Tue, 01/20/2009 4:46 PM  |  The Jakarta Post I Bali

Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika announced Sunday his administration would establish a special team to review investor plans to transform one of the island’s lakes into a mass tourism venue.

The plan has drawn strong criticism from local environmental activists, who say the project would further degrade the integrity of the surrounding area, estimated to be one of the island’s few remaining water absorption areas. “A team will be assigned to review the plan. We, of course, will not issue any recommendation without first reviewing and deliberating on it thoroughly,” Pastika said during an inspection trip to Karangasem on Sunday. [Read more →]

Ni Komang Erviani ,  CONTRIBUTOR ,  THE JAKARTA POST, KARANGASEM   |  Tue, 01/20/2009 5:04 PM  |  Bali

Ketut Gatepan lives with his two wives and one daughter in a small 12-square-meter shack.

To get to his house, he must climb a rocky, narrow road that his fellow residents of Pucang hamlet in the village of Ban in Karangasem regency use as their daily route.

There are no rooms in his simple house made of bamboo walls and an asbestos roof. In the one interior space the family cooks, sleeps and eats. [Read more →]

Tue, 01/20/2009 5:11 , PM  The Jakarta Post  I Bali

While the number of tourists visiting Bali from Europe and the United States might drop, tourists from the Asia-Pacific countries will increase, a noted tourism association has predicted.

The Bali chapter of the Association of the Indonesian Tours and Travel Agencies (ASITA) predicted that tourists from European countries and the US may drop by 40 percent this year compared to last year. “Tourists from Europe and the US will be those worse hit by the global financial crisis. Furthermore, the flights from Europe and the US (to Bali) are the most expensive,” ASITA Bali chapter chairman Aloysius Purwa said in Denpasar on Saturday. [Read more →]