Some Advantages of Bali Compared to Thailand

[Guest Astrrro]

Bali is a great place and here's some advantages compared toThailand.

 

1) Feels like tropical paradise

2) Great architecture

3) Western alphabet and a language that's about as easy as to learn as Spanish or Italian

4) Rupiah has depreciated significantly agians the baht in the last few years so a better value than ever.

 

[Guest]

This is a place I have always wanted to visit. How is the gay scene there? Do you enjoy it? Lots of it or hard to find?

[Guest Astrrro]

Easy to find but not lots of it. Mostly centered on one street in Semnyiak. The bars are more like regular pickup bars since there are no off fees.

 

Many of the boys and ladyboys are on Date In Asia and other websites.

 

It's worth a visit especially given the low Air Asia airfares.

 

Also, a trip using frequent flyers miles to Bangkok and Bali uses the same amount of miles as just Bangkok.

 

For me, I was mostly chillin. But boys and ladyboys are certainly available though they tend to be from elsewhere in Indonesia. Bali's a great place!

[Guest fountainhall]

The first time I visited Bali in the early 1980's, I planned to stay 10 days followed by 10 more elsewhere in Asia. After just 3 days, I was so enchanted, I just stayed the full 3 weeks. Like Astrrro, I was just chilling out and did not go for any gay scene - which hardly seemed to exist then in any organised way. But there was something extraordinary about the people and the culture that just captivated me. Sure, seeing guys after work get naked and unashamedly wash and shower in all sorts of public places was 'extraordinary' (as my DC10 flight to Jakarta was taxiing to the runway, one guy even showered just off the taxiway), but there was also a wonderful innocence about them. Equally wonderful were the temple festivals, of which there were many, the smiles and laughter that surrounded me all the time, and even just walking around during the late afternoons and hearing the faint sounds of gamelan orchestras coming the villages.

 

After ten visits, I stopped going for almost 2 decades. When I returned, the island had still not recovered from the nightclub terrorist bombings and the affects of SARS on regional tourism. I suppose it was also inevitable that I found it had changed a great deal. Ubud used to be the most enchanting little village where almost everyone was a painter. Like many other parts, it had become a full-blown town with all the trappings of commercial tourism. Most islanders seemed to place a lot more importance on the material aspects of daily life. I almost wished I had not returned.

 

Rosy-tinted spectacles are often difficult to throw away.

 

[Rogie]

This is a favourite painting I photographed during a (self-conducted) tour of the studio of the artist Symon in Ubud about five years ago. I'd seen him profiled in one of the Thai gay mags (the forerunner to Spice, forget its name) so was keen to visit the studio. It was an amazing place. Although this was my first and so far only visit I suspect that Bali has lost much of its 'innocence' but I would definitely recommend it. If we shun places just because they aren't what they used to be, we'd have to whittle down our list of options alarmingly. Maybe places like Bhutan are still pretty unspoiled but I've never been able to afford to go there! Perhaps its tourist industry has recovered by now. Bali certainly grew to rely on them.

 

 

[Guest fountainhall]

This is a favourite painting I photographed during a (self-conducted) tour of the studio of the artist Symon in Ubud about five years ago

 

Nice painting. Wish he'd been working when I was there. I did go to the studio of one painter, apparently quite well-known at the time, and he had virtually-nude young ladies in his paintings - and all over his house!

 

Maybe places like Bhutan are still pretty unspoiled

 

Yes, it is. I had a fascinating week there in late 2007 but there is no gay scene as we know it.

[Guest fountainhall]

So sad to learn this morning that there have been more fatal hotel bombings in Jakarta, this time at the J W Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels. Listening to CNN, there seems to have been at least one suicide bomber who was inside the hotel despite major security measures, including searching vehicles and bags.

 

This will inevitably lead to tourists thinking twice about the whole of Indonesia, including Bali - at least for a few months.

[Rogie]

 

Indonesian police show images of the suicide bombers.

 

Al-Qaeda linked to Jakarta bomb attacks

 

Jakarta

July 23, 2009

 

Quote below taken from the Australian newspaper The Age

 

INVESTIGATORS believe the terror network behind last week's Jakarta hotel bombings received help from Pakistan-based al-Qaeda leaders.

 

Two of Indonesia's most senior security officials have linked al-Qaeda to the blasts that killed at least nine people, including three Australians, and injured more than 50 others.

 

"This kind of operation is not a domestic kind of work," said Surya Darma, former head of Indonesia's Detachment 88 anti-terror squad. "This is al-Qaeda. It has been al-Qaeda's since Bali bombing one."

 

The statements came amid renewed speculation in Indonesia about the role in the bombings of Noordin Mohammed Top, the fugitive Malaysian-born leader of a splinter group of Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

 

Top has had close links to al-Qaeda since 2002, when the organisation funded the first Bali bombing.

 

He was a key organiser of four bombings in Indonesia since 2002 that killed more than 240 people, and is suspected of having a key role in the latest bombings, which involved months of planning and exposed serious flaws in security at two of Jakarta's five-star hotels.

 

Linking al-Qaeda to last week's bombings, General Darma pointed out that terrorists who carried out the Pakistan-planned Mumbai attacks last year stayed in their target hotels, as did the Jakarta bombers, who checked into a room at the Marriott two days before the blasts.

 

Security experts say Islamist websites and chat rooms used by extremists have noted how the Jakarta bombers evaded hotel security by checking in before detonating bombs, raising fears of copycat attacks.