Have you ever heard about the first “expats” in Bali?
I do not mean today’s digital nomads with laptops and smoothie bowls, but those early foreigners who arrived in the 1930s on ocean steamships. They travelled with heavy overseas trunks, oil paints, manuscripts, and a considerable amount of curiosity in their luggage.
There was the German painter Walter Spies, who found his artistic home here. Writers who later produced books such as Love and Death in Bali by Vicki Baum. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who attempted to understand the culture of the islands.
They arrived here in an adventurous way — in safari outfits, in long dresses, with sketchbooks, and with the awareness of being a “guest”.
These early bule, as foreigners are called here, somehow found their way into the courts of Balinese royal compounds. Small guest houses on the palace grounds Today one might describe these buildings as simple huts. But in the context of that time they were certainly honorable accommodations — especially for an island population whose living conditions were far more modest.
Walter Spies, as a guest of Prince Cokorda Gede Agung Sukawati, found here his artistic muse and his Balinese lover. Other artists such as Rudolf Bonnet and Miguel Covarrubias (author of Island of Bali) settled in the region of Ubud. They met, discussed art, culture, and the global political situation — a world situation that at the time was marked by growing tensions and eventually escalated into World War II.
For some of these early visitors, the Balinese paradise ended tragically. Spies and other Europeans declared “prisoners of war” died in 1942 when the ship transporting them was sunk by Japanese bombs.
That must have been a bitter disappointment: after years of a creative and certainly paradisiacal life, suddenly to be declared a political enemy.
Yet one question presses itself forward.
Have you ever heard that these first expats loudly complained about their living conditions?
About the noise of fighting roosters at night?
About temple ceremonies?
About the Balinese food perhaps?
About rain blowing through the window during tropical storms?
About roofs through which water occasionally dripped?
About delay on tools or ordered oil paints arriving weeks or months too late?
Probably not.
These early visitors were above all one thing — modest and curious. They saw themselves as guests in a foreign culture, not as its critics. They were amazed by the differences, by the rituals, by the music, by the landscape and certainly by the beauty of this island. Mosquito bites, roosters crowing in the night, or improvised transport simply belonged to life.
Today this attitude seems to have vanished.
Many visitors come to Bali — and almost immediately feel like customers of a gigantic hotel that spans over the whole island. Whoever rents a villa or pays for a room often believes that this payment also grants a certain entitlement: to absolute silence at night despite temple ceremonies, to perfectly functioning infrastructure, to punctual deliveries, and to Swiss reliability.
Gamelan music at five in the morning?
Temple chanting during the night?
Rainwater leaking into the house?
A shower whose water flow is just a trickle and lacks sufficient pressure
People not coming on time, not showing up to their words?
There is more that can be complained about !
Of course every guest pays for their food, for the driver, for their accommodation. But when exactly did the idea arise that an entire island should behave like a perfectly organized hotel?
Europe needed decades — in fact centuries — to organize waste disposal, to develop traffic systems, and to stabilize administration and infrastructure. Even today, much of it remains imperfect.
So, where does the feeling come from, among some visitors, that they are entitled to declare disappointment here?
And an even more uncomfortable question:
Have we foreigners ourselves not contributed to this situation?
Traffic in Bali has also become more chaotic because more and more people want to live here or spend their holidays here. The mountains of garbage grow with the number of consumers. When I myself arrived in Bali many years ago, my first stay was rather simple. I lived with a host family in Ubud in a modest guest room — without air conditioning and without an en-suite bathroom.
Later I moved on to the north coast and had a wooden house built for myself. It was solid, new, and beautifully located on the beach. Yet the Hujan Angin, the wind-driven rain from the open sea, often found its way into the house during strong storms.
Sometimes water dripped through the roof. Through the gaps between window frames and glass came wind, rain, noises — and occasionally mosquitoes.
Tokay, geckos and spiders considered the house part of their territory anyway.
It would never have occurred to me at the time to hold the craftsmen responsible or to complain about the Balinese way of life. After all, I had chosen myself to move to the other end of the world — to a tropical island with its own very particular conditions.
Today modern villas made of concrete blocks are appearing everywhere. From the outside many of them look like houses on Ibiza or on the Costa del Sol: white facades, Mediterranean style, large window surfaces.
But appearances can deceive, it is a cheap copy of an European building, built with local material and local craftsmen. Standing proud in a beautiful scenery – in tropical conditions: Humidity, mold, termites, rainstorms alternating with relentless sunshine and built with poor mixed cement, fresh cut wood beams.
The materials usually come from Indonesia or China, the construction costs may be only thirty percent of what a comparable building in Europe or Florida would cost. And the tropical climate, with its heat and humidity, wears down the building substance much faster.
Some visitors are then disappointed.
The windows do not close as perfectly as double-glazed windows in Europe. Mosquitoes and spiders find their way into the house. Sounds from temples, motorcycles, cicadas, and neighbors penetrate inside. And the room temperature cannot be regulated as precisely as at home.
In short: everything is different.
But perhaps precisely here lies the core of the misunderstanding.
Who actually says that Balinese life must follow Western standards?
Who decided that people here should function like a Swiss clock?
That workers should skip ceremonies simply because a villa project urgently needs to move forward? That borrowed money must necessarily be repaid according to the same rules as in European banking contracts?
And above all: who first came up with the idea that this island had something to offer that attracts people from all over the world?
Apparently there must be something here — something that people are looking for: calm, beauty, spirituality, less worries, more joy, perhaps another way of life.
Anyone who comes here to take something from this island — relaxation, inspiration, joy of life — should perhaps also recognize that precisely this difference is part of what makes Bali what it is.
The island shares its way of life, its culture, its landscapes, its rituals.
Anyone who takes something from the island — for their health, their joy, or their business — should fairly acknowledge that the stay offers something, provides values, presents experiences, and is willing to share what the visitors came for.
How can one even be “disappointed”?
Where does this “entitled attitude” come from? Well, I for one know it comes from the American lifestyle of complaining and suing each other over less than a dripping showerhead. But how has it spread to Europe and other places… and now gets imported into paradise? The answer is: consumer expectations. Perhaps we are not willing to see what is on offer, but layer our expectations of what should be provided – over what life here has to share? Perhaps one is deceiving oneself with one’s own expectations.