Recapturing memories in a place I loved before: a fool's quest?
On revisiting Nusa Penida, now that it's become a popular destination for daytrippers from mainland Bali. (Really an essay about rethinking why and how I travel.)
However you found your way here, welcome! I’m Emily, and I write letters about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world and our place in it.
Sometime in July, W.C. and I made a trip to Bali. The impetus was a wedding—the bride is part Indonesian—and we decided to extend our stay to travel a little.
I had been to Bali before and anticipated it would be even more busy with tourists this time of year, which coincides with holidays in other countries. I had also heard that many places, such as Canggu, had since developed rapidly, so I had no grand ambitions for Bali; the idea was not to try to have “the perfect vacation”, or, for me, “the perfectly imperfect adventure” 😅—though they’re two sides of the same coin, really. The idea was just to see friends and family and have our first travel break in several months and not worry so much about getting off the beaten path. Since it would be W.C.’s first time there, we would also be visiting some places I had already been to, one of which ended up being Nusa Penida, a small island southwest of mainland Bali, which I have very fond memories of and hoped to recapture some of them with W.C., even if I knew that would be unlikely. But part of me was simply curious about how it had changed—that’s what people kept saying: how much it had changed—since I had last seen it.
While in Ubud, where we spent some time first, I saw Nusa Penida advertised everywhere as a popular day trip—especially since the construction of the new Sanur harbor, said a taxi driver (though we actually left from Kusamba Port, which is closer to Ubud and also to Nusa Penida). Having been there before, a day trip sounded like an impossible proposition to me. And even if you don’t do very much, traveling is essentially about soaking up the atmosphere of place; how do you do that going there and back in the same day? Locals and tourists we met warned us about how overcrowded Nusa Penida had become, and lamented how people had to queue to take photos at tourist sights (even if some of them hadn’t been there themselves or, at least. not recently). But I was undeterred. I remember my first trip there, years ago, so fondly, that I decided it would still be nice to go with W.C. We didn’t plan to queue for photos at tourist sights anyway, and if necessary, we would just avoid them entirely. Right?
We decided to give the west side of Nusa Penida a miss and went straight to the southeast—back, as it happened, to the area around Atuh Beach and Diamond Beach where my friend B. and I had also spent some time in October 2015. Though by no means deserted or remote anymore, it is still apparently the less visited part of the island (at least according to our Google research), being further from the northwest ports receiving tourist landings, but with some tourist amenities. Since this was the last leg of our trip before heading back to Kuala Lumpur and we hadn’t been to the beach very much, we decided we would book a nice place to stay and not try to check off any list; we would simply try to appreciate what’s open to us within walking’s distance and not think about what else we’re missing.
The idea didn’t completely backfire. Though there are definitely more visitors to Nusa Penida now than before, it still isn’t crowded in the same way Ubud or Canggu are; you’re not jostling against people and vehicles, making it quite difficult to walk in places that would otherwise be walkable. But something of its character has definitely changed. In the parts of Nusa Penida that are beautiful enough and that are now easy enough to get to, you are no longer left to your own devices in even the smallest way. At every step, your experience feels engineered.
Case in point:
We were staying at a villa just a short walk away from the so-called Thousand Islands Viewpoint. We didn’t look it up online and so had no idea what to expect, but thought, one morning, that we would just head there and find out. As we were walking along a path on the cliff’s edge, though, a man sitting in a hut’s shade by an adjacent car park stopped us from continuing on our way. There was no actual barrier, we could have gone on walking, but he told us we had to go through the car park instead.
We stared at the open path, but did what we were told. Exiting the other side of the car park, we found another hut manned by two people collecting an entrance fee, and forked out 15,000 rupiahs each to continue down a narrow brambly path, through rows of dragonfruit trees and other fruit trees. I guess we were paying for access through someone’s private land? Then, barely two minutes in, we came to a swing—they seem to be ubiquitous in Bali, especially along the Tegallalang rice terraces on the mainland!—which you have to pay another fee for. We had eschewed all such swings, because what have they become but a gimmick? A man in a hut next to the swing called out to us, but we declined the photo op.
Not long after, we came to a plateau skirting the cliff’s edge, which we would have arrived at had we continued along the path earlier. There were a couple of heart-shaped “bird’s nest” seats, which have also cropped up in several tourist spots I’ve been to in Bali, and the best thing I can say about these ones is that you could sit on them—something that, I would later find out, can’t be taken for granted. Nearby, a wooden post with signboards tacked to it pointed the way to various other well-known Indonesian “destinations”, including to a long flight of steep steps descending the cliff’s edge, which would apparently lead to Rumah Pohon—i.e. “treehouse” in Indonesian/Malay and what I guessed to be a lookout/selfie station (but apparently you can also book yourself in to stay the night). Well, why not. We’re tourists, and we’re already here.
So we descended the steps, and came to another purpose-built Instagrammable spot. Halfway down the steep, narrow stairs, there is a beautiful view of the coast that you can take in from an outcrop of rock. But there, such a “bird’s nest” had been built, leaving limited room to maneuver if you just wanted to enjoy the panorama. That wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that you had to pay another 25,000 rupiahs even to sit on the bench, because I guess why would you sit on it unless you could take an Instagrammable photograph of yourself sitting on it? Even when the man looking after it left for a break, you couldn’t use it as a resting perch. Silently, he crisscrossed it with a thin blue rope as we watched. I felt a creeping despair, and guilt at the same time, just for being here.
When I recounted this to friends later, they asked if the fees were being collected legally or if people had just spotted an opportunity. I’m not sure if what we came upon was the same as what was reported here in the same Pejukutan area, but in any case, I always find it difficult to criticize something when it forms the basis of someone’s livelihood, especially after a pandemic, from which I and most people I know have been lucky enough to emerge from relatively unscathed. I guess, in this case: if they’re opportunists, then they’re at least, presumably, pocketing the money for themselves, since the land around them has been, and is being, taken up by villas and such—one of which we were ourselves staying in. It has been estimated that 85 percent of tourism profits in Bali end up in the pockets of non-Balinese, including from Jakarta and abroad, weakening any say they might have over how tourism is conducted on their own island.
Deflated in spirit, we continued going down the steps until we came to another plateau—punctuated by a pile of discarded plastic water bottles, which is not uncommon at tourist sights in Bali, since it feels like we’ve often been supplied with one upon payment of a fee (as if to make sure we don’t feel we’ve paid for nothing, and perhaps someone also makes a little money from sending the discarded bottles off to a recycling center?) Half-heartedly, we snapped some photos and watched others snapped theirs, all of us trying to reap whatever beauty we still could from a place we would in all likelihood not return to, and which we must sense would not stay the way it was for much longer.
But that wasn’t the last of it. Ahead of us, we saw the final stretch: more stone steps climbing up a narrow ridge with, I suppose, even better views of the coast and also the promised Rumah Pohon, which you can apparently use as an Instagram prop. You couldn’t just go to the ridge and not go to the treehouse, though; going up at all would cost an additional 75,000 rupiahs. Worn out by the sheer consumerism of the whole experience by this point, we skipped it too.
I should say, it’s not about the money. I’m happy to give back—I think we should give back, in monetary terms if we can’t do it any other way—to local communities for what we bring to and take from their homes. But there must be a different way of getting money into the right hands? Perhaps it would be better to just pay one fee for the whole site, as well as a tourist tax (like this, to be imposed from next year) for visiting the island—though such payments alone wouldn’t present a solution, because who knows if they will be eventually distributed more equitably into the hands of local communities? This whole piecemeal affair felt like being forced through the levels of a video game where the logic of its built world makes no sense.
I want to emphasize that in writing about this, I don’t mean to single out Nusa Penida or Bali at all, but what feels increasingly like our approach to tourism in many places. It’s like someone thinks, Oh look, the tourists love swings and bird’s nests—or whatever other Instagram-friendly gimmick—there, don’t they? Let’s bring them here too and they will come! And I guess many of them do? Regrettably, in such places, it often feels like there’s no room left for even the humblest of surprises, by which I only mean a discovery for oneself: like chancing a bend in the road and finding and unexpected path, then following it to see where it might lead.
Instead, huge signs and price tags shout it out at you: Walk this way and you will be there! OK, you are now here! Please pay up and here’s an admittance wristband for you like you’re about to enter a theme park and a bottle of mineral water to go with it even if you didn’t ask for it because we have to give you something for your buck, even if it pollutes the environment! This happened at the entrance to Atuh Beach and Diamond Beach, preceded by a huge car park. (Come to think of it, do we need car parks at the foot of every sight?)
According to this paper:
The growth of tourism in Nusa Penida tourism has eroded the social, economic and cultural spaces of the community, even eroded the physical space that should be used as an environmental buffer diverted for tourism development. […] Formerly, places considered as haunted or haunted as fine spirits' residences, such as sea cliffs, beaches, cliff clusters, rock cliffs, latrines were recently commodified for tourism purposes.
As I understand it, tourism development began in Nusa Penida in 2014 in response to what was seen as its tourism potential—incentivized by friendly local government policies, though without adequate planning accompanying them. This encouraged farmers to abandon seaweed farming, the island’s economic mainstay since the 1980s, and it didn’t help that production had also been declining with the onset of increasingly erratic weather. Infrastructure—roads, hospitals, schools—was built that also lifted the islanders standard of living, but hotels, restaurants, and cafes gradually displaced the beach huts they had built to store seaweed and where they took shelter while they worked.
This paper goes on to say:
Likewise in hilly areas, the existence of accommodation slowly penetrates, annexing farmers’ land. People are competing to build tourism accommodation, like mushrooms in the rainy season as if out of control; something that was never imagined before.
Without realizing it, I had been standing on the cusp of these changes on my first trip. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that when I visited with B. for the two days in 2015, we only came across a handful or so of other foreigners. The roads were fairly quiet, which made it possible for us—two young women who had never properly commandeered a scooter before—to navigate the island with a scooter, with a little help from local people we met 😅
As B. confirmed when I compared notes with her recently, we just meandered. There was something of the picaresque in our trip back then: we were not in search of any grand narrative, but just went wherever our scooter could take us. Of course, we had done some research on Nusa Penida and had plotted some possible points on the map. But it wasn’t imperative that we make it to these points, and the nascent state of the island’s development as a tourist destination at the time still allowed for small moments of serendipity.
Like the time we went in search of Atuh Beach and, some minutes’ walk away from the steep stone steps leading down the cliff to the coast, came across Pak Rai and his family whose house lay along a dirt road when we followed a small wooden sign that pointed to fresh coconuts being sold. We spent maybe an hour just chatting to him and his wife, before continuing on our way. Hours later, when we reemerged from the stone stairs, Pak Rai and his son would help us take our scooter down a treacherous stretch to a more forgiving slope so we could make our way back onto the ring road.
Or the time we stopped by a roadside shack overlooking coastal seaweed farms for lunch and ended up going spearfishing with the proprietor, Made, the next day. Well, he spearfished, we watched, and we all feasted on barracuda and snapper and sweetlips together after.
You get the idea. It was just one encounter after another—including how we came across a group of mischievous schoolboys who flipped a sign for Atuh Beach in the opposite direction to mislead us! 😆 Perhaps none of these events, on their own, was anything to shout about, but strung together they made for an experience that was very special and continues to live on in my mind as a feeling. I can’t say I ever had this feeling again on my recent visit to Nusa Penida.
Still, all was not lost. Despite its trappings, Diamond Beach retains a pleasing wildness—I guess because the stone steps are very steep, which means that most tourists just stay at the top for their pictures. And this time, we could actually be on the beach. Last I was here with B., the stone steps that now lead down the cliff to Diamond Beach did not yet exist, so we could only admire it from above; in any case, we wouldn’t have thought about trying to make our way down, because the tide was high and the waves had licked right up at the rocks, as they still threaten to do now. On our recent trip, I learned from a construction worker we met along the way that work on the steps began in 2016, a year after B. and I were there.
If you’re thinking, well, isn’t that an accessibility you’re thankful for? Yes, I am! I am of course not saying that there shouldn’t be any tourism development. As it is with most things, it’s about the manner in which it’s done. I think opening up new places to more people as long as it’s not, on balance, too detrimental to the environment is a good thing.
But I also don’t think it’s necessary.
My first time here, I was happy enough to just appreciate Diamond Beach from the top of the cliff. Not every beautiful place in the world needs to be conquered. If the authorities ever allowed private developers to build a glass elevator(!) in a place like this, because the existing stone steps become too dangerous, as it has done in other places… What kind of a solution is that?! I think a sense of wonder is a necessary, healthy thing to cultivate, and what must having things become so easily accessible do to our sense of awe? And I’m not saying this as if I’m a better tourist, by the way. As W.C. likes to remind me, I’m definitely someone who struggles to bask in the beauty of something that is right in front of me, to live in the moment—and I think it has everything to do with having been lucky enough to see so much of the world and always having my phone, and so seemingly the world, readily at hand.
I know that my strong feelings in response to how Nusa Penida has changed owe to the fact that I was here before it changed, and so that I got to see, with such contrast, the before and after—while creeping changes in my own city, though no less significant, can seem less drastic. I think this is the clearest I’ve been able to see a place transform over just a handful of years; Nusa Penida glowers more clearly in my mind because it’s a microcosm of similar changes happening elsewhere. Had I come here for the first time this year, all this would probably not have been as notable to me. Perhaps I would have just likened it to any number of places in the world that have become playgrounds for tourists and been able to just take it as it is. Maybe it’s my own fault for trying to recapture old memories in this place, any place? Maybe, when we’re not trying too hard to get off the beaten path, this is just what we can expect now in popular “destinations”?
Speaking of change, here are some before (October 2015) and after (July 2023) photos of the approach to Atuh Beach and Diamond Beach, if you’re curious:
I’m uncomfortably aware that everyone who travels is part of the problem in the bigger scheme of these things. And yet, all any one person thinks when they go somewhere is that they want to see something, and especially if they are there for the first and likely only time, they will do whatever is available to do there, whatever most people are doing there. I don’t agree entirely with Agnes Callard’s piece against travel—I think taking on new experiences that a place inspires of you can lead to lasting transformation in your life—but it is also true that we tend to just do whatever we think we “should” be doing while traveling (like falconry in Abu Dhabi, apparently) that we might not care so much to do at home. Though we should each strive to be aware of the impacts we wreak on a place, we also can’t put everything on individual responsibility.
In a way, perhaps those who grumble about the hackneyed behavior of the “tourist” are those privileged enough to travel frequently. At the same time, it’s also clear to see that privilege doesn’t always buy discernment, which is why I think moves by some governments to impose or raise the cost of tourism fees—though I agree with it, done in moderation—may not necessarily have the desired effect. But look, it’s not like I have any answers or solutions to offer. I think the same problem that blights tourism is the same problem of over-consumerism that blights so much of our modern life in a hypercapitalist society, and that’s not something that rules can be easily set down for and managed when everyone—government, investor, local, tourist—is pursuing their own, often conflicting, interests. At the heart of it all is our stubborn desires, and the right we feel we have to them, the right we are often told we have to them.
One question I’ve been worrying over: is it possible to travel with even middle-class comforts without feeling like one is, first and foremost, just a consumer? I had less occasion to ponder this when I was younger and more often traveling solo on a tighter budget. But now I’m wondering: does one necessarily have to swerve off the beaten track where there are fewer of the usual trappings like nice cafes and restaurants and hotels in order to feel like a “traveler”? Are there no respites to be found in “vacations” or travel the way most people do it? In some cases, does one have to simply opt out?
At the same time, is there anything more irritating than the tourist who thinks they aren’t a tourist, when they’re probably going by the same guides and recommendations as everyone else—even in more out-of-the-way destinations? (Speaking of which, I think I might have another letter brewing, tentatively titled, “On Recommendations” 😆)
Increasingly, I’ve felt aimless and listless when I’m not exploring a place with a purpose other than just travel—say, through a story’s lens, even if it’s not something to be published, just a personal line of inquiry I’ve chosen in order to understand a place. Yet, at the same time, that feels like a kind of failing. Someone looking for the perfect vacation, someone looking for the perfect adventure, someone looking for the perfect story—they all stand on the same spectrum. Have we become so inured to the simple wonders of life that we can no longer enjoy just being somewhere, without expecting anything of it, without worrying about whether we’re only having the experience everyone else is having? Is it possible to simply enjoy the moment, without letting others’ experience of a place dictate ours? In so many ways, this has been a soul-searching trip, and it’s made me rethink why and how I travel—though all I still have are questions.
Before W.C. and I left Nusa Penida, I snapped this photo of what seems to be a prospective villa hotel in construction. As much as we all like to criticize overtourism and gentrification, we also like nice things—which, nothing wrong with that; more people should have nice things. But I wonder if we will ever get the balance right. In a couple of years when this hotel is all done up, tourists will come and stay, lured by its prime cliff-edge location. Maybe you would have been to this island before and, wanting to avoid the crowds, you’ll decide to book a villa here so you can have the cliff’s edge all to yourself. Or maybe you’ll be here for the first time, in which case it will be easy to take what you see for granted. You will not know what was here before, and in your mind it will never have been troubled by its previous life.
Until the next,
E.