Bali governor urges to introduce a waiting list for tourists to enter the island

“We will introduce a quota for visiting for the next 100 years”

While the domestic tourism industry is asking the Indonesian authorities to officially cancel covid entry formalities (in fact, they are no longer applied, they remain only on paper), the Bali authorities are seriously considering introducing a “waiting list” to visit the island. The quotas, according to the Balinese governor, will affect all foreigners, but the Russians, as the most undisciplined guests, will have to sign up for “fabulous Bali” a year in advance.

Russian tour operators are concerned about clients who are afraid of vaccinations (Indonesia has not yet officially canceled the requirement for a vaccination certificate from foreigners upon entry, although Indonesian border guards have not asked for it for a long time).

“But while there are requirements, albeit conditional,” they explain to us in a travel agency working with Bali resorts, “contractors and carriers must comply with them. That is, we warn customers about the need for a vaccination certificate. This scares away those who do not have it, or have it, but 2-3 years ago, and they do not want to be revaccinated.

At the same time, the governor of Bali, Mr. Wayan Kostner, made an unexpected proposal – to introduce a quota for visiting the island for all foreigners, and for the “most troublesome” ones – for the whole next century.

The Balinese head sees the technical implementation of his idea in putting tourists on the waiting list a year before the planned trip, which, according to the island governor, “will limit mass tourism, and with it the number of troublemakers.”

Judging by the quotes from Mr. Kostner’s speech in the Indonesian media, the head of the island does not particularly hide the fact that his irritation is addressed primarily to the Russians: “Most of the tourists who misbehave in Bali are from Russia. We have already deported someone, others are being tried on the spot according to Indonesian laws. Since the beginning of 2023, 101 foreigners have been expelled from the country, of which 27 are citizens of the Russian Federation.” At the same time, today there are more than 50 thousand of our fellow citizens on the island: the smallest part of them are “packagers” who have a rest on tours. All others arrived “indefinitely”.

“There are no direct flights to Indonesia from the Russian Federation, so the tours are expensive, the logistics are complicated, as a result of which there are only a few so-called “packet travelers” who arrived on the tour from Russia for a week or two in Bali,” explains a Russian-speaking employee of a travel agency in Nusa Dua (an elite area Bali – Auth.). – The rest are winterers and relocants.

The governor of the island in the local press even transparently hinted that these were guests “eating packaged rice.” For Indonesians, this is an allegorical designation for greed or poverty, or both at once. And the locals, for all their friendliness, are already so annoyed that Russian relocators violate local laws and customs: they allow them to stay in the country after the expiration of their visas, they work illegally, taking away jobs from the natives, and every now and then they arrange all sorts of start-ups, including and outright fraudulent. There has been a lot of complaints about this lately. And after Pengubengan, the governor was simply obliged to speak out publicly.

Pengubengan, which has become the last straw in the patience of the Balinese authorities, is a sacred temple from the Besakih complex at the foot of Mount Agung. Two 35-year-old citizens of the Russian Federation in the company of a 37-year-old Russian were noticed by local residents there “obscenely posing and dancing”, which was reported to the tourist police.

The incident, insulting to the feelings of the residents of Bali, has already become the third manifestation of blatant disrespect for local customs by Russians in the last month alone (in the last days of April, a Russian tourist got into a fight with a Balinese clergyman, Jro Mangku Budi Utama, right on the road in the Ubud area in a traffic jam; Utama’s face wrote a statement to the police. Auth.).

– And before that there were naked intimate parts of the bodies of compatriots against the backdrop of Balinese shrines – and there was nothing! – the Russian-speaking guide of the Balinese five-star sighs. – So the quotas for a hundred years are addressed to us, there is no doubt about it.

Three Russian defilers of Pengubengan are now at the immigration office of the Singaraji district, awaiting a court verdict. The head of this office says that their violation of the law is so serious (the details of the dances and poses of the Russians are not disclosed for religious reasons) that the authorities cannot give any forecasts: “Deportation and a fine are at best, sorry, but our patience is over.”