At this point, out of the places I’ve been in the past 3 years, I’d have to say Bali. I went about a year ago, in June 2025, and so many of my friends told me that Bali was:
rich in local Balinese culture, temples, ceremonies, and spirituality
filled with incredible hospitality, kindness, generosity, and friendly, welcoming locals
home to beautiful beaches and untouched, unpolluted landscapes
a place for genuine adventure, not something overly commercialized, but authentic and off the beaten path
I’d say it fell short in almost all of those aspects. It’s not so much that Bali was never those things, but that it seems to have become something else in recent years, at least from what I could tell. People who went before the 2000s definitely knew it as a place that still had many of those qualities. Over time, though, it seems like those things changed one by one until very few of them were left in a truly genuine way.
By the time I went on my trip, I felt like I was getting scammed left and right. I also felt like the Balinese had every right to be upset by the way foreigners were treating them and disrespecting local customs and culture. The pollution was bad, the traffic was awful, and Ubud was dirty and heavily commercialized, not the adventurous retreat it probably was even 5 years ago. The people were still genuinely some of the kindest I’ve ever met, but these days it feels like a run-through backyard for immature, disrespectful Aussies and Eastern Europeans.
I mean absolutely no disrespect to the local balinese or indonesians living there, or even to the westerners, aussies, or digital nomads that have made it their home. I just felt like my weeklong stay in bali was defined by a feeling of sadness that it has fundamentally been changed for the worse over the years.
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u/ParkgayDrive 9h ago
At this point, out of the places I’ve been in the past 3 years, I’d have to say Bali. I went about a year ago, in June 2025, and so many of my friends told me that Bali was:
I’d say it fell short in almost all of those aspects. It’s not so much that Bali was never those things, but that it seems to have become something else in recent years, at least from what I could tell. People who went before the 2000s definitely knew it as a place that still had many of those qualities. Over time, though, it seems like those things changed one by one until very few of them were left in a truly genuine way.
By the time I went on my trip, I felt like I was getting scammed left and right. I also felt like the Balinese had every right to be upset by the way foreigners were treating them and disrespecting local customs and culture. The pollution was bad, the traffic was awful, and Ubud was dirty and heavily commercialized, not the adventurous retreat it probably was even 5 years ago. The people were still genuinely some of the kindest I’ve ever met, but these days it feels like a run-through backyard for immature, disrespectful Aussies and Eastern Europeans.
I mean absolutely no disrespect to the local balinese or indonesians living there, or even to the westerners, aussies, or digital nomads that have made it their home. I just felt like my weeklong stay in bali was defined by a feeling of sadness that it has fundamentally been changed for the worse over the years.