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This article is aimed at sharing my experience living in Bali as a full-time J-E translator, from November 1997 to November 2000. If living in a tropical paradise is something that has ever crossed your mind, then we have something in common. Maybe my story will tempt you to actually give it a try, if not in Bali then maybe in some other interesting location.
Why Bali?
With the devaluation of the rupiah that began in 1997, Indonesia—especially Bali—has become a textbook example of how the Internet has created the opportunity for lifestyle arbitrage. The ultimate sell high-buy low strategy. Feed your overhead in one market while earning an income in a completely different market. Imagine earning a Tokyo income in a country where the average worker makes less than 6000 yen a month. The bottom line is, living in Bali with absolutely no dependence on the Indonesian economy for your earnings gives you great financial freedom. You have many options: you can live a very luxurious life, save for early retirement, take a lot of time off, aggressively polish your skills, or find your own happy mix among all of those extremes.
Bali has a large expat population, and although some are independently wealthy or live on pensions or other fixed income arrangements, the vast majority makes a living by either working in the tourist industry (managing hotels, restaurants, dive operations) or by exporting products, such as textiles, handicrafts, furniture, or jewelry. Although I met some business consultants, web page designers, and other knowledge workers (no other translators, surprisingly) who got all or most of their business, like I did, from outside of the country, such "e-lancers" seem to be rare at this point. The hardest part of living in Bali for a foreigner is finding a way to get an income, but an e-lancer already has that covered. There are also quite a few artists, writers, and "healers" running around, especially in Ubud, where we spent most of our time. All in all, an interesting cast of characters and a fertile environment for plying the translation trade.
Although I am surely preaching to the choir here, you need to learn speak Indonesian to have an enjoyable experience (and to achieve the economy mentioned below). It is much easier to gain a basic conversational facility in Indonesian than the languages you deal with professionally, and it can be learned quickly. No need to tackle Balinese, since you will rarely deal with anyone who speaks only Balinese, although it is a worthy pursuit for the linguist.
Cost of Living
There is a wide range of options to choose from in terms of lifestyle that will impact how much you can live on. I have an Italian friend who lives frugally on $600 a month with his wife and three children. A single Japanese friend lives on about the same. Others living more luxuriant lifestyles might live on $2000 to $3000 per month, or more. The locals here can support a family for about $50 a month or less. Since the currency has fluctuated wildly in the past four years, these numbers are not set in stone, but you get the idea.
Food (both dining out and buying groceries) is unbelievably inexpensive. Depending on your eating habits and ability to adapt, you can either save a lot or save an awful lot. Even dining out three times a week and buying lots of cheese, olive oil, Japanese curry rice mix (can't live without that), and other imported items, we rarely spent more than about $500 a month to feed a family of four. Utilities, telecom costs, gasoline, vehicle maintenance, entertainment, and health club membership fees are all priced well below prices in Japan or the west. Airtime for your cellular phone is an astonishing 3 cents a minute, for example. In the confusion of the initial collapse of the rupiah in early 1998, I actually was renting a car for $70 a month (now it will probably cost you about $200/month, with the owner covering all maintenance costs). Gasoline was going for 10 cents a liter for most of our stay, but that is now up to about 13 cents now.)
Rent varies widely depending on where on the island you want to live and what sort of space, amenities, and view you demand. The key here is being a smart buyer and using your imagination. It is a very imperfect market with a procession of people hoping to cash in on your ignorance. You always get a better deal with a long-term lease and paying for your own improvements, or just leasing land and building yourself. I know many people who have a very comfortable living environment and pay $2000 a year, while others get by for much less. You can have a nice villa with four bedrooms, maids' quarters, and your own private pool for as little $6000 a year if you look hard and explore the market. (I am quoting rents in annual terms because you normally have to pay a year or more of rent upfront to get a favorable deal.) You are better off paying less without any promises to do anything from the landlord, since they probably aren't going to do it anyway.
Affordable domestic help is one of the huge advantages to living in Bali. Although it will vary with the exchange rate and where you live, you normally will not pay much more than $60 a month for a full-time helper such as cook, maid, or nanny (a driver will cost a little more). Balinese are almost always very good with children, but there is a huge variation in their productivity. You're not getting Mary Poppins, but as long as you understand that upfront, frustrations can be minimized. It is not uncommon for foreigners and well-to-do locals to have a household staff of three or more.
Productivity
Although this is something that will vary among individuals, there are both positive and negative factors affecting your work productivity when in Bali. The biggest negative is the slowness of Internet access (although it is improving), which of course means it takes longer to search information and download large files sent by email. You also lack the option of going down to the library or Barnes and Noble to look something up, and making phone calls to organizations in Japan to ask their official English name can get expensive. (Although for almost a year after the rupiah's collapse and before phone rates were raised, it was actually cheaper to call Tokyo from Bali than from Kyoto.) On the positive side, the availability of inexpensive domestic help indirectly boosts productivity. Add up the hours that you spend every month doing such chores as laundry, cooking, washing dishes, cleaning the room, and shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables at the market. Assuming you get no intrinsic value (relaxation or otherwise) from doing these chores, not having to do them adds to your overall productivity. Being able to get rejuvenated with a body massage at home or at the local spa on a regular basis can also do wonders for your productivity. It is roughly break even at this point, but once broadband becomes available in Bali it won't even be close.
Ability to get work
Whether you can earn the same income from Bali as you can in your current location can only be answered by you. It totally depends on the type of work you get and the attitude of your clients. But there should not be a need to change clients. By the way, I never sought work from Bali sources, and when I was offered such work I politely declined (see immigration, below). Virtually all of my work comes from Japan. And given that Bali is only one hour behind Tokyo (GMT +8, the same as Singapore and Hong Kong), in certain types of work—quick turnaround during Tokyo business hours—being in Bali gives you an advantage over U.S.- or Europe-based translators. I believe it important to get to Japan at least once a year, and you can do that just as easily from Bali as from the U.S., without the jet lag.
Immigration issues
You can apply for a work visa and residence status, but it is not necessary and pulls you into the system deeper than you might want to be (you need to apply for a visa to leave the country, for example). Like the majority of expats, we employed an immigration services broker to take care of our visa status for us, which at various times was either a social visa or a business visa, depending on what pleased the "authorities." These visas could be extended to last a total of six months each time, after which the visa holders must fly to another country, visit the Indonesian consulate, and get a new visa. We were always ready to travel at least twice a year anyway, so that worked fine. Some expats never even bother with a visa, and just fly to Singapore or elsewhere every two months to automatically get a new tourist visa. There is no need to go to an Indonesian consulate for citizens of most countries, since you receive the 60-day tourist visa upon entry. Going without a work visa means not marketing your services in Bali, but that is not where the money is, at least not in translation. Remember, this is lifestyle arbitrage. The work visa may be best for someone that wishes to do interpreting on the Island, however, or if you have a spouse interested in running a business.
Schooling
There are a number of options for private schooling (we were not impressed with the public school system), but those options become more limited as your children grow older. Elementary school is fine, junior high school okay, and high school very limited. The Bali International School recently added an 11th grade (junior in high school) to its program, and the Sanur International School (where our two boys went) now goes up to 9th grade. There is always private tutoring and home schooling. There is a Japanese "Saturday" school in Sanur, with classes held outside of regular school hours, so that children of Japanese expats (many of them half Indonesian) can acquire and maintain Japanese proficiency. A number of Western expats I know schooled their children in Bali until they were 14 or 15 years old, and then put them in a boarding school in Perth (about a three-hour flight away). Other options include correspondence courses using quality private tutors, which are definitely available in Bali. All in all, schooling is not a reason to rule out Bali, especially if your children are still young, but can be a limiting factor if they are older and neither parent is excited about the prospect of home schooling.
The Flip Side
There is no paradise on earth, as they say, and Bali is no exception to this truism. In addition to slow Internet access (help is on the horizon via a planned satellite Internet service similar to Direct PC through HK Cable & Wireless, but that has been bogged down in bureaucracy), there are other realities of living in the less-developed world. Driving can be a harrowing experience on the narrow, potholed roads with huge numbers of hell-bent, 100cc motorbike drivers zipping in and out of traffic with complete disregard for life and limb. (I must admit, I derived a perverse enjoyment from driving under those conditions.) Although the climate is overall very much a plus, it can be quite humid most of the year, and when it rains it pours. (It's never as hot and humid as a summer in Tokyo, however, and the sun shines often even during rainy season.) Everything moves at a slow pace, except maybe for the insects. And at times it is very difficult to understand why things work the way they do—the cultural differences are quite stark (another potential negative that was a plus for me, however).
The Bali lifestyle
Is Bali for you? Only you can answer that. Do you like exposing yourself to different cultures? Do you enjoy sharing your living quarters with large lizards? Do you have a hedonistic streak? Many of the foreigners in Bali have been there 10 or more years and can't imagine living anywhere else. Others go there in pursuit of the Bali dream, and don't last six months before island fever drives them away forever. It is up to you. Maybe you should give it a try.
I no longer live in Bali—I left with my family at the end of November 2000 after a great experience living in Ubud (central Bali) and Sanur (on the southeast coast) for a total of three years. Life is short, and we have other parts of the world we would like to see (we are currently based in southwest France, a completely different living experience), so we have left Bali behind for now, always keeping in mind the possibility of moving back. But Bali is still close to my heart, and I remain a strong advocate of living there.
The above summary describes living conditions at the end of 2000, but given the instability of government much of this could be changing. When I returned to Bali for a few weeks in April-May 2001, things were much the same. Although I am no longer there to help you as a local, I would be happy to answer your questions and introduce you to that lifestyle. Just track me down on the Honyaku or JAT mailing lists!