Do You Know How Much I Spend in Your Country?

(First published in Bali Advertiser, June 22, 2005)

How can we, as a country, stand by and let a young lady, as an Australian, rot away in a foreign prison? We gave Indonesia how many hundreds of millions of dollars in tsunami relief? -- Actor Russell Crowe on an Australian radio talk show, as quoted in a May 28 International Herald Tribune article.

People who live or travel in foreign countries sometimes get the idea that no laws exist for them. They are outside the reach of their own governments. They aren’t integrated into the political, social, and legal communities around them. They may be away from company, boss, family, and friends. They may not understand the laws of the country in which they temporarily or permanently reside. They sense only freedom for the next weeks, months, years.

A few get the idea that even physical laws have been rescinded for them. Bare skin no longer loses when challenging asphalt; un-helmeted skulls no longer crush when hitting solid objects at 40 kilometers per hour. Additionally, many Australians, Americans, Europeans, and northern Asians - as ‘wealthy’ foreigners in a poorer country – come to feel their higher financial standing gives them an aristocratic status. The deference shown by officials, shop owners, and hotel staff becomes a right instead of a service. “Do you know how much money I spend in your country?” is the rhetorical question to excuse all bad behavior.

I don’t know if Schapelle Corby, the Australian woman sentenced to 20 years in a Bali prison for drug smuggling, is guilty or innocent. If she is guilty, I have no more sympathy for her than I would have for anyone - foreign or Indonesian - sentenced to serve time in Indonesia. If she has been wrongly convicted, I hope that she, her lawyers, and her family are able to prove her innocence during the appeals process.

Anyone who’s followed her case knows the excess and hysteria that it has sparked in the Australian media and public. Consider, though, the outcry if one million Indonesians were visiting Australia each year, driving illegally, consuming illegal drugs at all-night beach parties, and behaving badly and loudly in most public situations. Australians would rightly argue that it didn’t matter how much the Indonesians were contributing to the economy: Visitors have to obey Australian law or face the consequences, and even the potentially innocent would have to be tried and judged in the local courts.

This didn’t work out so well for Chika Honda, a young Japanese woman, and three male companions. They never even got the chance to ask the money question. When they arrived in Melbourne in 1992, Australian customs officers found 13 kilograms of heroin hidden in false panels in their suitcases. Their story that their original bags had been stolen in Kuala Lumpur and replaced by the “generosity” of a friend didn’t sway the Australian courts. Ms. Honda and the three men were deported in 2002 after more than 10 years in jail and are still trying to clear their names from Japan (June 2 article on www.theage.com.au).

Travel in a foreign country carries risks. It’s one of the reasons we do it. We want a break from daily routine. We want to see something different, try new things. For travelers from wealthy countries, the price paid for the experience includes the risks inherent in lower standards of medical care, dirtier water and unhygienic food, and less developed political and judicial systems. And there’s only so much the people back home can do for the willing traveler who has been unlucky or foolish.

Many of Ms. Corby’s supporters in Australia don’t seem to grasp that she isn’t in Australia, that Indonesian laws aren’t the same as Australian laws. Such ignorance is of no consequence for someone sending letters to the editor from Cambewarra, New South Wales. It can be costly for someone in Bali who thinks money, foreign citizenship, and light skin color makes them untouchable. Just as I would have no sympathy for a guilty Ms. Corby, I have none to spare for unlicensed drivers “harassed” by the police; for people who “buy” land despite laws against foreign ownership and lose on the deal; for people turned in for drug use by the person who sold them the drugs. They are breaking Indonesian law, and if caught, deserve to be punished or pay accordingly. It doesn’t matter how much they’ve spent or how many Indonesians depend on them for jobs.

The only important issue for Ms. Corby is her guilt or innocence. If she’s guilty, it’s no good to argue that the sentence is too harsh, Indonesian jails are too dirty, and marijuana should be legal anyway. She isn’t in Australia where those kinds of arguments might win her some leniency.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi

Singapore, Oh, Singapore, Lah

(First published in Bali Advertiser, June 8, 2005)

Anne and Michael prided themselves on being different; artists, you know, and liberal-minded people – maybe a little scatterbrained, but then (secretly, they felt) that came from genius. – Langston Hughes, Slave on the Block, 1938

People screw up their faces when I tell them I lived in Singapore nine years. They seem to dislike Singapore because it is efficient, safe, ordered. Singapore, the thinking goes, just doesn’t have the chaotic freedom that would allow a Bali resident’s genius to flourish. The ‘true’ Asian cities of Bangkok, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur, with their traffic, pollution, stitched-together transport systems, and urban slums, are a better fit for anyone with an anarchic turn of mind.

The typical Bali free spirit probably does feel out of place in the ‘nanny’ state. Singapore allows people to chew medicinal gums now – but you must have a prescription; it holds annoying (and amusing) social improvement campaigns; foreigners can’t bribe their way through a traffic stop if caught driving without a license; illegal activity of most sorts is dealt with harshly. And it’s expensive. Unless you are staying in a love hotel, you can’t get a half-decent room for under US$50 a night. Cigarettes are the equivalent of about 60,000 rupiah a pack. A mug of non-happy hour beer at most pubs will set you back the same.

I just returned from a five-day trip to Singapore. After I had finished my two days of business, I spent the rest of the time exploring the city on train, bus, and foot. In the evenings, I caught up with friends at pubs and restaurants. Going to Singapore for me is like dropping in on the world to see how it’s been doing during my absence in Bali. I can report to the curious that oil and other commodities are still being shipped around the world; traders and brokers are still buying and selling; companies are still plunking down millions of dollars to make the plastic for the plastic goods that define 21st Century life; airlines are still fighting over landing rights and offering cheaper and cheaper flights; and Singapore is still building, building, building to improve the living, working, and commuting comforts of its citizens.

Singapore can be a charming place if you go to explore and enjoy it, instead of for an in-and-out visa turnaround, limiting your extracurricular activity to shopping for CDs and books you can’t find in Bali. The city has a great movie festival for art film lovers every year in April and May. The German and French cultural associations hold annual mini-movie festivals as well. ‘Fringe’ plays are regularly put on at the Substation Art House on Armenia St. and at Jubilee Hall at Raffles Hotel, some featuring actors and playwrights with London and New York City experience. Almost every weekend in season you can go to Victoria Hall or to the gleaming new Esplanade and listen to the Singapore Philharmonic Orchestra for less than the price of a cold Singapore beer.

Cars and housing are expensive for those that live there, yes, but the public transport system is second to none, the airport is world class, and the air is remarkably clean for one of the major refinery and petrochemical centers of Asia. What isn’t to like, really? Flights to the playgrounds of Asia are cheap. You can take bumboats to the east coast of Malaysia or ferries to the working ports of the Riau Islands. You can walk safely in most districts any time of the day or night. And if you think that Singaporeans are all automatons, you haven’t spent much time talking to the cab drivers about old Harry Lee and his PAP policies (PAP - the Peoples’ Action Party or Pay-and-Pay, depending on a driver’s political views).

My last day on this trip I went searching for some old shrimp farms in one of the few slices of mangrove swamps remaining on the northern coast of the island. A friend and I had been separately to the spot in the late 90s and were curious to see if the little corner had been wiped out by the intervening years of development. We did not find the shrimp farms. The mangroves were there, and a by-the-hour fishing pond was still in operation, looking more like something across the Johor Strait than like a Singapore enterprise. The boardwalk and fishing platforms were crumbling. The generator running the aerator was covered in oil and hoses. The whole area was littered with discarded wood and scraps of corrugated tin.

The best part was getting caught out in the mangroves about a kilometer from the car by a sudden rain storm. We sheltered underneath a tree until we were soaked and finally slogged back to where we had parked after giving up on a respite from the rain. We and the 20 others at the fish pond were probably the only people who got caught by the rain in Singapore mangroves that day. We had strived, we had conquered, and we still got back to a café half an hour later for a warming cup of coffee and a beer. Exploration is seldom so easy and enjoyable. As a bonus, for a couple of hours we escaped the sight of the government minders – a secret pleasure that can’t be found in almost-anything-goes Bali.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi