24 September 2004

Monday blues? Not on my island


Eric Ellis

Life is GOOD. And lest I sound too smug, here's why.

I write this from an airy teak balcony, basking in a sunny 30'C overlooking 10 acres of sumptuous, verdant Balinese rice paddy. It truly is the Morning of the Earth, as India's Jawaharlal Nehru famously described Bali after sneaking away from the tedium of the post-colonial 1955 Bandung conference that trumpeted the arrival of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Last night, at a chic restaurant, we dined on baked chevre souffle and crab cakes, Moroccan lamb shanks on couscous and chicken escalope crusted in thyme and lemongrass on mash with kailang, washed down with an excellent New Zealand sauvignon blanc and cafe lattes, and all of a quality and price that would embarrass your average London restaurateur.

I had eaten after a swim in the pool, then followed the match of the day from Melbourne. My wife enjoyed a soothing massage and both of us had a fairly productive afternoon of e-mailing, writing and networking with office colleagues. And most of this happened without leaving home.

Home, for as much of the month as we can manage, is Bali's hedonist retreat of Ubud, where we've owned a house since mid-2000. Notionally based two hours away in Singapore, we steal away here as often as possible, with very little interruption to what would conventionally be described as normal life. Armed with a laptop, Bluetooth and internet-enabled handphone and a mobile job, some of my most industrious weeks have been in Bali, writing up stories from assignments elsewhere in the region.

And here in the heart of Indonesia's feisty democracy-in-diapers, Bali is a good deal more stimulating than sedate Singapore, where a challenging conversation is to debate the merits of one hawker market over another.

First, let's get a few things straight about me and Bali. I'm not here because I'm a Buddha Bar hippy chic kind of guy. Nor have I embraced Hinduism. I shave, I like my footy, rugby and cricket and don't care much for batik or incense or sarongs. I'm relaxed when I'm stressed; my idea of a good time is permanent broadband access, with satellite TV, to my PDA; and I'm not convinced that using a mobile phone while flying will crash an aircraft.

At 42, I'm neither a child of the 1960s nor a refugee from globalisation. My causeless generation, sandwiched between babyboomers and Gen X, was too young for Vietnam and now we're too old, too indebted and have scoffed too many Big Macs to throw rocks at the Golden Arches.

True, there's not a water cooler to gossip around (but I do have instant messaging on my box, which can be just as naughty) but, gorgeous though it obviously is, Bali is actually a surprisingly good place to be based when covering South-East Asia and Australasia, over more traditional centres in the same time zone. Singapore sells itself as Convenience Central but demanding though I am, I want for nothing on Bali. Where Singapore has two to three flights a day to just about everywhere, Bali's Ngurah Rai Airport will have at least one to the same places, the same flying time away.

While Bali is not about to be become Asia's financial centre, it is better networked than Indonesia's thumping, polluted capital, Jakarta. And as the European budget flight bug infects Asia, the same demographic who split their week between London and the Languedoc will do, as we are increasingly, the same between Bali/Phuket/Langkawi/Sri Lanka and the region's capitals. It's a case of have technology, will tele-commute or chill three to four days a week, and power-lunch the rest.

That's all very well but here's the real reason; for western salary-earners, Bali and places like it are cheap, and don't let anyone from the island's imported artigensia tell you different. That sensational dinner cost just $40 (GBP22), the massage under $10, our fabulous house at the lower end of five figures, safely leased for 25 years. One could live like a rajah in Bali for $1,000 a month, and still have change. Try doing that on the Cote d'Azur.

If you wanted to go wildly upmarket, a magnificent four-bedroomed villa - cutting-edge design, European fittings, staff - that would be {XEU}2m in Cap Ferrat or Cape Cod, will cost about $300,000-$400,000 on Bali, and the sea view - and weather - will be better. When you are away for work, or face-to-face with your boss, you can then rent it for about $300 a night for (at current occupancy rates) about 70 per cent of the year, and this just two years after the terrorist bombs. After modest management fees, that's about $50,000 in the hand each year. London property prices might be booming but you are not going to see that type of return on the average buy-to-let bedsit in Barnsbury.

Which may explain the growth of property agencies in Bali with names like Elite Havens, Exotiq Estates and O-C-N (geddit?), and magazines that service them such as Bali's Best Properties and The Yak (insiderspeak for Seminyak, an unprepossessing beachy district that the Buddha Bar set strangely regard as oh-so-hip, largely because it's not scuzzy Kuta, Bali's Benidorm that is its neighbour).

The ultra-designed Yak tells a lot about where Bali - and the world - is going. It effortlessly connects Seminyak with Tribeca, Ibiza and Milan, its funky fonts touting fusion this and chillin' that for the bare-midriffed, metallic belly-buttoned, tongue-studded, discreetly- tattooed, Tevas-shod, Wallpaper-subscribing spa set, who work in media, design, technology and perhaps are even bankers and investors. It advertises shops selling "post-atomic" clothes, whatever they are, and restaurants with radical chic names and all manner of ayurvedic treatments, aromatherapy and Balinese yoghurt massages. If a magazine had a soundtrack, The Yak's would be Morcheeba as mixed by Claude Challe and doubtless sold to its unsuspecting Eurotrash readers as "the real Bali".

But where exactly is "the real Bali" in all this? I'm not really the one to ask but the answer is probably: nowhere much. It probably doesn't matter. Bali is pretty much the venue for the Globalised Everyman, who could these days easily be Indonesian or Icelandic, a one-size-fits-all Nowhereland-for-Globos that could also be Phuket or St Barts or Dubai. Or inside London's Circle Line, or Lower Manhattan or Bondi. For more and more people, Bali has become all these places in its attitude.

There's not a Balinese on The Yak's masthead and that's perhaps the point. When I took our close friend Komang, a middle-class Balinese, to one fashionable Seminyak beach club for lunch (she was the only local apart from the waiting staff,) she looked around bemused at all the bule (foreigners) with jewellery in their navels and mobiles attached to their ears and asked the waiter, in English, for a nasi goreng, or at least some rice, the local staple which is the essence of Balinese culture.

The waiter apologised. There wasn't any rice. "This place is for foreigners," he said.