MikeLigalig.com

By Romy Teruel
Columnist
Bohol Sunday Post

Bali, Indonesia is a place almost everyone dreams to see. Mine was fulfilled recently and it would be selfish on my part not to share some insights on its tourism development that Bohol can learn from. Not that there is no comparison between Bohol and Bali. On the contrary there is a lot of comparison between the two with regard to natural beauty and culture that both are endowed with.

That a place has beautiful spots or attractions to offer does not mean it will be successful as a tourism destination. There is more to developing tourism destination than just beautiful things. Bali cannot fair with Bohol when it comes to beautiful beaches. But foreign tourists who come to Bali's beaches are more than thrice the domestic and foreign tourist arrival in Bohol. And the number is increasing as we write this.

Tourism development starts with good planning and a lot of support and cooperation from the key players. The people themselves must accept and understand that it is tourism that they want to embark on to improve their economy. Without the cooperation of all, no plans and policies can convert a place into a haven for tourist and visitors. Everybody's effort must contribute to making the right environment for tourism to take roots, grow and bear fruit.

That is what they did in Bali. And they are now reaping the fruits of their hard labor.

By Bohol's standards, Bali's beaches are just so-so. The beaches of Panglao Island and Anda Peninsula are powdery white while that of Nusa Dua, the most talked and widely written about place of Bali are just brown, like the sugar central.

Yet Bali has more than one million foreign tourist arrival every year, while we are already contented with our 400,000 for both domestic and foreign tourists combined.

In 2002, the terrorists bombed a place called Legian in downtown Kuta in Bali killing 200 people. Today a monument stands over the place with the list of names of those who perished in it. Then again in 2005, a second bomb was exploded by terrorists near the Starbuck and KFC at Jimbaran Bay. Twenty-three (23) died and three cafes were blown to pieces.

But Bali recovered from these terrorist attacks and the tourists have come again in droves.

One factor of this success, we learned from our guide Nym Summerta Aritenaya, a.k.a. Eric, is that the Balinese government has realized their tourism potential long before and had planned ahead. Not only that. They also executed their plans correctly and implemented their policies fairly.

If Bohol can follow the Bali model of planning and implementation, there should be very little difference in the success they now enjoy.

In size and population, Bali is a little bigger with an area of 5,000 sq. kms and a population of 3.5 million compared to Bohol's land area of 4,117 sq. kms. and a population of 1.2 million.

Bali is deep in history dating back to the Stone Age when the first settlers came from China. At around 300 B.C. a fairly evolved culture already existed. Irrigation and rice production were the pre-occupation of the people. At around 500 A.D. the Balinese became predominantly Buddhist according to Yi-Tsing, a Chinese scholar. It wasn't until the 11th century that Hindu and Javanese culture flourished in Bali.

To this day the Balinese people are 85% Hindu believers. Eric swears, despite the influx of tourist over the years, the Balinese people have kept their culture very much alive.

Eric did not have to insist. We saw the Balinese culture present everywhere one goes - in buildings, in hotel rooms, in plazas, in road intersections - practically everywhere. People make offerings in their temple every day. No car leaves the garage without an offering on its panel board. That is how they have taken care of their belief and their culture.

The history of Bohol is not very different. Before the Spaniards came to introduce Christianity, Boholanos were already trading with the Chinese. With the coming of the Spaniards, Boholanos embraced Christianity to the point of occultism. Their religiosity is beyond question. There is no Boholano house without a statue of a favorite Saint. There is no barangays or town without a church building. There is no office without an altar and a statue of its patron Saint. There is no brisk business that will not stop at the sound of the Angelus.

So where lies the difference or gap between tourism development in Bali and Bohol? This will be answered in Part II next issue.

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