Bar talk in Bali with (s)expat residential tourists

Abstract

Bali, Indonesia, is a popular destination for retiree migrants. Most people who settle there have experienced Bali as holiday makers. It is this lifestyle mode they hope to continue in their later years, with little concern about impacts on the local culture. For this project, the goal was to investigate various aspects of their new lives: their decisions to relocate, their daily activities, finding and participating in a new community, engagement with local people, and how their personal happiness had changed through the move. This paper focuses on just one group of residential retirees, single Australian men. During fieldwork, it quickly became apparent that the ‘official’ personal stories the respondents recounted excluded some of their actual agendas and activities in Bali. The face-to-face interviews with a female researcher did not comfortably facilitate this. In ‘unofficial’ bar conversations, another layer of narrative took place, excluding the researcher and giving rise to ethical considerations regarding the use of those unsolicited commentaries, often about sex tourism. The inclusion of those tales and explicit dialogues into this account of expats in Bali is not merely incidental, but pivotal to understanding this category of residential tourist. This study responds to calls for research into the nature and impact of privileged mobility in the age of globalization. It contributes an investigation of both macro and micro issues regarding the growing practice of residential tourism for retirees in Bali. At the same time, it highlights the limitations of fieldwork interviews; far more revealing material was collected informally. This gives rise to considerations of ethical issues when undertaking such research.

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