Bali style has to be included in Kuta

Unrestricted building with butt-ugly design is a feature of Bali. The locals in my mind, have a genius for creating beauty, and a passion for destroying it. BaliDiscovery talks about unrest in the Balinese community at the effect of such unrestricted building.

The article talks about how Kuta is overflowing with buildings that do not show any form of Balinese design and are not consistent with the history and culture. Also the Nusa Dua Bypass is another fine example of a ‘Bali-free’ zone. The reason for this is that the Balinese themselves are falling over each other to get westerners like me (just as the guy did the other day) to build stuff on their land. When the locals build themselves their first priority is walling off the site with a hugely disgusting 10ft high cement wall, that not only looks cheap and nasty, but blocks the view and the breeze. Tell me that’s traditional.

The Balinese will have a lot of these problems to face in years to come and the truths they will have to confront are 1) that many of them are greedy, and will take money over anything else, 2) corruption means you can you what you want if you have the cash, 3) you can only blame westerners for so much, 4) when Bali is a washed up dustbin, us westerners can move somewhere else, unlike the Balinese.

If I were them, I’d start listening to people like I Made Wendra and I Nyoman Rutha Ady.