In Reply to: On our first trip.. posted by Pieter_n_Rhonda on Wednesday, 20. February 2008 at 19:21 Bali Time:
when I first went to Bali. In 1992 my partner was working in Cilegon in West Java and this was my first visit to Indonesia and boy was it primitive. Dirty, no street lights, no tourists, one supermarket to buy food from and just a real hard place to spend any length of time. And you think that the traffic is bad in Bali...they are pussycats compared to the maniacs in West Java...LOL...When I went to Bali, for my first visit in 2000, nothing phased me at all because I had seen and experienced much worse than what you see in Bali in the 2 months that I spent in Cilegon. I thought that Bali was just paradise. The building practises, and things of that ilk, still make me laugh to this day but thats just how they are and changing them would be nigh on impossible. My partner is an Mechanical Engineer so you can imagine how he cringes when he sees some of it happening. Usually chortles and says WELL THAT WOULDN'T HAPPEN IN AUSTRALIA...LOL
Cilegon is now a thriving town with shopping malls and all things western that we didn't have the luxury of 15 years ago. That's progress I guess...although you still dont see a lot of white folk out that way though.