The guy asked, “How many people are there?”
Heidi and I were taking a morning walk along Seminyak Beach in Bali. Thirsty, we moved from the compact sand near the water’s edge, through the soft sand, and to the green grass and bushes on the grounds of a hotel, where we hoped for a beverage in the shade.
The attendant at the entrance from the beach asked Heidi, “Where are you staying?”
“The Hotel Indigo,” Heidi responded.
“How many people are there?” the attendant wanted to know.
Conversations we had with locals centered around the only thing that mattered: when will the tourists return? Indonesia had just further relaxed its entry requirements for many countries, now only requiring a pre-departure PCR test, and people were watching for signs of hope. They were asking us for hope: when are they coming? Because we were tourists, somehow we spoke for all of them.
In Ubud, the artist enclave where we took our batik class, 2/3 of the storefronts were shuttered.
Our driver to the airport on the way out said the monthly minimum wage in Bali was 3.2 million Rupiah (about US$200). The government had offered about 10% of that for unemployed people, and people had been scraping for whatever work they could find over the past two years.
Australians are beginning to trickle in. Bali is their back yard, and travel restrictions have eased on both ends. Unfortunately, Chinese tourists aren’t likely to return anytime soon, and they have formed the backbone of Asian tourism.
“May,” people would practically whisper the rumor to us, “I hear that bookings are picking up in May,” as if too confident a statement might jinx it.
In Bali, they’re counting the tourists, and counting on them.