00:00Bali is no longer a place you should travel to. All those beautiful scenes
00:04people keep posting are lies. They are fake. They tell you everything except
00:11what's reality. This needs to stop and I'm going to show you exactly why and
00:17how this is happening. The destruction of Bali. I've been living in Bali from
00:242013 to 2016. I've been working there. I speak the language. I know every corner
00:32of the island. It's not very big. I know this video will trigger a lot of Bali
00:36fanatics but it just has to be made and I'm not making this because I hate Bali.
00:42It's quite the opposite. I moved there because I love being there but it has
00:47become just so bad the island is suffering extremely from overtourism.
00:54Sometimes friends of friends are writing me because they're going to Bali soon
00:58and they heard that I've been living there and they're asking me for insider
01:02tips and I'm just like yeah don't go there go somewhere else. Why did people go
01:08to Bali in the first place? Because it's beautiful, because of its tranquility,
01:15because of the beaches and because it's cheap. Well all those things are gone now
01:22but most people who are booking the trip to go there for the first time don't know
01:27about this. They just go on Instagram and YouTube and they see all those
01:32beautiful pictures and videos.
01:39I mean how can you not want to go there if you see something like this and then
01:44they hear stories from other people who have been there and they say yeah it's
01:48beautiful there you should absolutely go there but those people they have been
01:53there like 10 or 15 years ago and today it looks completely different. Already in
02:002016 it was pretty bad but I went again last year to visit my brother who still
02:06lives there and it's just getting worse and worse. Let me paint you a picture of how
02:13it really is today. It's time to get to the details. First of all the garbage. Bali
02:21has a massive garbage problem. They have no garbage processing system. Most of the
02:27garbage is just being thrown into the river. For real. They just take big chunks
02:33of garbage and throw it in the river and it's going to stay in the river for most of
02:38the year. But when the rainy season comes all the trash is being washed into the sea
02:45and at some point it will show up on the beach again. This is an actual picture of
02:51a beach in Bali.
02:58How the beaches are looking today is horrendous and if you want to go diving in
03:04Bali you will see more garbage under water than fish. That's a fact.
03:11Then second of all we have the infrastructure. Bali has no public transport whatsoever so
03:18you have to get a taxi or rent a motorbike or a car to get anywhere. But the streets are
03:24not made at all for this kind of traffic. Many streets have only one lane. Back in 2013
03:32I used to live in Ubud. And if you wanted to go from Ubud to Seminyak, it would take you
03:39about 30 minutes. If you want to do the same trip today, it will take almost two
03:45hours. So when you're visiting Bali and you think, ah I can go easily around the
03:50island, you're going to spend a lot of time in traffic. And this situation is not
03:55going to be any better soon because the local government isn't doing anything. It will
04:01just get worse and worse because every year there's more tourists coming to the
04:06island. 2018 there were 16 million people visiting the island and the growth rate
04:13is currently at 10% a year. It's a tiny island. There's not enough space for that
04:19many people. Is this really how anyone wants to spend their holidays? Okay, these three
04:26things are passive developments. But there's also something actively destroying
04:32the very reason people were coming here in the first place. One of the most loved
04:36things in Bali are the rice fields. These beautiful pictures of rice fields and the
04:43sun is going down. And yeah, but those rice fields, they're going away at a very fast pace.
04:49Because Balinese people think, oh there's tourists coming, I should build a house on
04:55my rice fields. So they're building houses on their rice fields and also investors are
05:01coming and buying a big chunks of rice fields and they build hotels on it and
05:06whatever. The best example for this development is in Canggu. Just five years
05:12ago, Canggu was known as a place where there's beautiful rice fields just next to the
05:18beach and there were a few hotels. So everybody wanted to go there. And the
05:23more people want to go, the more stuff they will build for these people. And if
05:28you go there today, you almost see no rice fields anymore. There's house next to
05:34house next to house. No more rice fields. Then this is just going to keep happening.
05:41Among those investors, there's no sense of preservation. And if you're going there,
05:47you're just feeding them. Yeah, okay, but it's, it's, it's still a cheap place, right?
05:52Well, no. When I was in Bali the first time, you could buy a proper dinner with a drink for
06:01one
06:01dollar. That was it, one dollar. Today, they are charging you seven dollars for an avocado toast.
06:09And that's normal. That has become the norm. Okay, I'm out here. Seven dollars. The
06:17island has fallen victim to something that is called the Instagram effect. Those
06:22pictures of women in flowing dresses, leaving the only footprints in the sand,
06:27are beautiful. But they are not a reality. And as long as people keep posting their
06:33most beautiful travel pictures from best angle possible. This will not change. Bali is
06:41just a small island in a massive country of Indonesia. Indonesia has 18,000 islands.
06:48Why does everyone keep going to Bali? Because it's famous. But all the other
06:54islands around it, they just look the same. So now to you about this trip that you're
07:00planning. Why not go to Borneo or Lombok or Flores? You'll have as much fun there.
07:07Peace out. Happy traveling.
