How magical Balinese beaches really look

Blogger under the nickname levik writes:

So, I finally returned home, and now it's time to tell you the whole awkward truth about the heavenly beaches of Bali. Surprisingly, you will hardly read about this in any enthusiastic reports from bloggers. They all praise the pristine paradise of white sand and azure blue water. Unfortunately, in reality, it's not as great as you might think when reading articles on the internet.

I will tell you everything as it is, without embellishments, so that you, when planning a vacation, do not experience the same disappointment as I did. Read this post and show it to your friends who are planning (or dreaming) to go on vacation to Bali. After all, forewarned is forearmed.

If you open Instagram with the tag "Bali," you can see a collection of photos of deserted beaches and beautiful people - mainly girls, gifted by nature (and not only!) with magnificent figures. This is exactly the kind of island we chose for our vacation.

And it's not surprising that no one wants to post pictures of beaches that look more like dumps in their cozy Instagram when they finally arrive on vacation. Everyone wants to show off beautiful pictures to their friends back home, out of envy. Pictures similar to the ones that led them to decide to go to Bali.

I must admit, I am also somewhat to blame for this – for example, right before the new year, in order not to spoil anyone's mood, I posted a photo from a secluded clean beach.

As a result, it becomes a vicious circle – no one wants to be the first to show the truth. No one wants to admit that they went to a paradise corner and ended up in a dump. But we have to fight against this somehow, so I will still tell you how everything really looks.

So, we arrived in Seminyak, dropped our things at the villa, and hurried to the beach. We got there and immediately sensed that something was amiss.

Empty bottles, bags, wrappers, cups... were strewn all over the sand.

In some places where there were sun loungers with umbrellas, there were fewer of them.

In others — a lot more.

Moreover, the layer of plastic trash did not end on the sand - all this stuff continued to the water's edge and beyond. In the shallows, the same bottles and cups floated. It was completely unclear how one could sit in such conditions, and it was scary to think about swimming in it.

It turned out that the blame for all this trash cannot be solely placed on the residents of Bali or even on tourists who do not clean up after themselves. In the past few years, the winter months have become a plastic season on the island. Ocean currents bring heaps of garbage from neighboring Java to the southwest coast (where all the most popular resorts are located). Indonesia as a whole is one of the most egregious polluting countries, using a lot of disposable plastic that is not recycled. All of this ends up in local rivers, and then washes out to sea. And from December to March, it washes up on the shores of Bali, precisely in the places where tourists come for the heavenly beaches. The ocean currents wash up not only piles of plastic but sometimes entire logs on the beaches of Kuta, Seminyak, Jimbaran, and others.

It may seem surprising, but all this trash does not bother some people at all. They sit on sun loungers amidst all these bottles and labels!

They allow their children to play in the sand amidst all this garbage!

Some even take selfies on these polluted beaches!

The local authorities and owners of coastal hotels understand that such a situation can greatly damage tourism on the island and deprive them of a large part of their income. Therefore, beaches near expensive hotels are cleaned every morning by workers and volunteers. They simply come early in the morning with brooms and rakes, collect all the garbage that appeared since yesterday in large bags, and take it away somewhere. I hope all this plastic is properly recycled somewhere, and does not end up back in the sea.

In some places on the beach, you can very clearly see where the area of the expensive hotel ends, and therefore, the scope of these cleaners.

Is it surprising that most vacationers in Bali prefer to spend their time in the so-called beach clubs rather than on public beaches?

We ourselves spent several hours in such a club on the 31st of December.

And in general, we swam more in the pool than in the sea. The disappointment from the Balinese beaches was shocking for us.

If any of your acquaintances are planning to go to Bali hoping for clean beaches from Instagram, show them this post. Such beaches still exist on the island, but most likely, you will have to pay extra for them.

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And also... Do not think that this problem is exclusive to Bali, that you can just find some other heavenly beach in another corner of the world. Sooner or later, they will all be equally littered with plastic trash if our civilization continues to use bottles, cups, wrappers, and plastic bags so massively.

I have often heard about how disposable plastic items pollute our oceans. About how there is a plastic island floating somewhere at sea three times the size of France. But here I had to face this firsthand, and it is a rather disgusting feeling.

How can we fight against this?

Starting in January 2019, a ban on all disposable plastic items has already been implemented in Bali. It is unclear how an island where normal drinking water is only available in bottles will be able to enforce such a ban. But even if they succeed, it will not affect the flow of garbage that ocean currents wash up on their shores during the winter months.

Sooner or later, all of us will have to realize that we use and dispose of too much plastic in our daily lives and make some changes to our habits.

Photos and text - Source