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BULE BELLY aka BALI BELLY
Bali Belly is a term adopted by visitors to Bali for Traveler's Diarrhea. Balinese rarely get it, so it should really be called Bule (foreigner) Belly.
When visiting a foreign country, many things are foreign to you: customs, laws, weather, etc. However, as a foreigner, many things in Bali are foreign to your gut, and it can take some time to adjust.
Here is the A-Z of types of Belly problems that you may get if you come to Bali, the why, the how and the what to do.
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2024 has seen a rise in the number of deportations from Bali.
During the period between 1 January and 31 May 2024, as many as 135 foreigners from 41 countries were deported from Bali.
The 10 countries with the most citizens being deported from Bali in that period were from Australia, with 18 people, followed by 17 from Russia, 14 from the United States, eight from the United Kingdom, and six each from Iran and Tanzania.
The list was followed by five people each from Ukraine, Japan, and Germany and four from Italy.
Well, they are not that different from other countries, Bali has the normal traffic laws, criminal laws, tax laws, licensing laws, company laws, and banking laws. Indonesia has every law here that you will find in a Western country, many laws here date back to the Dutch Occupation.…
But Bali does have other local laws based on traditions, religious beliefs and local cultures, which we have explained in previous blogs.
The Balinese Governor put out a list of Do’s and don’ts in 2023 for all visitors to Bali, these are for foreign and local tourists.
Each dot point is a simple and gentle reminder to tourists to follow the laws here.
This list can easily be used to explain how and why we categorise the different types of tourists that visit Bali.
Now, if you are easily offended you may want to stop reading now…
The majority of intelligent and respectful tourists to Bali never do anything wrong. We categorise these tourists as Guests because they treat their hosts respectfully and use common sense. They follow our company motto: “We believe sustainable tourism is when the tourist adapts to the place they are visiting and does not expect the place to adapt to them”
Unlike our extensive Do’s and Don’ts list we put out nearly 15 years ago, the Government list is not that long, so it should be easy for all tourists to follow.
There has been a lot of talk about the Ogoh-Ogoh Parades being cancelled for 2024. That is because many of them are...due to the request from the Provisional Government to not hold a Competition for Ogoh-Ogohs. So, most areas have cancelled the competition for 10 March (night before Nyepi).
In Denpasar District, there was instead a competition, held on 17-18 February and only the 12 best Ogoh-Ogoh were nominated from the some 360 Ogoh-Ogohs to then be taken to the Kesanga Festival events on March 1-3 and paraded in the Catur Muka area of Denpasar.
There are some parts of Bali that will still be holding Ogoh-Ogoh Parades, such as Tabanan area, they will not have a competition, but they will do a parade. It is up to each Individual Traditional Administrative Adat to make the decisions to parade or not to parade.
There are some areas that have said they are still discussing mini parades, for the younger children to parade their mini Ogoh-Ogoh’ in the morning of 10th March…so cute.
But why no competition, is it not an age-old tradition?