The Death of a Thousand Cuts

There is a dark, cheerless room somewhere in Indonesia, lacking windows and completely cut off from the realities of life outside. Within that cloistered space are are special group of legislators and regulators, tightly focused on their endless task of driving nails into the coffin of expatriate life in Bali. If anyone had performed an autopsy on the unfortunate occupant of the casket - The Unknown Bali Expat – they would have discovered that the cause of death was exsanguination from a thousand cuts. But of course, there will never be autopsies on the death of expat dreams because nobody cares.

In Bali, expats are seen as a bottomless well of money for both local traders and the authorities. I have no real issue with the differential in prices for bules and locals – that’s just the way it is here, and it helps keep costs down for locals whose disposable wealth is miniscule. Up to now, even the huge swag of foreigner-targeted special charges and procedures have been onerous, but almost bearable – if you can call imposts like a $1,200 USD payment to Jakarta for each year of a KITAS permit bearable. Or the new $50,000 bride price now payable to Jakarta for foreigners who are the marrying kind. Yes, it is expensive for expats to live here when you factor in all the charges, but many of us have been able to manage, albeit with the odd grumble.

But now things seem to be different. Our Indonesian legislators, no longer content with slamming expats with every conceivable charge, and then some, seem to be changing direction. The aim seems to be to discourage us altogether. They simply don’t want us here. The ludicrous cost of alcohol in Bali is obviously aimed at foreigners – locals are not big consumers of imported wine and spirits. The new fines for motorists are simply out of reach of locals, so will obviously be selectively enforced for foreigners. The new rules – unpublicised - for bringing in personal effects now mean that you can’t easily bring your stuff here from home.

Here’s a frustrating little story about importing a few boxes of clothes, sports equipment for a child and the usual memorabilia that can ease the shock of transitioning to a new country. My friend used an Australian freight agent with many years of experience of bringing goods to Bali via Surabaya. The stuff duly arrived in Surabaya, and she was sent an invoice by the local freight forwarder, demanding a copy of her KITAS and payment of $800 USD for import duty. That’s strange, she thought – the rules say that there is no duty for payable for personal effects for KITAS holders, so why does he want both the duty fees and the KITAS? The local agent immediately changed his story and claimed that he had never sent her an invoice in the first place. Hmmm.

The troubles multiplied rapidly after that. The agent continued to demand a KITAS – not an option, as my friend lives here on a different type of long-term visa. Then came a demand for her to mail her passport to Surabaya. Yeah, right. “I’ll come to Surabaya and bring it myself”, she said. “Ahh, no, not possible …” was the reply. Finally came the news that under new rules, she now needs an import permit. However, once the goods have arrived in Indonesia, it is too late for an import permit, she was told. “We can re-export the goods to Singapore, and bring them back using ‘semi-legal’ methods” was the next suggestion. Wonderful – the quote for this scam was another couple of thousand dollars.

Worn down by the ten weeks it had taken to get to this stage, my friend was ready to just ship the goods out again. This annoyed the agent, who suggested that the goods had been left in Surabaya for too long and would most likely now be destroyed. The pressure intensified, with all suggestions from the agent revolving around huge storage, shipping and duty charges, payable, of course, to the agent.

In desperation, my friend said that she would get the required import permit, no matter what it took. Can you smirk via email? This agent did. His response was: “Ahh, but you need to have a company to get an import permit”. “I have a company”, she replied. “Ahh, but do you have warehousing facilities? All companies importing goods must also have a Government-approved warehouse to store the goods.”  She was speechless. ”And when did all these ‘new rules’ come into effect? “While your ship was on the way to Surabaya”, was the bland response.

So the end result is that, after more than three months of stalling and inconsistent rule-quoting by the authorities, my friend is shipping her goods back to Australia. Her Australian agent confirmed that it was nearly impossible now to send personal effects to Indonesia and will no longer deal with shipments from Australia to Indonesia while these ludicrous impediments exist.

As I said before, I am beginning to believe that the Indonesian Government just doesn’t want us here. Given that many expats spend perhaps upwards of 400 million rupiah for each year here, it just doesn’t make sense economically. If you don’t want us here, be honest – just tell us that we are not really welcome. It will save a lot of angst for all concerned.

Life Without Consequences

The concepts of consequences and responsibility seem deeply ingrained in village culture in Bali - especially in its ceremonial, spiritual and community aspects. Yet this awareness often seems to fail to make the transition to everyday, secular life. For foreigners at least, certain social norms here seem puzzling at best and downright annoying – even dangerous - at their worst.

People park their motorbikes on both sides of narrow gangs, completely blocking the passage of even the smallest car – then look surprised and slightly miffed when asked to shift them. Cars, trucks and motorcycles, their drivers oblivious to potentially deadly consequences, overtake on blind corners as a matter of course. Speeding school children on motorbikes, ignoring even the rudimentary road laws here, plough into other riders and pedestrians - then ride off without even offering basic assistance to the injured.

In commerce, suppliers take orders, and a deposit, for goods to be made by a certain date, then say: “Sorry, was too difficult to make, could not do” after you have travelled a long way to pick up the product. And then they want to keep the deposit for ”administration”. Tradesmen make promises to come over and fix things, then don’t turn up. Not until you have gone, anyway …

Then there are the consequences of disorganisation, delay and outright dishonesty. One of my friends finds out, by accident, that her first Bali phone bill has been prepared by the  local carrier and is waiting to be paid at the neighbourhood office. Despite the fact that several of her staff know of this, no-one has seen fit to inform her until the last day before the bill must be paid before disconnection. So she gives her pembantu the money to pay the bill and asks her to return with the receipt and change. The maid duly returns without a receipt, or change, and a vague story about the payment having being made and everything being fine – no receipt needed. No change needed either, apparently. Further questioning results in the pembantu completely forgetting that she can speak English. 

Naturally, my friend’s phone is cut off the next day. By the time she realises she therefore has no internet and is not getting emails, she has missed a critical business communication that results in a loss of  a substantial amount of money. Then a bemused villa manager drops in to ask why the pembantu has just asked him to pay the phone bill with his credit card.  The phone eventually gets reconnected after a week of disrupted business. In the end, when it all gets sorted out, the pembantu admits that she has stolen the money, but doesn’t seem to understand that her actions have had consequences. Serious consequences. In fact, she is staggered by the mere suggestion that she should even return the money. After all, the problem is fixed now, isn’t it? And as a sad coda, a few days later, she actually has the effrontery to become angry that her monthly pay has been reduced by the amount that she has misappropriated.

While there was obviously a lack of understanding of consequences in these examples, I suspect that sometimes there is a very shrewd grasp of the concept, especially when it means there is money to be made. A expat family recently shipped a load of personal and household effects from Australia to Bali via Surabaya. The first communication from the freight forwarder demanded a huge amount in clearance fees, admin fees – you name it, it was there, some in duplicate. After being challenged, the amount dropped, but the family were warned that any delays in payment would incur a daily penalty rate for ‘storage’.  The next six weeks were a continuing saga of demands for paperwork – all of which had been correctly supplied at the beginning. There were conflicting demands for different types of visas, letters, documents and other administrivia – which when supplied, turned out to be unnecessary. The latest demand was for the family to send their original passports to an unknown recipient in Surabaya – “just for a few days”. They have to be kidding, right? So what happens during all these delaying tactics? The penalty storage charges just keep going up, and up …

So maybe I’m being too hasty in thinking that there is a lack of understanding of consequences here. Maybe I’m falling into the trap (yet again) of judging other cultures by my own cultural markers. But if it’s not a lack of forward-thinking, then what is it? The glib answer is that people do things here because they either willingly discount the consequences as irrelevant, or because they can profit in some way. And that’s a scary conclusion, because it’s just too similar to what was happening in Australia – and one of the reasons that I left to come here.