neutral [Music] the seaweed is dried before being sent to java for processing there it's turned into beauty products sushi and medicinal extracts wayan left the island to study tourism that was the golden ticket for many of his generation as mass tourism arrived here huayan returned in the hopes of building a better life for his young family tourism start to explode more people's coming in from outside than the peoples living here before the pandemic wyan and his wife invested their life savings to build a bungalow for tourists i tried to build um my own business even i have to learn money from the bank the bungalow has only seen a few guests this pandemic still go on so this is the the worst things happen especially when i have to borrow money from the bank and then for me now it's very hard to return this one back [Music] when wyan worked at a high-end resort he earned 800 australian dollars a month now seaweed farming brings in less than 300 and his young family has grown this is my little house so here with my family the younger daughter three months come on my wife nice to meet you too [Music] when arrived at my home after getting i save it here my kids are smiling your tire is gone so that's more important we still survive here yeah because of the seaweed [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] me change is on everyone's mind back on the mainland generations of balinese are coming together to plan a different future for the island [Music] this is a wake-up call for all of us so that we realize that we cannot just depend on one industry and we have to develop all the other industries that actually have great potential [Music] christia da marwan runs events at her family's venue kevon vintage it's become the place for many of these big conversations i think it's a good time for reflection this year for sure going back to loving our island and make sure that people don't abuse our island as well for years locals have been unhappy with the negative impacts of mass tourism [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] me the infrastructure problem here in bali it's clear to pakgou the head of bali's tourism board what needs to be done i think we need like school 65 of balinese people not graduate from junior high school not enough water not enough electric not enough root traffic and rubbish number one problem in bali ali has already have tourism more than 100 years all the money's come but 70 percent go out from bali because the business is not operated by balinese people the way thinking have to change [Applause] bali's rubbish problem had begun to tarnish its picture-perfect reputation long before the pandemic the island lacks a centralized waste system there's nowhere for this to go the island of guards had become the island of trash that's something barley ray's gary bench gibb is trying to change with his organization sungai watch what very little people realize is that you know all this plastics that you know literally fills up the brink of kutai beach um comes from somewhere and it comes from the rivers [Music] rivers are essentially the toilets of indonesia they're on the backs of hotels villas with this lack of waste management that we have on the island our rivers in bali have turned into garbage dumps the covert shutdown provided an unexpected opportunity there's a sense of we want to go somewhere we want to do something and so that's really where we started our weekly cleanups at around that same time progressively you know we went from like 20 30 and now we're all the way up to like 150 200 people because equipment people have more time there's this community out there that wants to clean and press the reset button on bali before we open up to international tourism so here we are standing waist to knee depth in the rivers district he's got all these workers here they've all lost their jobs in the covered pandemic they used to work in tourism etc now they're out here every day attacking these rivers with sickles and chainsaws whatever they've got it's a war on plastic there's a long way to go name is g'day and before i'm being walk be a driver but right now because of the pandomi we have no job anymore in the tourism and now we're going to the refer to cleaning the river hopefully soon the tourism coming again to bali and we fleeing already the people in the village the locals to clean the river the beach the land of the west view thank you i have a rice field back in my hometown and my father we have a problem with the plastic every single day so that's why i like i need to find a community who solve this kind of problem [Music] rivers crisscross the island flowing through villages farms and rice fields they sustain local communities and the tourism industry but the rivers are under pressure tourists per capita generate three and a half times more waste than locals we're bringing two tons of trash every day in our research station to sorts we have a sorting table here to sort plastics into 15 different types of categories to bring it to recycling of the 300 tonnes of plastic collected so far only a third can be recycled these guys unfortunately can't be recycled this is a one-time use and then it has a lifetime behind it you know it lives longer than our grandkids kids kids kids kids kids kids what we're trying to to leverage is the brands that are responsible for the plastic packaging sashies of instantly through their comprehensive documentation sungai watch hopes to hold the manufacturers accountable soon i watch in many ways is more of a data river cleanup organization so really giving that transparency as to what we're finding in the rivers online for everybody to see so you can engage i believe like every generation has their own revolution our topic now is about the environmental issues [Music] getty robbie is a musician and an educator he's banned navikula a rock and roll royalty for two decades they've brought politics to the young people of bali through their music i love rock and roll so much because in concert we can collect a concentration of audience in one place even the religion is transformed by shadow puppet by theater so what's the difference which is with the rock and roll [Music] today robbie is putting the final touches on his film entitled palau plastic translated means plastic island in indonesia alone more than 93 million plastic straw is used every day more than 500 million plastic bags single-use plastic bag is used every day produced with local ngo copper nick this film is a shift for robbie from years of frontline activism he wants this documentary to put pressure on decision makers in bali the tourism industry and waste that created by this industry also become a problem more people come then more ways it's such a like it's predicted logical logical right what the importance for us is uh prevention [Music] robbie believes that the answers to the island's problems can be found in its traditions in bali there is some traditional rules to make it balance between economic prosperity and natural preservation but where long way loss more money more money is betray this concept will barley return to the way it was after this pandemic ends this is the big lesson for us to shifting our priority economic and ecology is not two separate things we understand that we live from the nature we cannot damage the nature specifically in bali the concept is nature and culture tourism that's our asset [Music] that's what we sell [Music] we cannot cheat where we eat right [Music] a year on from the start of covert bali is preparing to reopen to visitors tourism will return to the island of the gods and bring with it much needed money what type of tourism do you want we want to everybody peace in bali yeti this is the time for bali to do [Music] malini's people look at themselves here so like we learn i think the government learns the industry lands and the people as well plans taxi is our blood we cannot describe here because this process always people since they are the mom pregnant let's already start it's not religion it's a bali the kuda lifeguards are winding down for the day no one knows exactly when these beaches will be full again but marcelo and his crew will be waiting when the tourists come in we hope that littering the the beach has been very clean i hope you guys still come to bali and we're here for you you can bring good energy and we can give our energy for you guys [Music] oh [Music] um [Music] my [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 3,724,356

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Keywords: Bali, bali tour, bali tourism, bali travel, travel bali, travel bali vlog, bali travel vlog, bali travel guide, foreign correspondent, foreign correspondent Bali, bali indonesia, tourism bali, indonesia, bali without tourists, ceningan island, lembongan, abc news, abc news australia, bali now, bali 2021, bali covid, bali 2021 travel

Id: lF3mnuxjPCw

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Anomard]

Most overrated place I have ever been.

[u/SatoshiSounds]

Nice to see what's up in Bali these days. Unfortunately, I think it's unrealistic to think things will be any different once tourism returns - short term profits are always going to trump environmental concerns, especially in places with low education and high poverty.