In January 2011 I returned to Bali with all of my in-laws for a family holiday. Experienced Bali shoppers will take an empty suitcase and buy their clothes over there. An empty suitcase for me means more room for donations for my favourite Balinese charity, the Bali Animal Welfare Association. Before I left Australia I visited my wonderful vet clinic and collected some medical donations and to be on the safe side got a letter from BAWA in both English and Indonesian for customs on the way in (which customs didn’t ask for anyway, nor did they seem the least bit interested in the contents of my suitcase).
On a day trip to Ubud, I took my donations and camera up to BAWA’s clinic where I was delighted to find that a photo I had taken of a puppy a couple of years previously, had been used in their 2010 Christmas card and 2011 calendar campaign. I also got to play with some very cute puppies waiting in the shop to be adopted.
Even though I still hadn’t had my rabies shots I was given permission to photograph all the current rescues at the clinic so long as I promised not to try to touch any of the dogs as they were all in quarantine. Many more rescues were being housed compared to my last visit and even the clinic’s foyer was taken up with stacks of cages that also included young cats being treated for ringworm. Most of the puppies were in good health and once cleared of rabies would be sterilized and advertised for adoption. Puppies are such characters; their mournful eyes, winks and cute expressions are all put into action to melt the hearts of future owners.
This was the first time I’d stayed in Seminyak and compared to my previous experiences in Nusa Dua, Kuta and Ubud, Seminyak struck me as a fairly affluent part of Bali. There are many more shops on the main streets and they’re quite ritzy with elegant glass doors, airconditioning and window dressing and the products are much more upmarket, almost European style fashions, and very different to what you’d find in Nusa, Kuta or even Ubud which caters for a lot of European tourists. Some of the restaurants had world class reputations and were even difficult to get bookings and I got the feeling that many ex-pats lived in the area. The locals didn’t have a sense of poverty about them that most Balinese have and it showed in their more relaxed, less haggling, selling style.
My eye is always on the four legged locals and I think it was the dogs that brought my attention to the affluence of the area before anything else – they were all so healthy! There were no mangy, hairless or skinny dogs in sight, most of them had collars and some of them were even attached to an ex-pat owner by a lead and being taken for a walk, a sight I had never before seen in Bali.
It was obvious that the affluence of the region trickled all the way down to the dogs and a clear indication that poverty is the leading source of their health issues.
Normally beaches are hotspots for European and Australian holiday makers, but the Seminyak beaches were crowded with thousands of Indonesians tourists – and for the first time I actually felt like I was the only white person in some foreign country. But the Indonesian holiday makers were there for the same reasons as everyone else; mothers watched their toddlers play at the water’s edge and make sandcastles, youths played beach volleyball together or braved the big swells of the ocean crashing up onto the sand, and the beach was littered with hundred of sun lounges and umbrellas. And people played with their dogs, ex-pats and Indonesians alike.
At about four in the afternoon the wind really picked up and started blowing stinging sand into legs and eyes, ending the day for visitors and within an hour the beach emptied of thousands of people and was almost deserted except for a few local dogs and a few lifesavers.
Early mornings and late afternoons is the time when the beach belongs to the local dogs. They chase each other, race incoming waves and frolic in the water with as much fun and enthusiasm as the tourists. But even these “rich” dogs were too savvy or cynical to accept a friendly word or pat.
