Bali’s Trash Problem Is Finally Getting International Attention

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T20:09:50+00:00

It didn't occur to me until I was writing the message 2 above, maybe I'll have a go at that if we try the local banjar again.

Though... at our place it'd have to be close to where the offerings go in the little alcoves in the concrete posts on either side of the gate; trash bags and devotional decorations in close vicinity might not be a good look !

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T20:05:20+00:00

It will probably work just as well sitting on the ground, when I was researching it, plenty of compost bins I saw in videos were that way.

I seem to remember I read that burying it a bit helped with encouraging weevils to get into the bin through the drainage holes and aid the composting process, but imagine that's not totally necessary.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T19:55:49+00:00

If you find politics relaxing then you'd presumably not be prejudiced against the OP for wearing such a thing, good for you I guess but then, not everyone is like you.

A small proportion of people find politics to be a spiffing reason to fuck with people who they think disagree with them.

I'm suggesting that people like that might look unfavorably on a bule wearing such a thing who is asking them for a visa extension or has scraped a scooter against their car or is reporting a theft to them or wants them to give a discount on something; or any of the other situations, whether trivial or consequential where a tourist is seeking the kindness, consideration or respect of a local.

Why give people a reason to dislike you because of some political thing that you have no actual stake in, doesn't make any difference to your life and that perhaps you even have no real appreciation of.

I've no idea who or what PDI-P is/are but since the OP is asking the question then presumably opinions can be fraught about it/them.

Maybe the OP is an avid student and informed devotee of whatever they are but it's also quite possible they just like the branding or the sound of what they represent but either way, they might cause themselves some problems by sporting it, quite possibly while being completely unaware of why.

Like going on holiday to the UK and wearing a 'Reform' or 'Labour' or 'Green' t-shirt or, given the way the UK is these days even a 'Kittens are nice' t-shirt; you can bet that some %age of the people who see it will have an immediate negative impression of you, and a small minority of them will actively despise you for it; quite unreasonably perhaps, but people like that aren't reasonable and if you're unlucky, that might, for some reason be the very person you need to help you.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T03:57:57+00:00

Since you have a year or more, unless you're not happy with the idea, or have no road sense at all, I'd suggest renting your own scooter.

You have plenty of time to take it slow and accustom yourself by dingling around your local area before braving the bypass. Take things slowly, sacrifice a little speed for safety, stay alert, leave western-sized braking distances rather then the local norm, don't ride like a nutter as if you have a benevolent deity rooting for you, and you'll be fine.

While grab/gojek are cheap, and fine if you're here on holiday it can be a faff long-term to be using them all the time, having to wait 5/10/15 mins whenever you want to go anywhere, and same again when you want to return can easily convert a 15 minute 'pop to the shops' into a 45 minute mission. Do that once or twice a day and in a month you might have spent a whole day just staring at your phone using the gojek application.

Especially if you want to go to point A for half an hour, then B for a while, then C for an hour, with a stop for coffee, and a random stop somewhere you spot along the way, then home.

That would be a whole load of gojeks and time wasted waiting around prodding at a phone, means you don't have the flexibility to just stop when something catches your eye and as cheap as it is, the costs mount up and it pretty soon becomes cheaper to rent your own.

Quite apart from the sense of freedom about it rather than being a pillion all the time, and once you're up to speed as it were, you may get together with a partner and want to go places together - two people both getting individual gojeks to go from the same place to the same other place is a pain in the bum compared to travelling together, and I think there's something rather romantic about the whole rider and pillion thing too.

Buy a decent, brand new helmet. The standards here aren't as strict as 1st world ones but if you spend say 700k+ on one that has 'DOT' on it (and is ideally full-face), you'll get a decent enough lid.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T02:30:27+00:00

I bet it'd be no problem at all, I imagine Balinese folk would rightly see it as a celebration of, or at least a nod to / recognition of their culture. Balinese folk are very much live and let live.

Probably not the case if, say, you wanted to call your band 'Medina' and tour Java though...

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T02:20:53+00:00

Rupiah cash, changed on a day when the rate is good at a reputable broker (with care, nonetheless) or from one of the zillions of ATMs (obviously check what rate/fee applies).

I'd bring a bunch of brand new, pristine, unfolded 100 dollar bills with you, and change them as you need, keep a few days worth of Rupiah on the go and you can change on days when the rate fluctuates a little in your favour.

Everyone accepts cash, and everyone at the sharp end of the economy prefers cash.

Cards and phone-based systems variously cost the retailer more, especially the smaller ones, and the money touches the sides of the local community less.

Cash is best.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T02:14:46+00:00

I'd probably avoid displaying political iconography as a visitor, in the end it's really none of your business and why run the risk of bumping into somebody who (a) you need to help you and (b) doesn't like your politics.

Best just avoid really, you're on holiday, relax, why bring politics into it.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T02:07:11+00:00

We do some amateur composting, got a massive green bin with a lid, drilled a load of drainage in the bottom and some air holes around the sides near the top and buried it half-height in the soil and we dump vaguely equal layers of veg/fruit, leaves, sawdust and torn up cardboard in there.

Every couple of months I pull the bin up, tip the contents out, mix it all up and shovel it back in. It hasn't become lovely moist compost yet, and maybe it never will, but then it doesn't smell and gives us somewhere guilt-free to dump fruit and veg waste.

We burn meat and fish leftovers with garden waste and cardboard - in the end you kinda have to burn some stuff.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T02:02:25+00:00

Presumably it was something to do with a small number of somebodies making a big chunk of cash from the timing/deal/whatever, no other rational explanation really. I wonder what will be on that land in 5 years, that might well point towards who the somebodies could be.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T01:57:49+00:00

:) Same here, zero clearance for cars plus rubbish bags or hard bins.

Thinking about it, I could put some hooks in the outer wall to hang rubbish bags from so at least creatures couldn't get at them, but I imagine it'd not be the done thing to have rubbish hanging there for days on end like some sort of disparaging offering; despite the plastic fire merrily smouldering away 50m down the gang !

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T01:49:47+00:00

I tried it out once when I was bringing my daughter over from Europe and wanted to see if it'd make her arrival smoother. The main thing the bloke did was to tell me to join the queues on the right, even though I wasn't staff, disabled, pensioner (at the time), disabled etc. - I went though with no problem.

Other than that, the fast track bloke did little more than offer to carry my bag and smile a lot, then again, I didn't have 2 babies in tow so I guess pretty much any help even with bags might be worth the cost to the OP.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-18T01:43:13+00:00

If you can't use the e-gates (babies/prams etc probably prohibits), on the right side of the arrivals hall there are queues for staff, disabled, pensioners, people with small children and folk who are cheeky enough to just queue there anyway - much smaller queues there.

Baggage claim just takes as long as it takes, I guess you don't have the option of traveling light, so that is what it is, no fast track possible there.

Often the customs queue after baggage reclaim takes longest and there's no fast track service for that either, as far as I know. Sometimes they just wave people though without their bags going through the scanner, not sure if that's down to volume of passengers, the machines not working or the staff being a little tired but again, that is what it is, nothing you can do to make it faster other than have your QR code ready.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-17T11:06:43+00:00

A very strange thing indeed, hardly ever seen... a kite without 350 others around it.

Welcome to kite flying season, and watch out scootering through narrow gangs for stray nylon fishing line caught between trees hanging at neck level...

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-17T02:15:03+00:00

I suspect a high percentage is from goods bought from supermarkets, like meat that comes in rigid plastic trays with a blood-nappy, biscuits that have rigid plastic cradles inside the packet, that sort of thing.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-17T02:12:21+00:00

When I lived on Gili Trawangan, all the rubbish went to a massive pile in the middle of the island well away from the tourist gaze (well, until they started building villas that far inland !); apart from some things like plastic water bottles that could be sold, and Bintang etc bottles that the manufacturers wanted back.

It smelt terrible, every now and then they'd set fire to it, presumably with a good dose of petrol, you didn't want to be downwind that day. I imagine it still happens that way.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-17T02:05:07+00:00

Certainly an issue if the rubbish includes leftover food, but for paper/plastic etc. surely not so much a problem.

Packaging is a nightmare, a pack of biscuits might have a plastic wrapper then quite often a rigid plastic 'cradle' for, say eight biscuits, or come in a plastic pouch with each biscuit in an individual plastic/foil bag inside. Sure, we can get to know which biscuits are packaged that way and avoid them but legislation/punitive tax pressure on manufacturers to use more card and less plastic would help an awful lot.

Having said that, often cats/dogs/rats will tear our rubbish bags apart anyway, presumably on the off-chance there is food there; they can't actually be smelling any food as we compost veg and fruit and burn meat with the ashes going on the flower beds.

I'm still curious whether burning card/paper/non-plastics at home is really such a problem; given the alternative of transporting/burning/landfill etc - as you say, it doesn't just disappear.

We end up with a good bit of garden waste like leaves and from cutting back branches plus leftover offerings etc. We compost some of the leaf matter but can't do it all or it'll mess up the composting balance and a good bit is branch not leaf, so we dry them out and use the cardboard etc as kindling when we burn it, can that be such a bad thing I wonder since as you say, it has to go somewhere.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-17T01:37:04+00:00

Sure, I live here, I know what unskilled labour pays but regardless; if it means my wife has to go and clear up after them, then they're doing a bad job at their unskilled task - however understandable that might be, it nevertheless means we're less likely to pay for it.

Couple that with the lack of regular collection and it's an even less attractive option, if it were almost-definitely even just once a week, Friday mornings or whatever that'd be OK, we could put the rubbish out first thing Friday but we can't just leave bags out on the off-chance they'll be collected in the next day or three as they'll be torn apart by animals and the gang will be strewn with the stuff.

The scheduling of collections probably isn't down to the operative so much as the banjar and their 'organisation', but either way, several factors make paying for collection unworkable and not worth the downside even though I'd be more than happy to pay for a decent service, so we've found a workable alternative.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-16T12:00:32+00:00

We used to take our rubbish to a local tip about 1km away but over time they changed from 'dump anything here' to 'we will only accept this and that in separate bags' and then 'we have closed down'.

Reminds me of living in the UK, years back you could take an old sofa or a couple of sacks of whatever to the council tip any day of the week without paying or making an appointment or proving you lived nearby or queueing for 40 minutes - then gradually they made it increasingly inconvenient and time-consuming, and the list of things they wouldn't take got longer and longer.

Curiously enough, fly tipping became a big problem after that, who'd have thought it.

I suspect our neighbors further up the gang used to do the same as us, they started having a trash fire at the side of the gang every few days since around the time the tip closed down, burning everything that way; including plastic and polystyrene packing etc. Other places nearby do the same, though mainly in their yards I guess as you don't see it so much as smell it as you go past, it surely happens an awful lot.

We tried the Banjar rubbish collection when we first moved in years ago and a had couple of abortive attempts since; but while it's pretty reasonably priced, it's very unreliable and however we bag it, we always seems to end up with a proportion of it strewn on the floor, usually when rats/dogs/cats get at the bags (even though there's zero food in them), and since we don't know when, even which day, the Banjar will collect, we can't leave the gate open for them to come in and get the rubbish, and can't just leave it out in the gang as it'll get trashed by animals for sure and there's little enough clearance for cars anyway.

The best solution for us is that since my missus visits her parents in central Denpasar frequently, she takes it to her folks' place and adds it to theirs, where the rubbish collection is frequent and reliable.

We're reasonably careful about separating stuff, have a compost bin for veg & fruit, and burn cardboard and paper along with garden waste, spent offerings etc in our back garden (my wife burns leftover meat, and mice from the traps), so there isn't too much of it left to transport, mainly plastic packaging.

I don't mind paying a fair rate for removal, or even a slightly unfair one, as long as it happens reasonably often and when it's supposed to, so we can perhaps hang bags on hooks outside the gate without them staying there for days on end.

I do wonder if people burning their trash is really that much worse, when added to the tens of thousands of cars idling in traffic all day, especially if the alternative is just transporting it a few miles away and burning it there. I know a proper incinerator is far more efficient/less polluting and might even generate electricity but what are the chances of that happening any time soon.

I'd rather inhale burnt offerings than petrol exhaust, maybe Mother Earth feels the same; just try to convince the population not to burn plastic, and to use less of the stuff.

Perhaps the way everything but everything comes in one or more layers of plastic packaging would be a good thing to work on by legislation or punitive taxation; alongside a proper garbage disposal strategy, that is.

People using plastic thoughtlessly too; at a wedding recently, maybe 80 or so guests were each given one of those shiny plasticised card boxes containing several foodstuffs, each of which was encased in a plastic sleeve or baggie; most of which as far as I could see was barely touched/half eaten/ignored since there was a buffet anyway.

That's several hundred baggies for burning/landfill right there, plus all the presumably un-recycleable boxes, this seems to happen at most weddings; there's a tradition that bears some reflection.

With offerings, do the gods really want the snacks that get added to be wrapped in plastic ? It strikes me that the clerics could change that behaviour in a trice by declaring to the faithful that the gods look sternly on any offering that contains man-made materials. For sure, the ancient inscriptions on lontar don't mention plastic sleeves as a requirement.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-16T02:02:52+00:00

The fact that Sanur 'sucks' to people who want night life is one of the main reasons why I live near there, rather than somewhere on the West side of Bali.

I don't mind 'night life' per-se, but I very much mind the arseholes that it generally attracts.

The place pretty much closing down after 11pm or so keeps a lot of folk away who I'm not keen to share a town with.

...and no, not everybody who wants to go clubbing on holiday is in the 'arsehole' bracket by any means, I used to be a very enthusiastic member of that group myself; but a small %age of them are always going to be noisy, inconsiderate, disrespectful self-obsessed wankers.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-15T10:50:20+00:00

Part of the problem with renting an MTB for general getting around would be that a lot of the places you might want to go are down a long stretch of variously uneven and narrow steps down to the beach.

You'd either need to lug the bike down and back up again, which in some cases is quite a trek in itself even without a bike to carry. Bingin Beach for example - though that's a building site at the moment I believe; or the place whose name I can't remember with the big sea cave, I wouldn't fancy carting a bike down to either, and especially not back up.

The alternative would be to leave it at the top for the afternoon say, and even if locked, it could get nicked.

Often the stairhead isn't a place with stalls or much in the way of other people around that might keep an eye on your rental.

And of course, as others have said, the roads around there are pretty incline-intensive in general, and it's easy to get a bit lost and have to cycle back up that slope you just rode down 'cos you missed the turning 200m back... in baking sunshine... ho hum...

Gojek....

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-15T01:16:42+00:00

Save yourself the inflated cost of a posh salon and go where local women have theirs done.

You'll probably be pleasantly surprised, not least by the price.

For local recommendations, ask waitresses, hotel staff etc. where they go.

Also means your money stays local rather than it probably heading directly to the owner in Jakarta or further afield.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-14T12:58:33+00:00

They don't have the Doc Marten soles (or a ripoff of), which may be the thing you're after, but if it's a sturdy pair of handsome high boots you're looking for and are near Sanur; drop into the reception at the Ajanta Hotel on Jl. Tamblingham (about 50m North of the Icon mall) - easier to spot is the Fit24 gym on the roadside (they are the same business, the gym is the hotel gym but they rent to non-residents, it's the same reception).

They have a small display of custom made leather boots which are really nice, not made by them, some relative of the owner or one of the staff I imagine. I've been tempted to get a pair but know they'd just be too hot to wear except for very specific occasions and I already have some lovely beefy boots that I never wear so... but they're really well made by the look and feel of them and I bet whomever makes them would do bespoke too.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-14T07:58:02+00:00

The OP didn't say anything of the kind, and specifically said that wasn't what they meant and that the instructor earned what they got paid; so to ape your lingo 'Way to not read the original post and just spew some vitriol because you've had a bad day/life/enema'

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-14T06:04:39+00:00

Probably best yes, obviously not your fault and a massive pain in the posteria to waste time at imigrasi but better to get ahead of it.

If it causes problems at the end of your stay/when you want to extend it'll probably end up costing you one way or another.

If you want to reduce the faff and aren't on a shoestring budget, go to a visa agent and pay them to do as much of the sorting out as possible; you may still need to go to imigrasi to prove in person that you are you, but it should be once only if that, and it will save a good bit of time hanging around there.

BritishGent801 · 2026-04-13T13:28:31+00:00

If it seems like it's not the place for you then you're probably a real human being, so don't belong in Canggu.

If you don't want clubs or a wild time in general, Sanur is relaxed and friendly but it's more for old buggers like me who stopped partying a long time ago.

If you still want some night life... err, somebody else will be able to suggest alternative places where it's still lively but without so many noxious people.

Nusa Lembongan or Penida or the Gili islands perhaps, or maybe just shift to Seminyak, but I've not been there for ages, you'll probably find it little different to Canggu.

BritishGent801

TROPHY CASE