Today I went to Cafe Moka, a French cafe on Jl. Raya Seminyak for my occasional basket of bread and pot of kopi Bali. They have recently put the prices up and I now have to pay 22,000rp, which for some people is not cheap anymore.
While there I talked to a German expat who has lived in Bali for 13 years and owns a couple of businesses selling the usual stuff, jewelry etc. We talked about life in Bali and he told me stories about when he first moved here including having about 20 police and other people (banjar, locals etc.) come over to his house one day on the pretence of looking for contraband. He said this was scary because with so many people anyone could put something there and he would be in big trouble. His explanation of why this happened was that a relative of someone came into his shop and said to his wife, You will give me this item for free because you husband is a bule. When this did not happen people got jealous hence the visit. They managed to find some discrepancy between the place his wife listed as her residence and where he listed his. He had to pay 5m rp.
We chatted and I said on balance living in Bali is still good and I am positive about it. The expat also talked about how dealing with locals, the banjar etc. you cannot go directly to the result you want. There is always a lot of maneuvering. He said when he first came over, every time he went for a visa extension they kept on questioning him asking, Why are you living here, what are you doing, why do you not take your wife to your own country (in Indonesia the wife follows the man). Nowadays they have gotten used to the idea that people like living in Bali and thankfully we do not have to go through so much of that.
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