The Indonesian resort island of Bali is usually an immensely popular place to holiday, with an estimated six-million foreign visitors annually crowding its majestic, sun-drenched land. Plus a further 10 million from the mainland.
Cruise ships brought international tourism here in the 1930s. Then later, when an international airport opened in Kuta in the 1960s—a quiet, dreamy fishing village at the time—the region became a verified hippy paradise. But unrestrained development in the decades to follow turned Kuta into a polluted, concrete carnival humming with garish resorts, gnarling traffic, thumping nightclubs and drunk tourists.That is, until now. Stripped of tourists by the coronavirus, Bali is the quietest it has been for many, many years. In mid-March, as the travel industry was all but totally stalled, I walked around Kuta to capture this rare period of calm, and to ask locals how they're faring.
Advertisement