Becoming an expat in Bali
Living in Bali I run into tourists, travellers and expats. I also meet a lot of people who are in transition, they come as tourists and start to explore the possibilities of becoming an expat.
Last night I attended a bbq at Dreamland on the Bukit Peninsula at a house built by a friend of mine. He has his own fully operational business going on here and employs and couple of other westerners as well as Indonesians. Things are going well for him and he is set to stay in Bali. Also in attendance were 2 ladies I met last year. One has found a job working for a major jewelry factory in Mambal, the same village where the Aqua bottling factory is. The factory has 1,000 employees and she rides from her house in Canggu to Mambal everyday, a trip that takes her 35 minutes via a route she found through the rice paddies.
Another lady who I have known for the same period of time has just returned to Bali and is looking for a job. She was asking me what she could do. This is a problem many people face who do not have marketable skills. My advice to her was that most of the available money was in the tourist industry and providing goods and services to tourists was a westerners best chance of making money. Of course serving the expat market is another route, but expats have a whole other set of requirements, they are not looking for trinkets or day tours and their local knowledge is already well tuned.
I know yet another expat who has lived in Bali for 13 years and who is having to take a 3 month stint back in the US to get on his feet financially. Many people are drawn by the sun, surf and expat dream. Making it a viable long-term reality takes some planning and you actually have to work, a nasty surprise for some people.
By Nick | Permalink
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It would be really nice if all you expats became naturalised citizens of the land you obviously love so much and removed yourself totally from the citizenship of your land of orign. This would be of great benifit to both countries. Of course you may lose some benifits of being a citizen of the country you were born in, but that is little price to pay.