Stop promoting Bali too much!

At the moment, you may be frowning at the title above (after knowing that I lived in Bali for two years and loved every minute of it) but no, it's not what you think.

Experiences tell us that, if we are overtly dependent on something, we would lose our balance when that "thing" is lost.

Which was exactly the reason why people of the Indonesian tourism industry were freaked out when the first Bali bombing rocked Legian.

Why should we be afraid?

Indonesia has more than 17,300 islands, and losing the tourist revenues coming into Bali should NOT be a big problem.

But apparently, it IS a problem.

Because we have idiots running the Indonesian Tourism Ministry. They launch the Visit Indonesia Year 2008 with Bali, Java, Lombok and Bangka as their main arsenals, with only a little bit of everything else promoted here and there.

Indonesia is not targetting much this time round with no more than 10 million international visitors in 2008 (in comparison, the tiny state of Singapore was able to attract 20 million visitors in 2007). The Indonesian ministry indeed have a realistic target, but what's the difference between year 2007 and 2008 if they couldn't exceed the number 10 million visitors?

Trust me, it just sounds pathetic for a country this big to have our tourism figures beaten by that dwarfish Singapore.

If Bali is no longer capable to generate the main income for tourism industry, we shouldn't fret. We still have 17,300 other islands in Indonesia to depend our tourism upon, and hence we should make the amenities and infrastructures more accessible to the outside visitors.