Savvy Traveler - American Ex-pats in Bali (02/16)

Just south of the equator, the Indonesian island paradise of Bali, with its volcanos, miles of white sandy beaches, and tropical weather attracts about 2 million tourists a year. And some of them have decided to stay. Bali is home to about 6-thousand ex-patriates, most of whom live along the coast and work for multi-national corporations. But some 500 ex-pats, roughly half of them Americans, have settled at the southern foot of the central mountain range in the town of Ubud (EW-bood). As Bali's cultural capital, music, painting, and dance thrive in Ubud. Since the 1930's, Western artists have taken up residence here. But another group has been drawn to Ubud. Like many ex-pats around the world, they've left the US seeking something that FITS with their picture of a better life. Though that may not include actually fitting in. The Savvy Traveler's Jeff Tyler spent some time in Ubud, and begins his story where all Westerners are outsiders...at a Balinese Hindu ceremony.

Feature: American Ex-pats in Bali

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As I walk down Ubud's main thoroughfare, Jalan Raya, the traffic suddenly stops. Honking cars and motorbikes go silent as I watch a parade of normally laid-back Balinese become ebullient under the spell of music and color. They file past one-room art galleries, tourist restaurants, and Internet cafes. The women balance baskets of fruit and flowers on their heads... offerings to appease the spirits. The men, in street-length golden sarongs, bang bronze kettle drums as they march... their coffee-colored skin off-set by matching white shirts and turbans. I see Hindu rituals like this performed almost daily in Bali. As hotel owner Chakorda Raka tells me, these ceremonies are vital.

Raka: "The important for the ritual is to keep the balance in our daily life, between heaven and earth, and good and bad ... so we can be able to live harmonious among ourselves and also our neighbor."

Now, I'm not particularly religious, but I can appreciate that quest for harmony and balance. The ex-pats living in Ubud are also looking for a kind of balance. In the States, most of them felt the scales were tipped against them. Something was missing...whether it be love or the ability to live in wealthy comfort. So they came here. These ex-patriates are different from ex-pats who move overseas to get ahead in their careers.

Max: "Ubud area in Bali is uniquely different than almost any other ex-pat community that I've seen in Asia or anywhere because there is no corporate reality happening here...People came here through choice. People came here because we liked the place, and the kind of people who came here are the kind of oddball, kind of out-there, stranger people."

That's Max, from California, who lives here his wife and kids. I'm talking to him on the veranda of his house, a mile up a twisting dirt road from Ubud. His nearest neighbors are noisy frogs, croaking in the surrounding rice fields. Max doesn't LOOK like an oddball: dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, he is clean-cut, 40-ish, but with a boyish face and neat sandy-brown hair. But though conventional in appearance, in the US, he didn't fit in, a feeling he says is common among ex-pats in Ubud.

Max: "Almost everyone who's here, that lives here full time, was definitely a failure and an outcast within their own society. That's why we left. Successful people tend to stay at home. So we left, we came over here and found it's a lot easier to have the trappings of success in Asia, and particularly in Bali, than almost any other place on earth."

Here in Ubud, Max lives in a two-story stucco house that sits back from the road, surrounded by a high wooden fence, on almost an acre of land. It's no mansion, but it's as big as a suburban house in any upper-middle class American neighborhood. After the mosquitos on the veranda become unbearable, we retreat to a book-lined study. If this home were in California, where I'm from, you'd say Max was living the American dream. But for a whole lot cheaper. Here in Ubud, he pays 250 dollars A YEAR. Plus another 50 bucks a month for a live-in cook and maid.

Max: "It's the equivalent of English upper-middle class of maybe 120, 130 years ago. In the sense that a working person, such as myself, can afford to have servants, have their own home separated from their servants quarters, have a cook that takes care of you, does the shopping for you. Have a driver. And that has not been freely available in the West for like a hundred years."

But the servants, the house, the low-priced creature comforts aren't the only things that brought Max and his family to Ubud. Like so many people here, Max was also seeking a kind of freedom. Where other people mind their own business, and he can basically disappear.

Max: "Most of us don't really want to be seen."

The US, he says, is too intrusive. He calls it a police state. Too many taxes. Too many rules. Too many cops. Which might seem ironic considering that Indonesia was until recently a dictatorship. But with the incentive of a modest bribe, officials HERE will ignore you.

Raka: "I have no interest in going to some place where I can't pay a policeman to leave me alone."

And it's not just the police. Max feels that in America, the whole society passes judgement on him.

Max: "We come here because it's a very accepting and easy place to live... The local people here do NOT judge us by any standards that really matter to us. They judge us by their own standards - apples and oranges. So different as to be it doesn't matter."

Perhaps ex-pats like Max haven't come to Ubud to fit in so much as to make peace with their role as outsiders and live comfortably in relative seclusion. Because in contrast to his leave-me-alone individualism, Balinese society, despite its rigid caste structure, is in many ways communal. You can see this in the local temple. Walk through the outer gateway, past intricately carved stone sculptures of dragons and demons, and you'll come to a courtyard where Balinese women, young and old, prepare for the next ceremony. They chat and swap stories while working. In essence, they bond. But the ex-pats who came to Ubud because they were outcasts at home remain outcasts here. They are not Hindu and do not belong. So the Western men in Ubud bond the same way they do in Europe or the States - they drink.

Charlie: "This place is kind of like the "Cheers" of Bali, where everyone knows your problem."

Naughty Nuri's is a local ex-pat hang-out on the outskirts of Ubud. Nothing fancy. A patio of picnic tables underneath a corrugated tin roof. Mosquito coils keep some of the bugs away. But most of the patrons innoculate themselves with martinis, served in a proper thin-stemmed glass with an olive. The regulars are white and mostly men. Middle-aged or older. They are balding, and no longer worry about hiding their beer bellies. Here, at Naughty Nuri's, they find community. A man I'll call Charlie has come for the company - he doesn't drink. He's is 6 feet tall, and well over 200 pounds. Charlie's in the middle of a story that much of his audience can relate to - his marriage back in the US to a Balinese woman.

Charlie: "When we got married, it was the first time she'd ever heard a Christian liturgy for a wedding. And the preacher was doing 'Repeat after me.' And he said, 'And make a covenant with God.' To which she replied, 'And make government with dog.'"

Charlie moved to Ubud with his wife three years ago, after losing his job at Apple Computer. And now, it's Charlie who faces the culture clash. For example, he speaks Indonesian, but some of the locals still won't talk to him.

Charlie: "I just say, 'Selamat malam, bagiamana sisi membantu anda...'
Which means, 'Good evening. How can I assist you?'
And they look at me and their eyes go white as saucers and they say, 'Sorry, I don't speak any English.' And that's about the time my wife comes out, and then they told her what they could have told me easily, which is that they want to put their motorcycles in our garage...in our enclosure for the night."

This kind of non-acceptance is routine. Which makes life tough if you work with Balinese employees. Like Joey. With his long blond hair and skinny frame, 40-year old Joey looks more like a hippy surfer than a boss. But he runs a documentary film company in Ubud with a Balinese staff.

Joey: "And all our employees looked at us as mother and father. You have to be really careful with people. OK, it's like, how would I deal with my son? How would I deal with my daughter? And that's the way you deal with employees."

These are the kinds of cultural challenges that prospective ex-pats don't anticipate. And one reason Joey cautions tourists who want to move here.

Joey: "They say, hey, what advice do you have about living here. And the first thing that we say is 'DON'T.' It's not all it's cracked up to be."

Bali, he says, is a bit of a mirage. There are the little annoyances. Charlie would kill for good Mexican food. Max misses good books. And everyone agrees the local TV is lousy. But the real challenges are more daunting. Some Westerners go stir crazy - a sort of temporary insanity the ex-pats call 'going tropo.' The bugs, the heat, the loneliness and alienation...they just get to be too much. Charlie says the dream of paradise fades quickly.

Charlie: "We see a lot of people come into Bali and look like their setting up shop, and maybe last a year or less and bounce back out."

The folks who've come to retire get bored. The ones who need to support themselves find they can't get a work visa. I've changed the names in this story because almost all the ex-pats I met work here illegally.

And so the people who come to Ubud to put some balance in their lives find that they also have to perform a BALANCING ACT. Because, just as with a Balinese ritual, a successful life here requires sacrifice. Yes, the perks are great. You can live like a king in Ubud on 10 thousand dollars a year. And the slow pace of life affords Charlie a special kind of balance that most parents would envy.

Charlie: "I've got a lot more time to spend with my children than I might have if I was back in the States... Bali is a great place for children."

But the scales tilt in the other direction too. Ex-pats must adapt to a culture that overturns everything they know about how society works. And as Max says, they can never fully assimilate.

Max: "I learned to speak the language, and I go to the religious ceremonies and give them as much respect as possible, but as far as me being a part of it - no way. It's not possible."

It's not possible in most countries. Ex-pats, everywhere from Mexico to Morocco, are perpetual outsiders. And so perhaps the balancing act foreigners face in Ubud is representative of ex-pat communities around the world. But then, if they wanted a melting pot, they would never have left America.

In Ubud, Bali, I'm Jeff Tyler for the Savvy Traveler.

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