Bali

It was my first time traveling to Bali, and it was eye-opening to me as someone who mostly travels to first-world countries and never explored Southeast Asia outside Singapore. These are the small pieces of culture shock that I experienced.

The most immediate thing to notice was the traffic culture. I learned to drive in suburbian North Virginia, one of the calmest driving environments. Bali (presumably like other Southeast Asian countries) is the polar opposite. Every ten seconds any given motorist is six inches away from a severe accident. The roads are narrow and there are often obstacles on the side of the road and to get around them you need to briefly pass through the other lane. Such situations in the US would be a mini-heart attack for me.

A second thing that I noticed was how affordable services, food, transportation, and hospitality are. Karina and I got a 90-minute massage at $25 per person, and I got a haircut for $12. We went to Shishi Lounge and Izakaya, an amazing buffet restaurant, for only $30 dollars a person (a similar experience would cost $150 in the US). A 90-minute grab ride from Seminyak to Ubud was only $25. The affordable pricing had an interesting effect where I almost felt bad not buying goods and services in Bali.

Another distinguishing feature of Bali is the idea of “micro-retail”, where most commerce happens at small, roadside shops, instead of online and in big supermarkets like in the US. What was very surprising to me is that you could take a one-hour drive down any street in Bali and it would be full of small shops that are open with shopkeepers ready but very few customers. I was really curious about how the economics of that was feasible, as the items in the store were also very cheap. The answer according to o3, is that many factors drive down the cost of having such stores: shopkeepers living in the back of the store, ownership of land, and children and elderly helping out with labor. So even if each store only sold tens of dollars of goods per day it would still make the $2k per year average wage in Bali.

My view of poverty was also different in Bali compared to the US. In Bali, I could tell that the blue collar workers worked hard—it was evident in the culture of service, seeing construction workers on the side of the road, and even in the looks on people’s faces. I think part of the reason I felt bad about the poverty is that people in Bali work hard and don’t have access to opportunity. Whereas in San Francisco, the homeless population (mostly) doesn’t try to work hard but instead seems to be hit by drugs and not trying to contribute to society, and economic mobility is much better in the US.

A final difference in culture is the attitude in the tourism industry seems to be much better than my experience in the US. For example, when we went on a jungle swing in Bali, the assistant took the initiative to ask another tourist to take a video for us even though we didn’t want the official photographer. Another example is that at the jewelry making class, the artist added extra details on my tuna pendant that I didn’t ask for. I really appreciated those details.

Contrast. A lot of stuff looked comestically good but if you inspect more closely it wasn’t that great. For example, a designer sink where the water pressure was way too high.

Singapore

It was my third time traveling to Singapore but I enjoyed it nonetheless. A few highlights:

• Meeting Yi and his family Vanessa and Mirielle
• Very nice buffet with Sam Ching, John Ling, Karina, and Zach at Colony at Ritz Carlson
• Battlebox bunker museum with Sam
• Hanging out at GDM and OpenAI parties, Karaoke after with Shuchao and John Ling
• Going on a hike with Daniel Ching and a lot of other people, where we saw monkeys
• Playing soccer at CharisTurf, even though it was insanely hot
• Korean BBQ and hotpot with Zou Kai

Next time I go to Singapore I want to try to see a wild boar, and there is a pitch-dark restaurant with blind staff that I want to go to. And maybe go into some of the non-touristy areas.