Interview with Jay Bishoff: Post Bali Bomb tourist-part I

Jay is a 37 year old musician from the US who has become an Australian citizen. His wife Debbie was born in Papua New Guinea and is also an Australian citizen. They have a 6 month old daughter Sienna. I asked Jay for his thoughts on Bali and why he came this time.

Baliblog: What were your main reasons for coming to Bali this time?

Jay: Well we have friends here and are establishing a place up on Mt. Batukaru, and we definitely wanted to get up to the mountains again and hang out with our friends.

Baliblog: Why do you like the mountains? I mean all the party stuff is in Kuta.
Jay: That's not our primary objective, the party scene, for me in Bali anymore, in fact it never was. The first time we came to Bali was 1992 and we were in the middle of an 8 month trek across Asia, starting in Brisbane Australia, going up to PNG for a couple months, then starting on the Irian Jaya side going straight across Indonesia for 2 months by boat, riding on all those crazy passenger boats that you always read about. We eventually made our way through Timor, Flores and Lombok to Bali. That was 1992 and when we arrived we met a guy and he said "Where are you from?" and we said "We're from Australia", even though I am from America. He said "Oh I have been to Australia too." And I said "Really, you've been to Australia?" "Where did you go?" and he said "Kuta, Kuta Beach Australia." That was a bit of a warning sign for us, because we weren't coming to Indonesia to experience Australia, so we avoided Kuta Beach and Seminyak completely, we went straight to Ubud. That was only 1992 and Ubud was a bit of a journey back then, going off to this faraway place somehow. Now of course Ubud is heavily on the tourist map and it really changed. Big buses in all day long, crazy traffic and real expat community. So Ubud has seen a lot of changes and so has this area I guess as well.