The Stirring of a Thousand Bells, Colin McPhee

Nicely written. The postscript was a bit saddening though, makes me wonder why people think mass tourism is anything other than an ironic destruction of what they profess to love. Currently I (dwelling in Canada) am being bombarded with advertisements on YouTube attempting to stimulate a "post-Covid" tourism rush between provinces and Expedia promising free cancelled hotel rooms if only I will get on an aeroplane and do my bit to pollute the world by staying for 5 days in a resort built to house people like me in a developing country.

Mass tourism seems to destroy anything that makes tourism rationally attractive in the first place. Maybe we can sell these people a different dream?

Returning in 2014 it was different. Most of the lush jungle on the road to Ubud was gone. Many of the rice paddies had disappeared, replaced by resorts and large concrete dwellings. Ubud was now a town, its streets jammed with tourist buses, and taxis full of tourists like me, its population of 70,000 or so swelling to accommodate three million visitors per year.

Jesus.