A Picture of Paradise: Bali’s Dorian Gray Complex
In Victorian London a handsome aristocrat named Dorian Gray is painted by an artist in his suffocatingly hot studio. The painting is deemed a huge success and depicts perfectly the exquisite beauty of Gray and his enviable youth. Upon gazing at his own image the vain Gray, completely entranced by the version of himself captured on canvas, wishes aloud for his eternal youth and for the painting to bear his age. He proclaims “I would give my soul for that”. Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. Enter the enigmatic Lord Henry Wotton, less fairy godmother and more influential force, who decides to grant this wish in his own way. Seeing how wonderfully corruptible Gray is, he sets about on a mission of influence, to teach his young protégée all about the wonders of self-indulgence, sin, debauchery and indulgence. In his own words ‘he would seek to dominate him […] he would make that wonderful spirit his own’. Cue, a monster of his own making.
In June 2025 a small island finds itself once more in full blown tourist season. The roar of motorbikes swell as perma-tanned foreigners make their morning commute from glass-clad villas to fitness clubs and gyms. In a once rice-paddied rural haven, budding Yogis make their way to their morning sun salutations whilst sipping on Matcha Lattes and in beach clubs dotted along its coastline, models prepare for a day of pouring shots down visitors’ mouths and dancing, lots of dancing with the wild young things of the twenty twenties.
The island of Bali, Indonesia’s most visited destination and known as a surfer’s paradise, a hippy retreat and a party boys playground is hardly a location that springs to mind when one thinks of Oscar Wilde: the erudite playwright, poet and novelist now known largely for his pithy remarks such as “always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them more” or “I have nothing to declare except my genius”. Spoiler, he certainly wasn’t arriving in Balinese customs when this was proclaimed.
Nonetheless it is this man, my favourite writer, who comes to mind as the image of Bali’s white sand beaches and sodden rice paddies float into my brain. It is less Eat Pray Love and more hedonistic decay—Dorian Gray reincarnate.
But what does a 19th century novel featuring a dashing young man doing a deal with the devil have to do with a peaceful Hindu island? This ‘home of the gods’, ‘island of a thousand temples’ (over 10,000 to be more accurate) and place of worship, retreat and fantastic satay is a far cry from deceitful dandies. Well, the answer lies when the traveller and the tourist decide to look beyond the palm fronds and intoxicating wafts of incense to the alternative, darker story of Bali. A picture paints a thousand words but sometimes it can hide much more.
Last year my partner and I were fortunate enough to visit this alluring island. We were drawn not by the sumptuous tourist adverts but by a friend’s wedding, a wonderful excuse to visit a destination alternately loved and loathed. Having read Eat Pray Love, I was keen to not fall into the predictable category of ‘spiritual tourist there to find my inner peace’ – instead I fell into the equally annoying category of ‘woke tourist who hates the fact that they’re a tourist and wants to do things that are ethical, off-the-beaten-track and authentic’. I was keen to avoid any of the hot spots that Bali is famed for and so sought out its more rugged and, to quote our green-carnationed friend, “unfashionable” side. Nonetheless, finding it impossible to completely avoid them, we also experienced the array of ‘delicacies’ arranged tackily for the visitors. As a result of this, we found an island of thirds: there was the good, the bad and the just plain sad.
Most of ‘the good’ was found in the beautiful and still largely untouched North and East coast. We spent some time in a small fishing village called Amed which is now largely known for its underwater offerings. There I did some scuba diving with a locally owned dive company and drifted in meditative bliss through coral clad portcullises of the famed Liberty Wreck.
When out of the water, we wandered along black sand beaches dyed their distinctive colour by the local volcano, Mount Agung, which erupts periodically and dominates the landscape handsomely yet forebodingly. In the blue waters young boys sit on wooden kayaks with bundled fishing lines behind them and cast about for catches of Mahi-Mahi, Bluefin or Snapper to be found later in dishes served in local Warungs. For our last morning on the quiet east coast we drove through thick dawn fog and up terrifyingly steep hills to the viewing point ‘Lahangan Sweet’. From here we watched as the bright orange sun rose slowly up, turning the jungle below from a mass of dark shapes in the cloudy mist to a rich green painting of different hues descending all the way down to the waiting shores of the different bays. The vista was startling enough and the insects sufficiently distracting that we were only slightly deterred by the inevitable few influencer types posing for endless photos on raised wooden platforms built for the perfect ‘candids’. These modern day Dorian Grays have switched canvas for iPhone and paintbrush for filters.
Further south of Amed in Blahbatuh district we released baby turtles back to the embrace of the ocean and learnt of their all too frequent perils thanks to an earnest guide and eco-activist at Saba Asri Sea Turtle Conservation. This simple centre set up by a passionate local fisherman is run by volunteers who work to inspire and educate visitors as well as to preserve Bali’s sea turtle population.
There was also ‘the bad’, spent in the coastal resort towns of Canggu. This concrete jungle could have been, with its endless rivers of roaring traffic, on an entirely different island. Here you see a side of tourism warned against in moral tales of capitalist evils and neo-liberal fancies. It is a tourism which grips visitors in its enticing grasp: luring them in with cheap drinks and social media eye candy yet cruelly keeps locals at arm’s length. They are just close enough that they feel beholden to it, so crucial is it to their income, yet far enough away that they can never fully take advantage of it. This results in a standard of living that hasn’t changed much since the first plane full of foreigners arrived all those years ago.
It is with all this in mind that I turn once again to Oscar Wilde’s moral tale, namely the infamous: “People know the price of everything but the value of nothing” as delivered by Lord Henry Wotton to the impressionable Dorian Gray. As visitors arrive to Bali in their droves, they giggle delightedly as they realise what their fat wads of rupiah can buy. “We’re millionaires” they will exclaim happily. Between 1967 and 1973 Bali’s tourism increased by more than 50% annually; the spike due not to chance but a concerted effort by the Balinese government to bring in investment aided by the ever-generous World Bank Group in order to attract private foreign investors to build hotels and create businesses. It was the footnote for Bali’s touristic future, one that seems inextricably linked to the downfall of our titular Dorian Gray who, as the story goes on, becomes exactly what he wished for: a picture of beauty hiding a multitude of sins and a soul that has been compromised.
In Bali’s ever rising supply of cheap villas which spill into once beautiful jungle and rice-paddies, I see the smiling face of Lord Henry Wotton promising thrills, adventure and a land of promise. In its glossy adverts of blue waters, temples layered like decorative wedding cakes and palm trees silhouetted against an orange setting sun I see the alluring beauty of Dorian Gray—the picture perfect image and a victim of its own success.
Unlike Gray however, whose demise was written a long time ago, Bali’s future is still not penned. When speaking to locals I discovered a deep commitment to their Hindu faith and cultural traditions alongside a pride of their island home. The Balinese people we met were friendly, kind and deeply connected to their land. The ‘sad’ in what we witnessed was the sheer economic disparity between locals and the island’s tourist and expat population coupled with an unfettered and thirsty development happening left, right and centre. Tourism has been Bali’s lifeline and noose and we, as part of the islands annual 6.3 million visitors were part of this. Complicit as we may be, I hope for a future where Bali basks in its majority of locally owned and run businesses and an island which invests in infrastructure that benefits its population: namely waste disposal systems, zoning laws to protect the natural environment and tighter controls on visitor numbers.
It was romanticism that Wilde often rallied against and that I am keen to avoid in this literary revisiting of an island too often romanticised at its peril. I was not led there by a book but one did find me there. In its pages is a warning but also a challenge. Let us, as lucky visitors to far flung places, appreciate and not greedily extract their beauty and uniqueness. Behind each beautiful picture is a story, neither should be allowed to fade.
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