Day 54 – Bali, Indonesia

Bali is an island in Indonesia situated just 2 miles east of Java. It is approximately 95 miles wide and 70 miles from north to South, with a land area of approximately 2158 square miles. Its mountainous interior rises to over 9000 feet and it has several active volcanoes. Rice is grown widely on the southern facing mountain slopes whilst coffee is grown on the north facing slopes.

The capital city, Denpasar, has a population of approximately 760,000. Bali is situated just 8° south of the equator and has a tropical climate.

Bali is one of the world’s destinations that has been most over-exploited by tourism. 80% of Bali‘s GDP is tourism related. Bali has a long-held reputation for being an idyllic tropical paradise, however the reality is somewhat different. Traffic is a massive problem – roads are poor and are constantly severely congested with no apparent traffic rules in place. In Denpasar, it took us 45 minutes to get from our ship to a market; a journey of merely 8 km. Pollution is another major problem and certainly in Denpasar mountains of rotting rubbish are piled up everywhere along the streets with no signs of them being dealt with. Outside of the western style shopping malls and hotels you are constantly pestered by hawkers who are very persistent and take a considerable effort to shake off.

In fairness, our visit to Bali only extended to Denpasar, a dirty, chaotic and highly polluted city where you cannot walk anywhere without being accosted and pestered for money on the pretext of some unwanted service being provided. No doubt there are some parts of Bali which are still relatively unspoilt (apparently mostly in the north), but unfortunately we did not have time to see any of them today.