Behind Bali's Postcard

When I arrived for the first time, it smelled of dust and burning plastic. I smelled Bali before I even saw the island. And then immediately there was the green and a heat that doesn’t stay on the skin but burns itself deep inside.

Everyone knows the postcard. The rice terraces and the sunset over the temple. You can take the photo home believing you understood something. But when you go behind the facade, you find no secret. You find what has settled there since the beginning of mass tourism. A unique mix of dirt and noise and kindness and spirituality, all at once.

The core of the island is spiritual. The ceremonies happen daily, stubbornly and without regard for the tourists. The tourists usually don’t show much regard either, but that would be a much deeper topic. I’ll write about that in another essay. Here I’m interested in the first impression, and that impression is not meant for visitors. But it’s so real for the Balinese that as an outsider you can only stare. Because you don’t understand the gods and spirits there. You visit them and they laugh at you. Not the people, but the gods. At least that’s what I felt. Or what it seemed like. Out of ignorance.

But spirituality often attracts its opposite. The people who come to Bali aren’t looking for themselves. They want more self than they actually have. If you want to find yourself, you can do that at home. Nobody needs to get on a plane for that.

The Balinese pray and simply move on. Most of them look at you as if you weren’t there. They endure the tourists that wash up on their shore, but they’re slowly being consumed by them.

Bali took an illusion from me. That there is a place that heals you, and that beauty means it’s true. The island owes you nothing. It shows you everything openly, ugly and beautiful at the same time. How much longer it can hold up, I don’t know. But I’ll write about it.