Indonesia -- Bali Seems To Weather A Storm Of Tourists

KUTA, Indonesia - Above a busy intersection near a beachfront strip of luxury hotels, a billboard for Cathay Pacific Airlines heralds the inexorable, inevitable thing we call progress:

Bali, the island of the gods, "the morning of the world," is now accessible by jumbo jet, direct three times a week from Hong Kong, not to mention Singapore and Australia.

That's the sad, disquieting state of affairs, at least for all those who have long considered Bali the most exotic place on Earth.

Now the good news: Bali can still send the needle surging on almost anyone's exotic-meter, despite close to a million tourist arrivals last year during "Visit Indonesia Year," the government's campaign to promote tourism.

"Bali, more than any other place I've seen in the world, has been able to weather the tourist storm," said Harvey Leve, an American business consultant and self-described Baliphile who lives in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

"I try to go as often as I can," he said during an interview, "and keep discovering new places."

"The morning of the world." That's how Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru once described Bali, a Hindu island in predominantly Muslim Indonesia where it seems like everyone is an artist and even the statues wear flowers in their hair.

And so, in the town of Batubulan, to twist Nehru's phrase a bit, "the morning" begins when "the world" arrives - hundreds of Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Australian, German, Dutch and American tourists.

They come by the busload at 9 a.m. to watch the local dance company perform a Balinese "barong" at a bamboo and thatch pavilion on the heavily traveled main road up-country from Kuta, the tourists' beachfront stronghold.

The native dance is genuine, a titanic struggle by a costumed dragon to fend off evil spirits, though the Fuji film sign at the souvenir stand right across the street is tacky and the vendors who descend on the tourists once the show ends can be more than a little obnoxious.

It doesn't sound all that exotic, but walk up the main road a few hundred yards and turn left down a shaded alley.

There you will find the artist Made Rame sitting on a crude wooden bench, mallet and chisel in hand, slowly turning a block of sandstone into the Hindu god Vishnu riding Garuda, the mythical bird.

One of Bali's master stone-carvers, Rame, 39, has been tapping away at Vishnu for 40 days, seemingly oblivious to the tourists, working as his father worked, his rubber sandals almost buried in a morning's worth of stone shavings.

Nearby, Made Wirawan, one of Bali's child carvers, puts the finishing touches on Dewesita, wife of lord Rama, also fashioned by Rame from a block of stone.

Rame's wholesale rendering is much more difficult than Wirawan's detail work, but at 14, the boy has many years left to learn his craft.

Batubulan is known for its stone-carvers. Crates in the back of this small factory will carry their work to lawns of mansions in Miami and Rotterdam.

Then there is Sukawati, a bend in the road away, full of puppet-makers. And Mas, known for wood-carvers and mask-makers. Ubud is where all the painters live, and Blahbutuh is home to Bali's only surviving gong-maker.

All of these little towns, identifiable by craft handed down from generation to generation, are connected by verdant, terraced rice paddies, geometric designs on rolling hills which are Bali's greatest works of art.

Men plow the paddies, working behind water buffalo; women in bright sarongs harvest the rice and walk along roads to Hindu temples carrying fruit and flowers and burning incense sticks in baskets on their heads.

The Balinese have proved most resilient, maintaining their culture, by and large, despite the allure of easy money from the tourist trade.

Ida Bagus Made, 65, one of Ubud's best-known painters of traditional Balinese landscapes, grouses about the tourists, the invasion of outside culture, the traffic and the younger generation of artists, churning out inferior work, corrupted by money.

But sitting bare-chested at his easel, his long gray hair hanging over his ears, Made is living proof that there is something incorruptible in the Balinese soul. Ask the price of his paintings and get a very soft sell.

"It's up to you," he says. "If you're interested, I will sell. If you're not, it's all right.

"I sell only for money to buy paints. We keep our name, we don't need money."

A generation younger, I Ketut Agus Partha, 33, a well-known puppet-maker in Sukawati, has made his peace with - and earned a profit from - the tourist industry without cashing in his pride.

His grandfather passed a boxful of traditional Hindu puppet designs to his father, and his father passed the box to him.

He now employs 15 puppet-makers and supplies 300 flat leather puppets on sticks, painted by hand, to the five-star Bali Beach Hotel every three months.

Partha's sister is a student at a 50-room government hotel school down at Nusa Dua, an enclave of eight five-star hotels on the beach a short drive from Bali's new international airport.

Nusa Dua was conceived by the Indonesian government and financed by the World Bank as a way to minimize the erosion of Balinese culture by concentrating large numbers of foreigners in a self-contained, beachfront luxury district.

By all accounts, it seems to be working. Bali is, after all, best-known as a beach resort, and many who come and stay in hotels at Nusa Dua and Kuta never leave the white sand.

But visiting Bali and staying at the beach is a little like visiting Paris and skipping the Louvre.

There is a volcano upcountry, and a monkey forest, and a seaside temple that ranks as one of the most photographed sights in all of Asia.

And in almost any village, like Mas, known for its wood-carvers and mask-makers, you are likely to stumble onto a barong dance through the streets on a Sunday afternoon, not because some tourists are paying to see it. It's just part of life.

"I love it all," says Leve, the Jakarta businessman.

"I've been biking in the countryside, hiking in Ubud, lying on the beach. I just enjoy the people. I find them warm and wonderful - and creative. Their creativity never ceases to surprise."