When I moved from Manhattan to Bali in 1999, tourism was long established in the beach resorts of Kuta and Sanur and the gorges surrounding the village of Ubud. But most of the island was still recognizably the tropical arcadia of travel brochures – where gentle rice farmers devoted themselves to the glamorous rituals of their unique religion.
Yet soon after the turn of the new millennium an astonishing, tourism-driven building boom began, which shows no sign of abating. A decade ago the island’s arid southern peninsula of the Bukit was virtually uninhabited outside the government-sponsored tourist enclave of Nusa Dua. Now it is chock-a-block with luxury hotels. North of Kuta, in Seminyak and along the west coast, ancient rice fields have been paved with holiday villas, thousands of them – and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
