In Reply to: See Bali & Cry posted by Rick Lowe on Thursday, 30. June 2005 at 09:29 Bali Time:
For someone who has been five times in 25 years you would clearly know that the footpaths in the Kuta area are 100% better now than on your first visit in 1980. Maybe you just forgot how bad they were on your last visit in 1990. What could explain that lapse? Bintang, age, regret, nostalgia? The comment about Everest was surely just hyperbole? Negotiating the unfamiliar customs and culture, and yes this does include the scams is part of the reason and excitement of travel. No Kuta is not well set up for people who are differently abled, whether they be in a wheelchair or have a sprained ankle, but again that could be seen as part of the romance of travel if someone is willing to RISK the unfamiliar and uncanny.
The things that you mark as negative are referred constantly here on the BTF pages, the money changers, the footpaths, the pollution. Again a lot of posts with negative information are often couched as outright trolls and are given short shrift.
But to focus on the negative might be too confronting for many. The truth about paradise and the idyll is it is never that simple, wages are low, hunger and disease are constant shadows when there outrageous disparities of income and wellbeing.
I like your final sentence: "In my case it may be just travel and adventure with more truth and understanding of our planet and its people. Bon Voyage" I try to do that every time I move within and from my home bioregion. I think you do to. May the road rise to meet you.