The Uluwatu beach community is built on the side of a rock: stairs crawling up and down, leading into little rural-style warungs serving simple dishes. Uluwatu is still just one inch on the backpacker/local-hangout side, if only for a few years to come.

Late in the afternoon the warungs perched on the cliffside are busy with hungry beach goers and surfers. But a sunset everybody leaves. It is a mystery. Where does everybody go? Is there no nightlife on such a gorgeous spot? All warungs are empty and closing down by 8 pm – except for Single Fin, the bar on top of the cliff. After trying out the local warung mahi-mahi with boiled potatoes, steamed vegetables and simple brown sauce, Single Fin was a no-brainer, especially with their fingerfood and cocktails menu.

Sometimes it is good to face it: touristy is what a tourist does. But the view over the water made the inflated-priced cocktails worth it: first a Sunset with a capital S. Then, later  hundreds of fishing boats blinking their lights in the dark. And always the sound of the surf.

(Uluwatu, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)

No surf today on one of the most legendary surf spots on this planet. When the tradewinds are right, I am told, one can keep on surfing in a seemingly endless, emerald-green pipe. It must be an experience of a lifetime.
Today, Padang Padang beach was not for surfers but for children. And lazy sunbathers like us, sipping on coconuts and gnawing on freshly grilled corn cobs from the fire.

The road down to the beach takes you through steep rock walls on a winding staircase. Or, should a tsunami hit, back up. There is only one way out, and it is clearly signed. And I could not help but wonder: why is it that the only places I see tsunami evacuation instructions are those places with only one way out: the same, no-brainer way you got in? (Padang Padang, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)

I could start like I did last year: There was a friend reunion, and a path away from Ubud to the rice paddies, where the air is clean. There were newly planted rice greens, and palm trees. And frogs. Thousands of frogs, humming the night away to themselves and their fiancés. Party in the rice fields, I tell you.

In the darkness sinking on us we spoke of chasing for breakthrough science and innovation that will cure cancer. Of the importance of showing women that computer game creation isn’t only a man’s world – that it has nothing to do with gender. And how we ended up here together because we first met in Greece, and a few years later had dinner in a frosty cold Helsinki, and there made a quick decision to go back to Bali – together. The world is a small place if you want it to be. (Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)

Stumbling over sleeping dogs and old morning offerings swept to the sidewalk, I amble the  side streets of Ubud. It is a hot afternoon. I challenge myself to get lost in a town with 3 main roads. To discover the remains of village life. Is it a temple or a wealthy Balinese house? As a visitor to Bali I can usually never tell. Perhaps if the door is decorated it is that of a temple. But each wealthy Balinese house has a large shrine, so basically it is a temple within a house. Same same. Every street has remainders of old ceremonies: bamboo poles with yellowed palm leaves, cut-out paper decorations in faded yellow and orange. As soon as the decorations become properly weathered, it is already time for a new village ceremony. The Balinese year is only 210 days long.

But flowers are always fresh. The laughing buddha certainly did not end up with two flowers in his lap because the wind blew. No, he was carefully decorated in the morning, and will be each morning until time wears him out or the Balinese stop believing. (Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)

For a day tripper, Ubud most likely seems like a hot, loud, motorbike-exhaust-filled hell. How different it must have been when the first tourists came to Bali in the 1930s! A strip of street with  a shop and a gas station. Women walking topless to the market, carrying baskets on their heads. No noise, few cars, no motorbikes. No big domestic animals, either, really: people did most of the carrying themselves.

Under the Dutch rule Bali had become a spice island, and one initially entered through Singaraja in the North. Miguel Covarrubias the artist describes ugly, cheap housing, gas stations, dirty shops, dirty people. Not really the picture postcard of lush, green banana trees and beautiful women. One must first endure a sweaty and tiring drive down south, over the cold mountains of Batur, until the air warms and becomes clear, the lush green forests appear, and the picture postcard becomes real.

In the 1930s Denpasar was the place to be. I have been to Bali twice and never seen Denpasar. In the 1930s, Kuta and Legian are described as miserable, malaria-infested lowlands. Today, they are miserable, drunk Aussie-tourist infested lowlands. In the 1930s, Ubud is described as a strip of street with a shop and gasoline station. Today, indeed, it is more shops and gasoline than streets, with strips of green.

In the 1930s, women began to dress in shirts and everybody understood that tourists can be a source of income. It was the end of innocence on Bali and the artists and etnographers residing there were sorry to see it go. Today, just 80 years later, the Balinese I see are Western on the outside and Balinese on the inside. There are still rice paddies and dancing and ceremonies, but no longer the old lifestyle, save for morning offerings.

As I was sipping on my post-yoga practice coconut, I thought of the basic etnographer’s theorem that by mere observational presence we change the object we try to observe. And tourists have never just tried to observe Bali – they’ve loved it so much they have tried to either become Bali or take a piece of Bali with them when they leave. Unfortunately, the reverse goes for the Balinese who meet Westerners. I hope that still 80 years in the future the Balinese would be proud to be Balinese on a unique island called Bali, even if people like me love their island and its soul to bits and crumbs.(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2016)