In Reply to: and in my experience posted by Freogirl on Saturday, 31. March 2007 at 17:24 Bali Time:
people feel offended if they feel their friends are trying to scam them.
I think the problem may lie in the difference in the perception of the relationship......the tourist perceives that they have made a Balinese friend but the Balinese person perceives that they have found a tourist who is interested in them and may in fact enrich their life in some way.
Tourists come and go and I think there are very few cases where these relationships involve genuine reciprocal(?sp)friendship.