Bali Box

Former Virgin Entertainment executive Ian Duffell has joined forces with Bali-based Australian property developer Saxon Looker’s Sentosa Worldwide Resorts group and Indonesian company Mandiri Aditama Perkasa to develop a 6.5ha site at Umalas, near trendy Seminyak.

All up, 133 luxury houses will be developed at the Sentosa Residence Umalas complex with fully furnished one-bedroom villas priced from $US199,000 ($219,000), while opulent three-bedroom, two-level riverfront villas, complete with private swimming pools, are priced from $US500,000. Two-bedroom premium villas on 282sq m sites are on sale for $US395,000.

So far, 24 villas have been sold at an average price of $US270,000, Mr Duffell said, speaking from Bali yesterday.

“About 40 per cent have sold to Australians and we have sold 30 per cent to local expats living in Bali - there has been a lot of interest from the expat community,” said Mr Duffell, who has been marketing the project for two months.

“There has also been interest from other parts of Asia, such as Singapore, and we have some interest from Europe,” he added. Most buyers are attracted to the project because of the cheap management fees. For a basic package of $US100 a week, owners get all common area garden maintenance, public lighting costs as well as their own gardens and pool cleaned weekly. They can also tap into a 24-hour on-call maintenance facility. For $US200 a week, buyers also receive a maid, shopping, cleaning and cooking, plus a nightly turn-down service.

“Most people want to think it’s a hotel-type environment,” Mr Duffell said.

While most of the buyers, particularly those aged over 55, plan to live at the facility full-time, Mr Duffell said others expected to live there for three to four months of the year and rent the property out for the remainder of the year.

The developers plan to release the three-bedders, which will be priced from $US500,000 and feature three carparks, pools and large gardens, within four weeks.

“People come in wanting to buy the one-bedder and upgrading to the two bedder because they want the ability to have people staying with them,” Mr Duffell said.

“Generally the buyers are over 50 - those are the ones who would live there, but there are people in their 30s and 40s also buying.”

Construction has started, with completion expected within 18 months.

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At the World Culture Forum held in Nusa Dua late November, renowned cultural expert and multilingual writer Jean Couteau represented Indonesia in the symposium "Holistic Approaches to Culture in Sustainable Development".

In an impassioned speech, he delved into a subject dear to many people, making direct reference to the theme of the forum in relation to Bali.

The four-day event, presented by the Education and Culture Ministry in conjunction with UNESCO, dubbed "The Power of Culture in Sustainable Development", featured discussions between hundreds of foreign dignitaries along with some of the finest cultural observers on the planet. It aimed to examine ideas to include culture in the goals for the post-2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. Highlighted was the need for new approaches to the development of the planet focused on sustainability and equality.

In the symposium, it was stated that indigenous cultures could be a great hindrance to economic progress. If so, then should we not consider changing the economic model championed by the world's corporate governments?

Yet, insisted Couteau, the bulldozer of the contemporary capitalist economies turned everything into commodities. As land and labor were turned into commodities and the peasantry urbanized, the traditional agrarian economies were being destroyed, and the cultural traditions associated with them were not productive anymore and allowed to wither away.

As the control of the world's resources passes into the hands of the elite, local and international, the grinding capitalist machine standardizes everything and the people's original cultural memory is being lost.

The only elements of local memory that are preserved are those that become iconic of national or ethnic identity and can thus be turned into commodities, which means eventually into folklore. This engineered tradition is celebrated in seminars and conferences in the name of the nation and globalized in the media in the name of an exotic identity, but the cultural leftovers of the original traditions are neglected and thus inevitably seem bound to disappear.

Yet no society can flourish without culture for it is essential to build bridges between people and institutions — for culture is who we are. In the "new world", culture will be the key enricher of economic development, but it will be so only if we preserve the world cultural diversity and confront the standardizing machine of today's globalized modernity.

For an economic model to be sustainable it must be people-orientated and morally responsible, reflecting people's core values, while unlocking their potential at generating a new contemporary modernity that is as much based as possible on the original traditions.

The alternative is to have Disneyland masqueraded as Indonesian through a touch of wayang kulit (the Indonesian shadow puppet performances) and Balinese dance. Was that culture, asked Couteau.

What remains of the memory of old should be systematically recorded, documented and translated, and it is here where he emphasized our beloved Bali.

To do this, Couteau said, we had between 20-40 years left, or the remaining life expectancy of people whose memory was shaped by their local culture before the introduction of television and other modern media, which were quickly altering the transmission of knowledge.

This is a plea to bring the issue of the preservation of the cultural memory of Bali into your hearts and minds, and to sway the collective consciousness for the better. Here begins the mechanism of change.

In an era of rapid transformation and "cheap modern thrills" let us all think earnestly about what it is we are willing to sacrifice, and what is the legacy we wish to leave behind.

_________________

Richard Horstman is a cultural observer residing in Ubud.

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In her acclaimed memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's desire to travel was sparked by the loss of her husband; my own wanderlust was motivated by the imminent loss of my mother. I'd venture to guess that although our catalysts were different, we were both driven by a quest for peace—a desperate hope that exploring the world might provide the answers we were seeking.

Unfortunately, I had neither time nor money to take 12 months off for vacation, so my eat, pray, live journey took three years! But in the end, I found what I was seeking… and more.

Traveling to the opposite end of the world when your mom is terminally ill might sound like an odd thing to do, but I'll be honest in saying that when I began planning, I never imagined she'd still be with us. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I envisioned the trip would be a way of recharging "after." And somewhere at the front of my mind, I worried that I would get "the call" at the airport and have to head home. Either way, I comforted myself with thoughts of how devoted I'd been in the seven years since Parkinson's disease changed our lives, and reminded myself that my mom—always a lover of adventure—wouldn't want me to stop living.

It was my 40th birthday, so I decided it was time for the trip of a lifetime. Bali was a mere 24 hours away by plane, but well worth every minute.

I'll spare the details of my travel delirium and of our brief detour to Singapore (the cleanest city I've ever seen), and skip straight to the moment when my girlfriends and I stepped off the plane in Denpasar. We moved swiftly through customs, noting signs that said "the penalty for drug trafficking is death," and on to the money exchange, where we each got over two million rupiah in exchange for about $175. (Try doing the math on that!) Finally, we reclaimed our bags, looked for the sign with my name, and breathed a sigh of relief that our driver, Yudi, was there.

On the way to our rented villa in Nusa Dua, I tried to relax and find the peace I'd envisioned, but instead I began worrying about all the things that could go wrong. What if the villa didn't look like the photos? What if it didn't exist at all? Here I was on the other side of the world with a 12-hour time difference in a land where I didn't understand the language or know the culture. How would I survive? A rooster crossing the road as we passed by one of many shanties only heightened my fears.

But then it happened. We rounded a corner and gates opened to reveal the most beautiful resort grounds I'd ever seen. Minutes later, we stepped into the large family room of our three-bedroom home, where a staff of six greeted us with virgin mojitos and peaceful Balinese music playing in the background. Yes, peace lived here.

Over the next seven days, and under the watchful eye of our guide, my five girlfriends and I explored as much of Bali as we could. We sampled the beaches, giving credit to the waves in Kuta that were likely a surfer's dream, but ultimately preferring the calm turquoise waters in Nusa Dua. We visited numerous boutiques in the ex-pat community in Seminyak, but found our real treasures in the silver shops and flea markets where bargaining was the rule not exception. On the road to Ubud, I even stumbled upon a life-sized original piece of art that I negotiated down to $100—a steal in any country.

And did I mention the food? We had some of our best meals at places with no walls, including Blue Ocean—a restaurant where you pointed to the live seafood of your choice then found a seat out on the sand to watch the sunset while your meal was cooked. We also discovered a quaint hut in the rice fields where we sat on pillows and enjoyed the spiciest noodles I've ever tasted. Or what about the park where we rode elephants, or the holistic center in Ubud where we took an impromptu yoga class? No summary would be complete without paying homage to all of the beautiful temples, including the infamous Tanah Lot rock formation that (even with the little monkeys that scared me to death) was worth every minute of the two hour drive to get there.

All in all though, my favorite part of Bali wasn't any of the material things; it was something far less tangible. There was an energy of gratitude that permeated everything and everyone. The way people left offerings at their doors as a sacrifice each day, and had tributes to their beliefs sprinkled throughout their homes and businesses. The way a Thai restaurant displayed a picture of the king of Thailand as a thank you for allowing them to serve their food in Bali and in hopes that the good energy would pass to everyone who ate there. The way people happily lived without the material items we cling to as necessities in America.

Yes, I went to Bali in hopes of regaining my peace during a difficult time, and after a week there I came back with a renewed sense of gratitude—determined to live each and every day to the fullest, and to enjoy every moment with my mom in celebration of a tomorrow not promised.

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