Bali changes

It was so beautiful when I first started coming to Bali… the long-haired boys in their sarongs, casually slipping flowers behind their ears, smiles flashing. Now, it seems most of the guys in Bali have cut their hair and traded their flowers for Harley t-shirts.

As I drive my motorbike through the villages after a few years away, I suddenly notice almost no one is wearing a sarong. In Denpasar or Singaraja or even Ubud, of course, younger people had never walked down the streets in sarongs except for ceremonies in the years I have been going to Bali. But back in the villages, I used to see a mix, some wearing Western clothing, but certainly a lot of people comfortable wearing beautiful batik sarongs as they went about their days. Women carrying water on their heads as they swayed down the street, men working in the fields, and grandmothers cooing to babies. Today only the very old women seem to wear sarongs outside of ceremonies; everyone else has adopted ugly synthetic K-Mart clothing.

It is so changed.