Paradise reopened - Bali hopes for tourists to return

From his home high atop the cliffs overlooking Bali's resort district of Jimbaran, German expat Pak Kriss has a perfect, unobstructed view of the island's international airport.

Composed of a single runway stretching out into the ocean, Mr Kriss notes that at its pre-pandemic peak, it handled some 700 flights a day, ushering more than 6.3 million international tourists a year to the Indonesian island, reports BBC.

"Then, one day… nothing," he says with a sweep of his hands. He expected it to last a few weeks, but it went on for two years.

In 2020 the island received just one million foreign visitors, almost all before Bali and the rest of the world went into lockdown in March of that year. Then in 2001 the island reportedly saw just 45 overseas tourists. Yes, just 45 people.

Back in February, Mr Kriss watched anxiously as the first international passenger fight for 24 months arrived from Singapore.

The expat, who runs a digital marketing and web design business catering to the local tourism industry, even recorded the event on his mobile phone. Like many in Bali, he was optimistic, especially after the island ditched quarantine rules for overseas arrivals in March.

But as the computer screens in his home office call up the latest visitor numbers, he says there's little cause for celebration.

In May, Bali saw 237,710 international arrivals, up from 114,684 a month earlier, but half the number in the same month in 2019. And Indonesia's tourism minister has set the modest aim of Bali welcoming 1.5 million overseas tourists for 2022 as a whole.

"I think it will be 10 years before Bali is back to pre-coronavirus numbers," says Mr Kriss.

He believes that foreign travellers are reluctant to visit more remote destinations like Bali due to a perfect storm of the war in Ukraine, high inflation around the world, and lingering concerns about Covid-19.

With tourism accounting for more than 60% of the island's economy, driving through the once-bustling tourist centres of Kuta, Seminyak and Nusa Dua, Covid's impact is immediately visible.

Dozens of tourism businesses, from shops, to bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and villas sit empty or abandoned, with some even reclaimed by the island's pervasive and all-consuming jungle vegetation. And the streets once crowded with Australian, Asian and European tourists are now still eerily quiet.

Made Suryani reopened her small souvenir store close to the Club Med Beach resort near Nusa Dua in April, even though most of the other retail units beside her remain shuttered.

"Before Covid, in a good month, I could earn more than two million rupiah ($140; £116) a month," she says. That was slightly below the minimum wage for employees in Bali.

"Now sometimes I make 50,000 rupiah in a week. I borrowed money from family to survive, and I don't know how I'm going pay it back," she says.

At Nusa Dua's shopping and restaurant mall Bali Collection the area that previously held some of the island's top restaurants is now fenced off and deserted. Of the remaining units, about 80% remain unoccupied.

A midwife with long Covid has said she feels "abandoned and angry".

New NHS sickness absence rules mean Sarah Sutton, 44, from Swansea, will not be paid after 1 November.

She contracted the virus at the start of the pandemic while working as a community midwife at Neath Port Talbot Hospital.

The Welsh government said NHS Wales and trade unions agreed the new rules for Covid sickness absences, which began on 1 July.

Two years after she contracted the virus, Sarah can only walk very short distances with the help of a stick.

She also finds it hard to catch her breath and becomes easily fatigued, so the mother-of-four relies on her partner and eldest daughters to care for her.

New NHS Wales Covid absence rules mean she will only receive half pay from this month and nothing from November.

Hospitals can use their discretion to extend sick pay to full pay "particularly to facilitate a phased return to work", but Sarah said her present state of health meant she was unlikely to be able to return to what she described as her "dream job" in the near future.

"I can't see me being back at work in November and that's going to mean zero pay and there's nothing I can do about it," she said.

She said "abandoned" was the best word to describe her situation, adding: "We went and did a job. This was before the first lockdown, we didn't have PPE, that's when people were stealing thermometers and hand gels and everything from hospitals.

"We didn't have masks and the focus was all on handwashing and we now know it's airborne, so I'm angry.

"I was doing my job, I was looking after people, I was doing what the NHS does, it cares and then I got ill."