Bali-fication comes for a laid-back surfer island

Damar, one of the best surf guides on the Indonesian island of Lombok, is at home taking tourists out to sea.

With his smooth English and casual banter, you’d never guess what his childhood fear was: foreigners.

“When I was 10 or maybe seven, I would cry – I would just pee my pants when I saw white people,” Damar, now 39, told the BBC.

That misgivings subsided as the peaceful island he called home slowly found its footing among Western travelers.

Just east of Bali, Lombok boasts the same azure beaches and stunning views as its famous neighbour, but without the irritating crowds. Lombok’s beaches are still a hidden gem among surfers, as is Mount Rinjani for tourists. Travel sites still widely use the word “unspoiled” to describe the island as they offer reasons to head outside of Bali.

So it should come as no surprise that the Indonesian government has sensed an opportunity to create yet another lucrative tourist haven in the sprawling archipelago.

The mission is to create more Balis – and Lombok will be one of them.

For islanders, this promise of “balification” is a welcome possibility, but they are also wary of what it brings.

And the change has already begun to hit home in more ways than one.

Mandalika in the south has been chosen as the heart of the “new Bali”.

Its rustic coastline has now given way to glitzy resorts, cafes and even a racecourse. Earlier this month, nearly 150,000 spectators turned up to watch the motorcycle Grand Prix.

Between 2019 and 2021, dozens of families were evicted from their rural homes for the construction of the Mandalika runway. Damar was among them.

Faced with what activists denounced as a botched resettlement plan and unfair compensation, he and his neighbors were helpless, Damar recalled.

“I was angry, but I can’t do much. I can’t fight against the government,” he says.

After the eviction, Damar bought a plot of land and built his own house, something many of his neighbors were unable to do. As a surf guide, he estimates he earns twice as much as a fisherman, a profession that has been around for generations in his community.

“I never went to school, so joining the travel industry was one of the best choices I ever made,” says Damar. “Meeting a lot of people from a lot of different countries… It opened my mind.”

Damar’s outrage at his ouster even comes with a scrupulous warning: “I’m not mad at the tourists. I’m just mad at my own government.”

The drive to transform Lombok is part of a wider effort to attract travelers away from Bali, which has played a huge role in Indonesia’s tourism industry for decades.

The island represents less than 1% of the country’s territory and less than 2% of its population of over 280 million. Yet last year it accounted for almost half of all visitors to Indonesia.

But Bali’s increasingly relentless traffic and pollution – a direct result of its success as a top tourist choice – are leaving these tourists disenchanted with what has long been touted as “the last paradise”.

As it turns out, this elusive paradise is only an hour away by boat.

But maybe not for long.

More and more travelers are catching on to the allure of Lombok. Last year, 81,500 foreign tourists touched down at the airport, a 40% jump on the previous year – still a far cry from the 6.3 million foreigners who flocked to Bali.

Eager for Lombok to follow in Bali’s footsteps, Indonesian authorities have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, along with a $250 million loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

This hastened the transformation of the island.

In Kuta, a popular Mandalika town, shabby surfer hostels have been replaced by a patchwork of chlorinated pools and plush sunbeds, as well as an international school for the children of expats.

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

A stone’s throw away on Tanjung Aan Beach, Kartini Cafe owner Lumban Raja told the BBC that locals there “don’t want to be ‘organized’ like Kuta”.

“When beaches start to look like Kuta, they lose their charm. We lose opportunities. We lose natural beauty,” she said.

Rumors of eviction have swirled for months at Tanjung Aan, which was earmarked for ambitious development plans.

Days after the BBC’s July visit, they came in a wave.

Security forces descended on the beach to demolish nearly 200 stalls, including Kartini’s.

Videos from that day showed masked men tearing down shop fences with their bare hands as stall owners protested.

“They were hitting things, kicking plywood… it’s really inhumane,” stall owner Ella Nurlaila told the BBC. “God, that expulsion was so cruel.”

The state-owned company leading Mandalika’s tourism initiative, InJourney Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), has secured 2.1 trillion rupiah ($128m; £96m) to build a luxury hotel on Tanjung Aan.

Officials said the project would create jobs and boost the local economy. But that’s no consolation to stall owners like Ella and her husband Adi, who have been selling coconuts and coffee on the beach for the past three years.

“Thousands of people here depend on (coastal land) for their livelihood,” Adi said. “Where else must we go for a living?”

The couple said they paid taxes on their stall – which Adi said was on land belonging to his parents.

But ITDC officials told the BBC that Tanjung Aan was “state land” and that the tax paid by these firms “does not equate to legal ownership or legitimacy of the land”.

It’s just the latest bout of tension over Mandalika’s tourism push.

Just Finance International, a development finance watchdog, has repeatedly flagged “a pattern of rights violations related to the Mandalika project” in recent years.

UN human rights experts estimate that more than 2,000 people “lost their basic means of livelihood overnight” due to the Tanjung Aan exodus. Stall owners were given neither “adequate notice” nor “appropriate” resettlement plans, they said in a statement in August.

“The people of Mandalika should not be sacrificed for a project that promises economic growth at the expense of human rights,” they said.

In its pursuit of a remarkably different future, Lombok will also have to grapple with what this means for local culture.

The predominantly Muslim island is home to thousands of mosques and the local Sasak ethnic group. Compared to Bali, alcohol is not as readily available in some parts of the island. On travel forums, tourists are encouraged to ditch bikinis and hot pants for more modest attire.

Such conservative sensibilities may change, or at least be directed further inland, as tourism heats up along the coast. Travelers who have loved Lombok are not happy about it either.

“Lombok is so special because it still has its own nature and people come to see that,” said Swiss tourist Basil Berger, a skeptic of the island’s “Bali-fiction”.

“If they want to see Bali, they (should) go to Bali,” he said. Turning Lombok into another Bali ‘is the ‘worst thing they can do’.

There are also environmental concerns. Last year’s motorcycle Grand Prix attracted 120,000 spectators to Mandalika, leaving behind 30 tonnes of rubbish which authorities struggled to clear.

“Before it reaches Bali’s stage of development, Lombok can learn. Because it shows the same kind of tension,” said Sekar Utami Setiastuti, who lives in Bali.

The government should ensure that “tourism development brings prosperity to many people instead of just bringing tourists to Lombok,” she adds. “Lombok needs to find its own identity – not just (become) a less crowded Bali.”

No matter where that search leads, a new era has dawned on Lombok.

Andrew Irwin is among the foreign investors who took an early interest in Lombok’s fledgling tourism. The American co-owns LMBK Surf House, one of Mandalika’s most popular surf camps.

The way he sees it, businesses like his help uplift local employees and their families.

“It gives people more opportunities to earn more money, send their kids to the right school, get the right insurance, get the right health care and basically live a better quality of life,” he said.

While “not much can necessarily be done” about Lombok’s changing landscape, he says, “we can just hope to bring a positive change to the equation.”

Tourism has certainly brought prosperity to the lives of many locals who have decided to try their hand at entrepreneurship.

“As long as you want to work, you will make money from tourism,” says Baik Enida Kinang Lare, a homeowner in Kuta known to her guests as Lara. Her neighbors also started living in families.

Lara started her business in 2014 with four rooms. It is now 14, not counting a separate villa under construction.

As excited as she is about her prospects, she’s also a little sad when she remembers life before the turmoil.

“It’s hard to find time to get together and see everyone. We miss that. It feels like time flies very, very quickly because we’re so busy,” she says.

It’s a sentiment sure to be shared by locals from Bali to Mykonos and Cancun when tourism hits their paradise: “I miss the past, but we like the money.”