A A$2,000 spoof — aimed at the Australia Tourism Board’s A$130 million television advertisement Where the Bloody Hell Are You — entitled Where the Bali Hell are You (www.wherethebalihellareyou.com) is a Bali-Oz co-production with good vibes.

It is the brain child of Australian Brett Morgan, New Zealander Marten Hubbeling and Ketut Swarmadyasa from E.R. Tours of Sanur, the latter starring as the cheeky guide with the Ozzie accent.

“Hey look! The Japanese are surfing your bloody waves!” the Balinese tour guide says in the ad, which has been picked up by all of Australia’s television channels. “The Italians are drinking your bloody beer.”

It’s just the shot in the arm the Australian public and the Balinese tourism industry needs, and it harnesses both islands’ love of a good send-up!

The Indonesian resort island took a massive economic hit when Australian arrivals plunged following the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings. But they’re not taking the trend lying down.

“It’s a lot cheaper than the A$180 million on the other campaign,” Morgan told Australia’s Channel 10.

Australia’s Tourism Minister Fran Bailey agrees. “I certainly think the Balinese got a very good bargain,” she told the network. “It’s a lot of fun and very cheeky.”

The refreshing thing about the street video is that it was produced by a young bunch of Australian surfers and Balinese travel guides — plus the general managers of the Dynasty and the Bali Garden Hotels — utilizing their connections in the tourism industry. The Dutch hats, for example, were “left over from some rich Dutch guys’ party at Kudeta”. The masseurs in the spa sequence were actually Garuda stewardesses pulled off the tennis courts at Sanur Beach Hotel; the lederhosen in the German sequence were donated by the Arena Sausage House on the Sanur By-Pass. It was a “boys’ town in Bali”-style production.

Creator Morgan has a cameo in every one of the half dozen hilarious spots. What makes the segments truly adorable, however, is the star performance by guide Ketut: his hamming it up, breaking up mid-sequence and cheesy smile are part of the true heart of the Bali-tourism charm of the piece.

Its creators feel that too much attention, and funding, goes to the big governmental tourism bodies. Marten points out that a Jakartan won Samsung’s pan-Asian mobile phone video contest recently. “There’s so much young creative talent on the streets,” he added.

The ad also found a soft spot with the Australian public who — may have forgotten, in their rush to pass judgment on the Indonesian nation and thus Bali — how much the pool bars and the spas and indeed the fun-loving Balinese themselves have become a part of their extended family.

Heart to heart

My last column on Bali-based Australian artist Donald Friend generated a bit of buzz too. My house was picketed by “Adelaide Mums for a Safer Sanur”. Australian media are now hot on the heels of Made Brata — the romantic lead in my last column — who was Friend’s platonic love interest that many, many years ago.

Also as a result of my last column, I am soon to be interviewed by a Sydney-based media celebrity, Mike Carlton, on Indonesian-Australian relations.

This is particularly poignant because I have only this week finished a batch of T-shirts — “Bali has soul, Australia has heart” — to be handed out at our office Christmas party. These T-shirts are part of a promotional package for the Bali Peace Park initiative, a group of concerned individuals who have harnessed the residual goodness, post-Bali bomb, of various Indonesians, Australians and Australian institutions.

Our office Christmas party is something of a pagan ritual involving 300 perfectly pressed but terrified Balinese children and one large, pink, furry Australian mammal sweating profusely in a Santa costume. Every year there is a good band and a bad magician.

My adopted Balinese family take more than their share of lunch boxes. It takes a month for my garden to recover.

The T-shirts I will be handing out feature the two photos printed here. The Australian lady being bussed by Seminyak palace heartthrob Agung Bagus is none other than Jan Smith, wife of former Australian ambassador to Indonesia Rick Smith. The photo was taken at Prawn Nite at the Kuta R.S.L. — otherwise known as the Kartika Plaza Hotel — at a party held by the Australian governor-general to thank all those Australian and Balinese volunteers who helped during the post-Bali bomb fortnight.

I had never really thought about it, but Australia really does have a big heart in sport, in love tangles on the fabled isle and in helping her neighbors in times of need. The Where the Bali Hell are You? video campaign is full of Australia’s heartache for her beloved isle’s tourist attractions!

Faghags and frog dancers

Almost every evening, I play Scrabble in a Balinese village with an old Balinese chum, Putu.

Almost every evening, Putu takes a call, mid-game, from his cousin Kadek who hovers on the outskirts of the village haunting warung and lottery stalls (Kadek is a tad agoraphobic and sticks only to nocturnal routines). The two Balinese confer in Australian-English about guy things and the state of balance in the Hindu-Balinese universe.

“Who’s there?” I heard Kadek ask recently. “Just Tante Wi,” Putu replied, shooting me a devilish smile.

I am shocked. Not by the familiarity of the reference disparaging me as “Auntie”, but by the faghag tones of these former Sanur playboys who have known French models and Australian actresses most nights of the week in the free-wheeling Bali of the 1970s.

How long has this campy talk been going on, I wonder? Are the Balinese getting a bit light in their loafers (selop)?

***
The next morning, I discover my tennis coach, Nyoman, a former exchange student to Australia, staring blankly at the dating.com page on the computer in my office.

He is putting in his personal details and is seeking my advice as to his sexual orientation.

“Bisexual,” I advise him, “the girls find it titillating.”

He dutifully moves the cursor.

To the right of the screen in a chat room is a muscle man in swimming trunks.

“Are you flirting with a muscle man?” I ask him, politely.

“No, just fooling around.”

That evening, I discover that Nyoman has made his muscle man with packed lunch my screen saver, replacing a cascade of beautiful gardens that normally fill my cyberspace.

Nothing I do changes it back.

***
The next day, I give a lunch for Sakiko-san, the world’s shortest landscape painter, and some banker buddies from Mumbai.

Sakiko-san, 79, once dubbed “Japan’s meanest export”, is here to reclaim the six pastel drawings of the Bali Hyatt gardens she left in the general manager’s office 12 years ago.

She is fascinated to learn of the piece I wrote in this column on Carole Muller’s 70th birthday some weeks back.

Sakiko-san once famously went to Australia out of season to paint the Cootamuudra Wattle. She only got as far as Carole Muller’s glamorous boat shed at Lavender Bay, Sydney; there she holed up, demanding bento boxes on room service for weeks.

She is the Yoko Ono of the landscape pastels world, really.
Anyway, here she is in front of all the photos, cooing, “Oohhh… Calol… Calol,” until lunch is served.

Absentmindedly, I close the website connection and, to my extreme embarrassment, up shoots the hunk in swimmers. The bankers giggle.

“Ohhh,” bleats Sakiko-san, “you like swimming.”