Is Lombok the new Bali? Some think so

Damar, top-of-the-line surf guides on the Indonesian island of Lombok, feels proper at house taking vacationers out to sea.

Together with his fluent English and easy banter, you’ll by no means guess what was his childhood concern: foreigners.

“Once I was 10 or possibly seven, I used to cry – I used to simply pee in my pants once I noticed white folks,” Damar, now 39, tells the BBC.

That diffidence waned because the laidback island he calls house slowly discovered its recognition amongst Western travellers.

Simply east of Bali, Lombok boasts the identical azure seashores and beautiful views as its well-known neighbour, however with out the exasperating crowds. Lombok’s seashores are nonetheless a hidden gem amongst surfers, as is Mount Rinjani for hikers. Journey websites nonetheless liberally use the phrase “untouched” to explain the island as they provide causes to enterprise past Bali.

So it ought to come as little shock that the Indonesian authorities has sensed the chance to create one other profitable vacationer haven on the sprawling archipelago.

The mission is to create extra “Balis” – and Lombok will probably be one among them.

For islanders, this promise of “Balification” is a welcome alternative however they’re additionally cautious of what it brings.

And the change has already begun to hit house in additional methods than one.

Mandalika within the south has been chosen as the center of the “new Bali”.

Its rustic shoreline has already given strategy to glitzy resorts, cafes and even a racetrack. Earlier this month, almost 150,000 spectators confirmed as much as watch the motorbike Grand Prix.

Between 2019 and 2021, dozens of households have been evicted from their village houses for the development of the Mandalika circuit. Damar’s was amongst them.

Confronted with what activists decried as a messy resettlement plan and unfair compensation, he and his neighbours have been helpless, Damar remembers.

“I used to be offended, however I can not do a lot. I can not combat in opposition to the federal government,” he says.

For the reason that eviction, Damar has purchased a plot of land and constructed his personal home, one thing that a lot of his neighbours have not been capable of do. As a surf information, he estimates that he earns twice as a lot as a fisherman – a generational career in his group.

“I’ve by no means actually been to highschool, so becoming a member of the tourism trade was top-of-the-line selections that I’ve ever made,” Damar says. “Assembly lots of people from many various international locations… It has opened my thoughts.”

Damar’s indignation about his eviction even comes with a scrupulous caveat: “I am not offended on the vacationers. I am simply offended at my very own authorities.”

The drive to rework Lombok is a part of a wider effort to lure travellers away from Bali, which has for many years performed an outsized position in Indonesia’s tourism trade.

The island makes up lower than 1% of the nation’s land space and fewer than 2% of its 280 million-plus inhabitants. But final yr it accounted for almost half of all guests to Indonesia.

However more and more Bali’s unrelenting site visitors and air pollution – a direct results of its success as a prime vacationer pick- are leaving these very vacationers disenchanted with what has lengthy been touted because the “final paradise”.

Because it seems, that elusive paradise lies simply an hour’s boat journey away.

However maybe not for lengthy.

Increasingly more travellers are catching on to Lombok’s attraction. Final yr, 81,500 overseas vacationers touched down at its airport, a 40% soar from the yr earlier than – nonetheless, a far cry from the 6.3 million foreigners who flocked to Bali.

Longing for Lombok to observe in Bali’s footsteps, Indonesian authorities have secured lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in funding, together with a $250m mortgage from the Asian Infrastructure Funding Financial institution.

This has accelerated the island’s makeover.

In Kuta, a well-liked city in Mandalika, scrappy surfers’ hostels have been changed by a mosaic of chlorinated swimming pools and plushy sunbeds, and a global faculty for the youngsters of expats.

Whereas authorities are hailing it as Lombok’s success story, some see a cautionary story.

A stone’s throw away on the seashore of Tanjung Aan, cafe proprietor Kartini Lumban Raja informed the BBC that locals there “do not need to be ‘organised’ like Kuta”.

“When seashores begin to appear like Kuta, they lose their allure. We lose alternatives. We lose pure magnificence,” she mentioned.

For months, rumours of evictions had been swirling on Tanjung Aan, which was earmarked for bold growth plans.

Days after the BBC’s go to in July, they got here like a rolling wave.

Safety forces descended upon the seashore to demolish almost 200 stalls, together with Kartini’s.

Movies from that day present masked males tearing store fences down with their naked arms as stall homeowners protested.

“They have been banging on issues, kicking plywood… it is actually inhumane,” Ella Nurlaila, a stall proprietor, informed the BBC. “My goodness, this eviction was so merciless.”

The state-owned firm main Mandalika’s tourism drive, InJourney Tourism Improvement Company (ITDC), has secured 2.1 trillion rupiah ($128m; £96m) to construct a luxurious lodge on Tanjung Aan.

Authorities mentioned the venture will create jobs and enhance the native financial system. However that is little comfort for stall homeowners like Ella and her husband Adi, who’ve offered coconuts and occasional on the seashore for the previous three years.

“1000’s of individuals right here rely upon [coastal land] for his or her livelihood,” Adi mentioned. “The place else are we speculated to go to earn a dwelling?”

The couple mentioned they’d paid taxes for his or her stall – which, in response to Adi, sat on land belonging to his dad and mom.

However ITDC representatives informed the BBC that Tanjung Aan is “state-owned land”, and that the tax paid by these companies “doesn’t equate to authorized possession or land legitimacy”.

That is simply the newest bout of tensions over Mandalika’s tourism push.

Simply Finance Worldwide, a growth finance watchdog, has repeatedly flagged “a sample of rights violations linked to the Mandalika venture” lately.

UN human rights consultants estimate that greater than 2,000 folks “misplaced their main technique of livelihood in a single day” due to the Tanjung Aan evictions. Stall homeowners got neither “satisfactory discover” nor “appropriate” resettlement plans, they mentioned in an announcement in August.

“The folks of Mandalika should not be sacrificed for a venture that guarantees financial progress on the expense of human rights,” they mentioned.

In its quest for a remarkably completely different future, Lombok can even need to cope with what this implies for native tradition.

The predominantly Muslim island is house to hundreds of mosques and the indigenous Sasak ethnic group. In comparison with Bali, alcohol will not be as available in elements of the island. On journey boards, vacationers are inspired to ditch bikinis and sizzling pants for extra modest apparel.

Such conservative sensitivities might change, or at the very least be pushed additional inland, as tourism heats up alongside the shoreline. Travellers who’ve come to like Lombok should not glad about that both.

“Lombok is so particular as a result of it nonetheless has its personal nature and folks come to see that,” mentioned Swiss vacationer Basil Berger, a sceptic of the”Bali-fication” of the island.

“In the event that they need to see Bali, they [should] go to Bali,” he mentioned. Turning Lombok into one other Bali “is the “the worst factor that they will do”.

There are additionally environmental considerations. The motorbike Grand Prix final yr drew 120,000 spectators to Mandalika, abandoning 30 tonnes of garbage that authorities struggled to clear.

“Earlier than it will get to Bali’s stage of growth, Lombok may be taught. As a result of it is exhibiting the identical sort of pressure,” says Sekar Utami Setiastuti, who lives in Bali.

The federal government ought to guarantee “tourism growth brings welfare to lots of people, as a substitute of simply bringing vacationers to Lombok”, she provides. “Lombok has to search out its personal identification – not simply [become] a much less crowded Bali.”

Irrespective of the place that search leads, a brand new period has dawned on Lombok.

Andrew Irwin is among the many overseas buyers who’ve taken an early curiosity in Lombok’s budding tourism. The American is the co-owner of LMBK Surf Home, one among Mandalika’s hottest surf camps.

The way in which he sees it, companies like his are serving to to uplift native workers and their households.

“It is giving folks extra alternatives to earn extra money, ship their youngsters to correct faculty, get correct insurance coverage, get correct healthcare, and basically stay a greater high quality of life,” he mentioned.

Whereas there’s “not essentially a lot one can do” about Lombok’s altering panorama, he says, “we are able to simply hope to carry a constructive change to the equation”.

Tourism has definitely ushered prosperity into the lives of many locals, who’ve determined to attempt their hand at entrepreneurship.

“As lengthy you need to work, you will generate profits from tourism,” says Baiq Enida Kinang Lare, a homestay proprietor in Kuta, identified to her friends as Lara. Her neighbours too have began homestays.

Lara began her enterprise in 2014 with 4 rooms. She’s now at 14, not counting a separate villa below building.

As excited as she is about her prospects, she can be slightly wistful as she recalled life earlier than the hustle.

“It is troublesome to search out time to collect and see everybody. That is what we miss. We really feel just like the time flies very, very quick as a result of we’re busy,” she says.

This can be a feeling that may certainly be shared by locals from Bali to Mykonos to Cancun, at any time when tourism took off of their patch of paradise: “I miss the previous, however we like the cash.”