WSJ Says: Only 43 International Visitors Entered Bali This Year

The first thing I do every single day, with my eyes still fuzzy and small, is read The Morning Brew.

It’s a free daily email that gives you an overview of everything happening in the world, from politics to finance to sports and pop culture. In other words, a five-minute read that makes you feel slightly less stupid/ignorant.

This morning, I came across a fascinating line in my Morning Brew. It read:

Stat: Just 43 international travelers visited Bali, Indonesia, during the first nine months of this year, compared to the 6.3 million who mobbed the island in 2019, per the WSJ

And I thought…hmmmmm…that doesn’t really add up, does it?

Because I personally know at least 25 surfers, both pro and pathetic, who landed at DPS this year and scored all over the island. I’m sure that collectively, the Stab staff could come up with 35 or more. Which leaves just eight people to be acounted for. Which is fucking farcical.

To make sure that The Morning Brew hadn’t missed a few zeroes and commas, I hit the link over to the Wall Street Journal piece. Lo and behold, the first two paragraphs read as such (before slamming into a paywall, the gall!):

Two years ago, there were so many tourists on Bali that bumper-to-bumper traffic snaked through the Indonesian island’s villages. Tides towed in waves of plastic garbage. A decade-long building binge tripled the number of hotel rooms to 75,000 on a popular stretch. Locals got wealthier, but many got fed up.

Foreign hordes are the least of their worries now. Just 43 travelers from abroad visited during the first nine months of 2021, down from 6.3 million in all of 2019, according to Bali’s statistics office.

So, there are two potential options here.

1. There truly have been just 43 international visitors to Bali this year, and at least 35 (but probably all 43) of them were surfers that we know, or…

2. The Bali statistics office is off its fucking gourd.

What do you think?