The impact of tourism on Bali’s environment has been horrendous. The island’s affluence has given way to ugly urban sprawl in the capital of Denpasar. Even more serious is the environmental damaged caused by the plundering of offshore reefs for coral used in the construction boom of the 1980s. Live reefs are threatened by sewage, runoff and silt. Over 1,000 hectares of agricultural land are lost every year to art shops, hotels, and housing estates. Megaresorts displace traditional landowners and tenants.

The southern region is woefully lacking in the infrastructure necessary to sustain a burgeoning population. The water table is sinking, and water is already in short supply. Electricity is barely adequate. The problem of waste disposal has reached crisis proportions. No one seems to know what to do with all the ’sampah’ (garbage) as the volume of non-organic, non-biodegradable waste grows. Profits made from tourists may soon be canceled out by the cost of maintaining the environment.

Inflation is inexorably driving up the price of land. In 1993, a restaurant owner on the Bypass paid Rp55 million for 10 are just to increase the bus parking space for her restaurant. Land in Kuta now runs Rp100,000 million per are. The Balinese themselves cannot raise the necessary capital to open big enterprises. Jakarta-based businessmen and women in partnership with transnational corporations now dominate Bali’s real estate market. In 1995 The West Australian published a list of the major investors in five-star hotels and golf courses in Bali, revealing that numerous high-end properties are owned by President Suharto’s children.

On Bali popular paintings, carvings, and antiques are mass-produced to satisfy undiscerning collectors, transforming everything from cow bones to coconut shells into souvenirs. Temples are pillaged for artifacts to sell to tourists. Religious ceremonies, dance and ‘gamelan’ forms, and traditional crafts are all being changed and in some cases subverted to fit tourist tastes. To reach such sacred temples as Tanah Lot, Tampaksiring, Besakih and the Monkey Forest you have to walk past tawdry commercial corridors of hard-sell souvenir and art shops. Resorts arrange helicopter rides over sacred temples. Pushy vendors infest every nice beach. T-shirts for sale are emblazoned with the message: “Fuck Off! I Don’t Want a Massage, Painting, Woodcarving, or Another Hotel!”

Tenganan, once one of the most traditional pre-Hindu villages in Bali, is overrun by souvenir shops and art galleries. A proposal to create a shopping center outside the walls of the community was rejected by villagers who’d already begun selling souvenirs out of their homes. Blue jeans have replaced ’sarung’, rubber thongs cover formerly bare feet, sacred religious symbols decorate hotels, kerosene burners ignite cremation pyres, and palm-leaf covers protecting offerings have been replaced by plastic fly-screens. Many Balinese young men don’t care so much for work anymore, preferring instead to hang around with foreigners or make a living out of short-time romances with fair-haired, round-eyed European women.

The much-publicized wedding of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall in Ubud in 1990 led inevitably to a Western trend of marrying on Bali. A number of beachfront hotels now specialize in wedding ceremonies for American, Dutch, and Australian couples. The service costs US$1000 and includes traditional costumes, photographer, photo album, lunch, dinner, and champagne.

Villagers still celebrate religious festivals with traditional Balinese dancing, but they also cluster around TV sets in the evening to watch Indonesian sitcoms. The expansion of hotels has limited access to the beaches for rituals. Balinese residents can now only reach the waters of Sanur via the narrow ‘gang’, snaking their way between the large hotels.

In Italy no one would dare enter a church or cathedral in a short-sleeved shirt or shorts, but in Bali Italians wear this sort of disrespectful clothing into Balinese temples all the time. The only bare-breasted women on Bali today are the Europeans who go topless on the beaches, ignoring government prohibitions against doing so.

Prices are getting higher; it costs money to use the toilet facilities; the whine of motorbikes is constant; the quality of paintings and carvings is declining; multilane highways and big shopping centers and even condo-type developments (”Own your own Bali Hideaway for US$200,000″) are legion; brash disco music drowns out tinkling ‘gamelan’; money-minded vendors in the tourist ghettoes of Sanur, Kuta, Denpasar and Lovina are a constant hassle. Tourism has brought stress, tension, corruption, congestion, pollution, urban blight, and crime.

You used to be able to leave your bag in the open anywhere on the island for three days and nothing would move it but the wind. Not anymore. Revered Hindu priests wear graffiti art T-shirts and atheist foreigners can pay their way into a Bali-Hindu wedding. Cremations are held especially for tourists, advertised with signs like: “Cremation this Saturday in Bangli! Rp20,000! Book now!” You can even book a seat in advance in Melbourne.