My Balinese History

I went to Bali on holiday, was not happy with the Bali Travel Forum (not enough info about the real Bali, just talk of Kuta, plus abuse by the forum owners posing as tourists posting advertisements everywhere) or reservation sites (uninsured agents taking your money in advance), so I built my own forum and direct reservations site (book with and pay the hotel directly). I did it as a hobby but as my sites became busy and successful, I formed an English company, etc. to further legitimize these sites.

What I did was go walkabout, round the island of Bali and check out the hotels; see what price they would give me as a walk-in guest and to inspect their rooms and grounds, etc. Probably visiting as many as 10 hotels in one day, this exposed me to a great number of hotels and villas in Bali, and I got to know which ones were really the best. When I returned to England I would then invite the best hotels to join my reservations site and use the photos I had taken myself as a regular guest; not specially taken and modified photos as many hotels use themselves. I would even tell users of my sites which room(s) to ask for, as some are always better than others for location, view, tranquility, access, etc; this made my sites very unique and popular.

The problem was that some visitors to Bali did not like to hear from me that I rated their favorite hotel as not so good, but then I had no axe to grind at that stage, I just reported it as I saw it. Bear in mind also I made comparisons with Thai hotels, as I also did the same thing in Thailand. When I went around the so called luxury hotels in Nusa Dua Bali I was generally unimpressed to say the least! I found the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel to be the worst in every respect after they downgraded us from the room we had paid for and then tried to tell us it was a better room, got left en route to the room for 30 minutes, had our baggage lost, had my precious laptop left on the reservations desk for I do not know how long after someone decided to take it out of the secure office area for what reason I do not know (our passports were in the laptop case as well), had problems getting coffee and tea in the breakfast room (even after 3 requests, the last one to the restaurant manager, we ended up having to go into the kitchen to get it ourselves while some other guests near us simply went without), was nearly poisoned by the amount of msg they put in their food (they had no msg free options either), etc., etc. Regulars of the Bali Travel Forum went mad at my report as this, apparently, was their favorite hotel and my forum got hammered with hate messages! All I did was say what happened, sorry!

As time went on I increasingly became aware of just how nasty Bali was behind the smiles. In Lovina gay pedophile tourists would call on the street kids on the beach to show them their backsides and offer them money, perhaps $10, to go into their room with them. I saw also how many of the snooty expatriate community looked down on the Balinese, the very people they relied upon for their incomes and lifestyles; it was ok to have sex with a Balinese but not to bring them into your social circle unless they were from the upper caste (Hindu Bali has a caste structure almost mirroring that of India). I saw how young girls were actively rented out on the streets of Kuta and Legian, along with narcotics; the later to excess and clearly with the consent or even sponsorship of the police. I saw how many redneck tourists came to Bali and screamed at hotel staff, shop and restaurant workers, most often using profanities and / or indignation as if the Balinese were beneath them. I got fed up with being stopped by police demanding money for something I had not done. When Waka Shorea's manager posted spam on my travel forum and I replied asking if his was the hotel built under questionable circumstances (a dodgy building permit) on National Park land (which meant the permit was illegal), he threatened to get me the Indonesian way by slashing my throat from behind. But you know, when I went out into the real Bali, away from the mass tourist hoards, away from the bands of demeaning expatriates, away from the pretentious leaches, I really loved Bali and its people. And yes, I married a Balinese girl and we have presently two children together.

One thing I hated were the travel agents who would cheat on the Internet using what is called "switch and bait", where they would advertise rooms at popular hotels at rates they could not and had no intention of honoring in order to get people enquiring and giving their credit card details; the agent would then say the hotel was fully booked (when it wasn't of course) but they had another great deal for the customer (which wasn't great at all), knowing the foreigner would feel obliged to do business with them not least as they had their credit card details. Just before the 2002 bombing I caught yet another agent offering rates on their web site the hotel said could not and would not be honoured; that agent was PT Bali Discovery Tours of Sanur, CEO Jack Daniels, who was forced to remove the offending rates by the hotel. This happened one month before the 2002 terrorist bombings.

When JI bombed Bali I went there as a sign of support; I was the only foreigner apart from 3 returning expats on the Singapore Airlines flight to Bali which would normally be packed. I had been told by various hotel owners that security now was so tight, Bali was the safest place to be; when I got to Bali I was horrified to see the reverse. When I left my home in Phuket I experienced massive security and was scanned twice, also in Singapore en route the security was huge and I was scanned again. When I got to Bali it was business as usual with the security staff reading books and lounging around, police ignoring traffic coming into Bali from the ferries, plus I got stopped for money again. The Indonesian TV and media reported how tight security was and the hotel owners believed them; it was a falsehood. Once I returned home to Phuket after being very, very scared at the appalling security at Bali airport on the way out too, I emailed a few hotel owners to let them know of my experiences. My email was really well received and one of them asked if he could use my email to help get the point across at security meetings then being held on the island that things were not as good as they should be; I said yes. The email was reproduced and finally ended up on an email newsletter service; one the recipients of which was Jack Daniels of Bali Discovery Tours. I would like to make the point that the US Homeland security also and still to this day say that Bali airport is a significant terrorist risk because of inadequate security there; so why were my same observations so "evil" and "illegal"!

Jack Daniels watched my posts on my own travel forum and when he knew I was going back to Bali he unlawfully colluded with the police saying I had insulted them but without signing the complaint form and that is how the police started acting unlawfully against me. They threatened to shoot me as a spy and had me listed on Interpol for a while as an insurgent! OK, I speak my mind, but I only ever had the interests and safety of travelers in mind, plus realized that providing false information about security would only cause Bali more hardship than being honest and doing something about it. The second bombings in 2005 completely destroyed Bali's tourism business and still it suffers badly to this day a) because the security is so bad thanks to ineffective policing no doubt because of corruption and b) because people hate being lied to, as I know the Indonesian tourism machine and authorities do all the time.

Certain expats in Bali hate me simply because my messages reach an audience as I intend them to, and people decide to stay away from Bali as a result for their won safety and to avoid putting money into corrupt officials and business people's wallets. These expats call me Nasty Mark of Bali, but the truth is I never made a penny out of my Bali Internet travel business / sites, I paid more to operate those sites and even gave away more than I made from them. I gave free rooms to families of bomb victims and I gave money to needy Balinese families whose sole bread winner was sent home from the hotel they worked for without wages or social security. So the expats that demean me only hate me because I have affected them, not the Balinese.

That is the truth of it, well documented, and a testament to the fact that foreigners should be very careful for a number of reasons if they decide to go to Bali, as they are likely fed nothing but lies and end up becoming a part of the problem for the Balinese and / or a victim themselves. It is clear while the Balinese police continue to pursue their acts of hate against me, because I named and shamed them (legally so by the way), Bali will not change and foreigners should beware.