by Ryan Wong
On the 17th of January, an American woman by the name of Kristen Gray posted a thread on Twitter detailing her experience of moving to Bali. Having wanted to “stack some bread” and “get out of survival mode” after struggling to find a job in 2019, Grey, together with her girlfriend, decided to book one-way flights to Indonesia’s prime tourist hotspot. There, she founded a graphic design business, and has since been able to live an “elevated lifestyle” residing in a $400/month treehouse, healing and growing whilst surrounded by a loving and supportive Black community in a peaceful “detachment from the chaos”. She listed the benefits of moving to Bali, including safety, affordability and queer-friendliness, and concluded by advertising her ebook Our Bali Life is Yours, through which viewers of the thread could buy to find out how they could follow in her footsteps.
For anyone curious about the deleted/hidden Bali thread pic.twitter.com/FYA3mRcMNf
— Salt chip (@gastricslut) January 17, 2021
Gray faced massive backlash soon after, and responded in a tweet before deleting the thread and locking her account. She and her girlfriend have since been deported by Balinese officials following an investigation in which they were found to have broken multiple immigration laws; the head of the Bali office for the Ministry of Law and Human Rights said in a statement that the digital nomad violated the purpose of her visitor-stay permit, and is suspected of “spreading information that could unsettle the public,” such as Bali being a queer-friendly place, and for implying that foreigners could enter Indonesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pair will be barred from re-entering the country for six months once back in the States.
Unsurprisingly, Gray’s tweets sparked yet another heated debate on the impact of wealthy migrants in LEDCs. Many users were quick to call her out for encouraging travel—even as the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide continues to rise at an alarming rate—, not paying taxes, and for advertising Bali as a safespace for the LGBTQ+ community despite it being a part of a country which, just last March, proposed a bill to force lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to undergo conversion therapy. Conversely, other users came to Gray’s defense, arguing that it isn’t fair to blame a Black queer woman for living her best life in another country.
But what those users fail to realise is that this isn’t about her race. As an American migrant in a developing country, Gray enforces a system that marks expatriates like herself as the “upper class” whilst relegating locals to a secondary, inferior position. By encouraging others to move to Indonesia—where roughly a tenth of the population lives in poverty—she threatens to exacerbate the financial hardships faced by its people, many of whom have been left unemployed and broke as a result of the ongoing pandemic.
We must remember that there is a very large difference between visiting Bali as a tourist and relocating there indefinitely. For an economy geared so heavily towards tourism, a group of sightseers regardless of size can benefit locally-owned businesses, create jobs and therefore raise living standards for many citizens. However, as more and more westerners scratch their vacation plans and look into residency, that’s when gentrification—where a large number of wealthy individuals move into poorer areas—occurs. Gentrification is a problem because it essentially forces low-income residents out of their communities to make space for the affluent. Upon their arrival, landlords looking to get rich raise property prices to the point where locals already struggling to pay rent are left homeless. Kristen Gray’s $400/month “low cost of living” may be laughably cheap to some, but in a province where the monthly minimum wage is equivalent to $177, it is a stark illustration of first-world privilege.
The controversy surrounding Gray is just one among many similar disputes between foreign migrants and the natives of developing countries. In this month alone, there have been a handful of reports of foreigners disobeying local authorities, refusing to follow orders at the expense of everyone else. The Public Order Agency in Badung, Bali announced that between January 11-18, of 74 people caught violating COVID-19 safety protocols, 71 were foreign nationals. Its chief I Gusti Agung Ketut Suryanegara also stated that since the province began enforcing a mandatory mask rule last September, 80% of the violators were foreigners. He then elaborated by saying that they were likely ignoring the health protocols because they could afford to pay the IDR100,000 (~$7) fine for not wearing masks in public. While this doesn’t mean that every foreigner in places like Bali is complicit, it does tell us that there are far too many in a similar position who are willing to defy the law and put others at risk because they believe themselves to be above it.
A reality check for the foreigners who are mad at being called tone-deaf: though it isn’t a crime to move to Bali for a fresh start, you need to acknowledge the privilege you hold as someone from a wealthy nation, as well as the impact you and those in a similar position as yourself have on the local population. Don’t expect special treatment just because you come from a richer country. Don’t encourage your friends and followers to make their lives harder, especially in the middle of a pandemic that has already left millions impoverished. That is tone-deaf.