The Balinese status quo

After reading a story in the Australian Financial Review about the Bali digital nomad community yesterday, I decided to take a look at PARQ, north of Ubud. The owners of the place bill PARQ Ubud as a city of the future on their website. The article billed it as a Russian and Ukrainian enclave, full of digital nomads, setting up camp in Bali to escape the war in their neighborhood. The place is enormous. Someone obviously spent a lot of dollars or rubles to put it together, but I didn’t feel threatened by it, nor the people there. In fact, it’s all rather suburban, like a shopping mall with accommodation.

It’s a complex of apartments, swimming pools and restaurants. There’s also a flash gym. But the main thing is the peaceful people. There’s no aggression, just people going about their business – most probably digital business like everywhere nowadays. There’s even a hint of sadness at these people’s plight.

There are other complexes around the island inhabited by Australians, French or Germans, maybe not as big, and like them, I wouldn’t feel threatened.

Bali has an inclusive environment that welcomes all to its shores. Just like Aussie bogans or Pommy hooligans everyone has to learn the local way and feel the local energy if they want to settle here. I expect these new settlers will eventually do the same.

The world and Bali is changing now at a rapid pace and there is no holding it back. Fortunately, we have a banjar system on this island that will keep the status quo the same as it has been for centuries, as was seen with recent deportations of unruly wannabe new settlers.

At sunset there weren’t so many people around the complex. A friend said there were more punters about at lunch. We took off down the hill for dinner in town and had a pleasant evening in Ubud.

More about that later.