August 21, 2002
After many years avoiding the place, Eric
Ellis has been to Bali too. What's more, he has decided to stay. The smell of
scented candles is in the air as he explains why.
I am not a Buddha Bar CD/chill-out-at-Ibiza/hippy chic kind of guy. I haven't
embraced Hinduism and, to me, Sufis are illiterate waveriders. I shave, don't
much like batik or scented candles and I certainly don't own a sarong, or a pair
of Tevas. I'm not even sure the collective noun for them is "pair".
At 40, I'm neither a child of the 1960s nor a refugee from globalization. My causeless generation was too young for Vietnam and we're too old, have too much debt and have scoffed too many Big Macs to throw rocks at the Golden Arches. Masais in Mombasa can wear loincloths but not Belgians in Bali.
I walk a million miles from mellow. I'm relaxed when I'm stressed. My idea of a good time is permanent broadband access to my Palm Pilot and I'm not convinced that using a mobile phone while flying will crash a plane. I hanker after Shangri-La – the luxury hotel chain.
So why did I buy a house in Bali's arty hamlet of Ubud? A place where it's impossible to avoid Claude Challe's latest mix that sounds just like the last one, where deodorant is a revelation and where, among the oh-so-groovy foreign set, you are nobody unless you have: 1) exhibited your photos/art/jewellery; 2) have a slim-hipped boyfriend called Ketut, and; 3) boast a byline that describes you as "divides time between SoHo and Ubud".
The glib answer is because it's cheaper than Byron – though none of the 5000 foreigners with property in Bali will ever admit that. The politically correct answer is that Balinese are fascinating and delightful (which of course ignores the fact that some can be as venal and profit-seeking as anyone). But the real answer, for me at least, is that it's a great place to escape from the mind-zapping sterility of Singapore, unreliable net access notwithstanding. And the sociology is ceaselessly entertaining.
From Made Wijaya, Bali's Leo Schofield-Barry Humphries hybrid who in a former life 30 years ago was a Sydney tennis pro called Michael White, to the pompous heirs of Donald Friend, Brett Whiteley and Walter Spies, this exotic Hindu redoubt in Indonesia's Muslim sea throws up one of the world's most eclectic bunch of eccentrics. And yes, Bali's culture is fascinating, mostly for its resilience in the face of so much foreign influence.
You can sit at Casa Luna in the centre of Ubud, and in will walk Donna Karan or Sting or Francis Ford Coppola – or that wacky Belgian in the loincloth jousting with news-seller Nyoman, who sells for $10 the newspapers he buys for 50˘.
At nearby Indus, you can have one of the best meals you'll ever eat, gazing over hectares of verdant rice padi and walk out with change from $10. What's not to like?
I didn't need much convincing when my wife proposed buying a holiday house there. I first went there in 1997 to get married – Redgum's cynical 1984 ditty having kept me away from Bali for 13 years. Thanks to bureaucratic tangles, the ceremony didn't happen, so we had the honeymoon instead.
It was sublime. And then we got that feeling. You have a great holiday, you want it to last forever, you find yourself looking in estate agent windows as you contemplate your mundane reality. People do it in Provence and Tuscany. Why not Bali?
Well, for one, Bali doesn't have too many display windows. Two, foreigners can't own land. And three, as United Nations special rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy controversially described it last month, Indonesia has "one of the world's worst legal systems" – not a good look for yuppies who like enforceable title.
And until 1997, it was mostly unattainable. Indonesia was Asia's boom economy and, with the rupiah a robust 2500 to the US dollar, Bali was as expensive as New York. But Suharto's corruption crippled the economy and the rupiah dived lower than an expat's scruples.
That was an Indonesian tragedy but it was also a boom for Bali, whose tourist bosses were desperately dissociating it from Indonesia lest it stem tourist flow. Bali became Indonesia's Switzerland as Jakartan tycoons, particularly its Chinese community, bailed from the turbulent capital to park cash in Bali.
A Jakarta-based friend did just that. She was building her own Aman outside Ubud and in mid-1999 invited us down. It was exciting but our enthusiasm for doing same dimmed when she explained she had to build a concrete bridge over a deep ravine because her grumpy Japanese neighbour refused to let her share his.
We visited our friend again in late 2000. Her place was barely 20% started and she was complaining about Bali's myriad festivals: the very aesthetic that drew her now offended her practical side when workers downed tools to don festive gear. It might be a teeth-filing ceremony, Nyepi (the Balinese New Year) a wedding or an odalan – a temple's birthday (the Balinese year has just 210 days and Bali has as many temples as London has pubs). It was utterly charming – and all too hard.
Then we got lucky, meeting Wolfgang, a fiftysomething photographer who was selling up and returning home to secure his German pension. His place was stunning; one kilometre out of town, nestled in 20 hectares of padi with magnificent views and a garden bursting with mango, papaya and breadfruit. Just three years old, it was delightfully Balinese but equally very Teutonic; the workmanship was very correct.
The house was Wolfie's but the land was leased from a rice farmer for 25 years. Dieter had used three of those years and the remaining 22 would be transferred to us. Foreigners can't own land in Bali, just lease and hope that no one seizes your land. It's not the Balinese who foreigners worry about; it's greedy Jakarta generals and their cronies.
There is some legal relief but Indonesian law isn't what one would always call secure. (Indignant Indonesians responded to the UN's "world's-worst" charge that they have the best legal system money can buy.) True, a modest house in Ubud is not a multi-billion mega-proyek (huge project) copper mine in Sulawesi but it's all relative.
So we sought some legal comfort, engaging a local lawyer to look over the titles, a piece of paper that until recently didn't exist in Bali – land just belonged to someone, usually the occupier under an ancient and mostly unchallenged hereditary system. Modest fees and what passes as a state stamp duty were paid, an offering was made to the landowner's temple and it was all pretty much hassle-free, with none of the low-level corruption one often encounters in Indonesia. (The same could not be said when we brought a used computer in from Singapore for our Balinese friend, Gede. In Singapore it cost $600, which is about how much the customs agent at Ngurah Rai airport in Denpasar decided he wanted in "fines".)
But the most effective comfort is the most attractive one: your relationship with the landowner. Get along, which means embracing Balinese-ness, and you will be rewarded with a hassle-free residency and an enriched experience. But block yourself off and be prepared for problems, arising from simple misunderstandings.
Thus, our patio is a Balinese crossroads; Made, the padi owner, enjoying a kretek and coconut milk smoko from the rice harvest; his amiable wife wandering through with sacks of her husband's haul on her head; their daughter muddied from chasing ducks in the padi. None speaks a word of English but their ready smiles suggest our lease isn't heading for trouble just yet.
Our buying experience was rare. More common is the experience of our friend, who ended up spending double in time and cash what she first anticipated. She's also sponsoring the village basketball team.
In the meantime, I'm finessing my Bahasa and – shock, horror – my wife has bought a cupboard full of scented candles for when the power fails. We've even got a Buddha Bar CD. But I'm drawing the line at Tevas – a pair or otherwise