Snowing in Bali

by Kathryn Bonella

  – Rafael

  Marco’s phone rang incessantly, with surfers, expats, or tourists with connections, wanting to buy Lemon Juice. Often he’d brusquely answer, ‘I’m fucking busy today, I’m in a business meeting, call tomorrow,’ snapping shut the phone to a round of laughs as he sat back down, smoking dope and drinking his beer.

  He loved the attention and the power kick of being the island’s number-one dope boss. If anyone wanted a quality smoke, he was the man, even trademarking the name Lemon Juice, and printing hundreds of T-shirts with ‘Lemon Juice 100% bagus’ (good) written on them in bold fluorescent lettering. Everyone from surfers and expats to rich and poor locals wore them.

  I work Lemon Juice for more than 12 years. Nobody knows because the people are so stupid. I just call my friend and say, ‘Let’s have a drink of Lemon Juice,’ but really, ‘Let’s smoke some pot, ganja.’ That’s the way, nobody knows. And then it gets famous the name Lemon Juice, everybody talks about Lemon Juice, and then I open one small Lemon Juice company.

  – Marco

  He organised people to sell for him, as Rafael had originally done, as well as selling it himself to friends.

  With Lemon Juice he was very famous.

  – Rafael

  Although most bosses kept a bit of distance from their horses, Marco liked keeping them around, reminding everyone he was the boss. It had been Marco who’d started the trend of using the word ‘horses’ instead of mules, initially as a typical Marco joke, using it solely for his best runners – his ‘pure bloods’. But it had soon become generic for all runners and widely used by the Bali drug crews, because it was more cryptic, therefore safer.

  Marco lived at the small rustic resort, Bali Village, in Legian, in fairly basic rooms nestled in overgrown gardens near the beach. The place was always bristling with his horses, and the resort was dubbed Marco’s stable.

  He also invited horses to the club, repeatedly using them for a gag, telling the horse to ‘talk’. Obligingly, they would neigh on cue for their boss. Marco found it more hilarious every single time.

  He was so crazy. Sometimes at the club I say, ‘Who is this?’ and he says, ‘This is my new horse. Look how good he is, Cavalo relincha – like, “Talk horse, make some song” ’ – and the guy does: ‘Neigh neigh neigh’. Marco says, ‘See, my horse is very good.’ I was thinking, ‘Fuck, what are you doing, man? Why do you do this to yourselves? ’ Marco loved to fuck with the horse, put them in position; he says horse, they are shit. But he was so crazy, so funny. He made a joke with everything. Whenever I came to Bali Village, I see so many people around. It was his stable, full of horses, sometimes he sent two guys together the same flight with Lemon Juice.

  – Rafael

  At this time, in the late 1990s, the island was the perfect place to start being a drug dealer, or work in other criminal lines that cashed in on cashed-up Bali. Tourism was booming and the underworld was growing as fast as the number of infinity pools. Bali was far from its sanguine, peaceful postcard image. It had turned into a hedonistic haven for drugs and debauchery, becoming a lucrative business island for pimps, hookers, drug dealers, gangs and corrupt cops, police, prosecutors and judges – who were all running rampant.

  There are a lot of fucking bad people, otherwise their jail wouldn’t be full of Balinese. If they are all so good, there wouldn’t be one Balinese in jail and there are plenty. They even have a little Hindu temple in Kerobokan.

  – Alberto

  Most tourists flying in for a week of sun-drenched poolside drinking, cheap massages and shopping were oblivious to the subculture of crime. But it existed all around them. The men in black standing at the front doors of exclusive restaurants, clubs and bars were mostly gangsters from the island’s most violent gang, Laskar Bali – its members usually identifiable by a distinctive three-ringed symbol tattooed between their thumb and first finger. There were at least five big gangs, but Laskar had most of the security contracts in Kuta, Legian and Seminyak, the prime tourist areas.

  These security deals were worth big bucks, as they gave the gangs control of the drug trade. The contracts were the cause of the violent turf war that was fought constantly right across the tourist mecca, almost in a parallel universe, usually not apparent to tourists unless they got caught in the crossfire. When fights broke out in popular clubs like Bounty or Sky Garden, information was kept sketchy, with local journalists under dire threats of harm if they dared to name Laskar – all to keep the false Eat Pray Love–esque image intact.

  Why don’t you put Laskar’s name in the paper?

  Mostly our journalists are scared to write that group’s name. That group don’t like it if we write their name in our paper.

  Journalists are scared?

  Yeah. Scared.

  Can’t the police protect you?

  How long can police secure you . . . have you any guarantee that police can secure us forever . . . no. We say mobs or community organisation, but we don’t say Laskar Bali.

  But in Bali, everybody knows, right?

  Everybody knows. But the big problem will come to you when you mention Laskar Bali.

  What is likely to happen?

  I’m not sure they won’t kill me.

  You think it’s possible?

  Possible. They can beat you on the street, run up to you, intimidate you. So, one of our ways to protect ourselves is not to write that group’s name.

  – Editor, one of Bali’s major newspapers

  One night just after midnight, a group of Laskars turned up at a popular bar, the Red Room, in Legian, carrying Samurai swords, and stabbed a chef to death. It was a revenge hit. Laskar wanted to avenge one of its own, after a member was badly hurt a week earlier by security guards at Sky Garden Club in Legian – where Laskar had lost the security contract to a rival gang, Hercules.

  The Red Room attack was strategically organised; with about ten of Laskar’s Seminyak members called to a secret meeting, and told to bring their Samurai swords. These men were all physically strong, a prerequisite to being accepted into the gang and given ID. If anyone got a call for a job, unless they had a good excuse they had better turn up. The gangsters convened in Seminyak, close to the Red Room, charging themselves with Arak, while two went ahead to recce the bar. As soon as they gave the word that the coast was clear – no police – the men roared down Legian street on motorbikes, their faces covered by black bandanas, and their swords tucked into their black leather jackets, ready to attack. Unfortunately, this night they got the wrong man, stabbing to death the chef, whom they mistakenly took for a Hercules gangster in the dim light.

  What was the problem in the Red Room?

  Hercules hit my friend, in Sky Garden – not kill, but broke his head. We meet in Seminyak first, and go, fast, very fast, must be five minutes, no more; after that we run.

  But Laskar killed the chef?

  Yeah, wrong guy.

  – Laskar gangster, Made.

  Tens of thugs carrying swords attacked the bar early in the morning last Wednesday. These thugs came on motorbikes and by car and went amok, attacking everything with their swords and killed Bagus Alit Edy Sastrawan (28) from Penarungan, Mengwi area. He died instantly due to a severe sickle cut. The cut stretched from his upper left lip to the inner part of his neck, and it was found that this also cut the blood vein on his neck.

  ‘It all happened at around 00.30. The bar was about to close. Suddenly, a group of thugs came up and attacked everything around them,’ an officer from Denpasar Metropolitan Police explained.

  – Denpost, 15 July 2010

  It was only when a high-profile person was involved that the frequent club violence got wide exposure, like former AFL North Melbourne coach Dean Laidley. His holiday hit headlines when security guards at Kuta’s Bounty Discotheque, where Laskar held the contract, attacked him and his family. It was vicious – the former coach was glassed in the head with a beer bottle and his son suffered a broken jaw. Three security guards were arrested.


  ‘What the police are telling us so far is that things like this happen all the time,’ Laidley told SEN [sports entertainment network] radio.

  – The Age, 11 October 2011

  It happens a lot over here that tourists get beaten up by security, and other tourists as well.

  – Bali International Medical Centre spokeswoman Tasya Aulia, Herald Sun, 10 October 2011

  Crime also pervaded the hotels, with hookers allowed to work in most of them – including five-star resorts – by slinging the security guards 50,000 rupiah (about $5).

  Nyoman, a Laskar gangster, was one of the tourist precinct’s seven official pimps. He regularly parked his battered blue Toyota four-wheel drive in a beach car park directly in front of the popular $300–$1600 a night Padma Hotel. Most nights the rented Toyota was full of girls in skimpy outfits, touching up their lipstick and mascara, dabbing perfume between their legs, as they took turns taking jobs.

  The seven pimps cruised the streets with girls piled into their cars, on the lookout for customers to walk by or come out of clubs. They also relied on phone calls from taxi drivers, hotel concierges, bike transport guys, fake drug dealers or anyone who could snare tourists wanting sex. Whoever did got a share of the take.

  Nyoman and the six other pimps had a monopoly, protected by the police, who also took their cut. The pimps owned the streets in the busiest tourist areas – Kuta, Legian and Seminyak – each paying a monthly sling of at least $400 to the chiefs at the three big police stations. The deal ensured they could work with impunity and that no other pimps could encroach on their turf without risking arrest.

  But they had brisk competition from hundreds of brothels, some unsubtly disguised as massage parlours or karaoke bars, and some blatant in-your-face sex shops – dubbed aquariums – which were glass-fronted rooms crammed with girls sitting on tiered seats. These were in back lanes or nestled in the main streets of Kuta, Legian and Sanur, often alongside luxury hotels, but unless you knew they were there, you wouldn’t have a clue. Taxi drivers often took tourists to the aquariums, escorting them down a laneway and taking them inside to ensure they got their cut. Dozens of girls, usually young and sometimes attractive, sat with numbers pinned onto their chests. This was fuck by number.

  Aquariums, you know, they’re like fish aquariums, but lady in the glass.

  – Ricky, taxi driver

  Like most taxi drivers, Ricky was constantly asking his male passengers, ‘You like a lady?’, especially if he picked up a drunk tourist on the street or leaving a club. If Ricky got a nod, it was a great night, possibly tripling his usual daily take, depending on how well or badly the tourist negotiated. Some customers would go with Ricky to pick their own number; others would ask him to go to the aquarium alone and deliver the girl to their hotel.

  Ricky happily obliged, but never wanting to get it wrong and miss out on his fee, he always asked for specifics on ‘style of body’ preferences. ‘Fat body or sexy Coca-Cola body?’ he’d ask, drawing the shape of a Coke bottle with his hands and whistling for impact. He never bothered asking about breasts, because in his experience, ‘All tourists like big boobs.’

  It wasn’t only at night that Ricky found sex tourists, it was any time. This was business and westerners were rich, often stupid, prey. With his chirpy sense of humour belying his cunning, he worked to win tourists over. If you wanted to go fast, he’d floor it, zigzagging in and out of traffic, or go as slowly as you liked. He was super-charming, always asking, ‘Tomorrow you need taxi?’ Whenever he got the chance, he’d tell a guy, slyly if they were with their wife or girlfriend, that he could organise a lady. Often he’d conspire to drop a wife or girlfriend off to shop in the up-market Seminyak boutiques, then escort the guy to a brothel.

  It’s money, it’s my work, it’s good. I take the wife shopping, drop her off and then the man, husband, goes to massage. Happy ending. Massage just one hour. The girl shopping is normally two, three hours, so the husband already has massage, happy ending and go. After, she ask, ‘Where you been?’ He says, ‘Bintang (supermarket), restaurant.’

  – Ricky, taxi driver

  One night, pimp Nyoman’s girls were all busy with customers, except for pretty 21-year-old Linda. They were parked at the edge of the beach in front of the Padma Hotel. It was a full moon – a beautiful Bali night when all Balinese across the island went to full moon ceremonies to give thanks to their Gods. Nyoman had dressed in his traditional Balinese clothes, a sarong, shirt and head cloth, and prayed at the temple earlier. But tonight he was pimping and stood at the back of his four-wheel drive overlooking the beach. Shadows of palm trees were swaying on the sand, and the white caps of the waves glowing luminously under the specially cast light – a magical effect that many of the hotels and restaurants used along the beachfront. It was balmy and peaceful, with only the sounds of the ocean, the rustle of trees and the laid-back music of Green Day’s ‘21 Guns’ coming from inside the car.

  Nyoman was chain-smoking and gazing out to sea, contemplating life. His wife had just had a baby girl. It highlighted the darkness of what he was doing and he only wanted to keep selling girls until he’d made enough cash to start a new business, probably a massage parlour, probably with happy endings. But for now the streets were it.

  The sound of his assistant’s motorbike coming across the car park snapped him out of his musings. A good-looking guy climbed off the back. He was mid-thirties and Australian. He wanted a girl. All business now, Nyoman opened the front car door to give him a look at the merchandise. Linda sat poker-faced, staring out the windscreen. A second earlier she’d been laughing animatedly on her phone. The guy stood there, slightly edgy, staring, thinking, assessing her fuckability. Yep, he liked her. He slipped Nyoman 200,000 rupiah (about $20), and zoomed off on the back of the assistant’s motorbike to a nearby hotel that charged Nyoman 50,000 rupiah ($5), the standard hourly rate. The assistant returned to pick up Linda. It was a quick job – within 20 minutes she was back again, sitting in the battered old Toyota, dabbing perfume. The customer had told her he needed to hurry . . . his wife was waiting for him back in their Padma Hotel room.

  Nyoman was happy to oblige all requests, so long as his girls were not put in danger, like the group sex in a villa swimming pool, which a bunch of English guys requested. The girls had all strutted in their skimpy, sparkly nylon outfits and high heels down the walkway between the private villas at exclusive bvilla in Seminyak. The concierge had phoned ordering ten girls for his guests. But one by one, or sometimes in twos, the girls did the walk of shame back down the long passage as they were rejected. Only two girls made the final cut but were expected to have sex in the swimming pool. They were scared of a pool orgy getting out of hand, so Nyoman gave the cash back, keeping 100,000 rupiah ($10) as a kill fee.

  Lewd requests were fine, though. When a middle-aged Australian husband and wife hired one of Nyoman’s girls for a threesome and asked him to come and watch for an extra $100, he thought it was weird but jumped at the cash.

  Australians were his favourite customers, usually easy­going and drunk. Another one of the seven official pimps was 27-year-old Ketut, a member of another gang, Baladika. He had a request from an Adelaide guy for a hooker all night. Inside his Bali Garden hotel room, he paid Ketut the 700,000 rupiah ($70) service fee upfront, then slurred a request for Ketut to stay an extra few minutes while he had a quick kip. The guy was blind drunk and quickly asleep on one of the twin beds.

  The pimp and his girl sat on the edge of the other bed waiting and watching soft porn on the TV. It made the pimp horny and he turned to his hooker, started kissing her and then gave her a test run, right next to his oblivious, snoring Austra­lian customer.

  I see on the TV a lot of the sexy sexy, and then I kiss my staff, because she is a beautiful lady – good body, tall, good smile, friendly, you know. And then I make sex, just one time. She was aggressive too, she liked it because she was new. If she were working for maybe one month, two months, she wou
ld not be interested in sex.

  Did the Australian guy wake up before you left?

  Yeah, I say, ‘Wake up, wake up, I want to go.’ He says, ‘Thank you brother, thank you brother.’ Was very funny.

  – Ketut, pimp

  Also on the streets were hundreds of fake drug dealers, loitering outside clubs or down lanes, stalking tourists, quickly attaching like clingfish as they hustled a potential sucker down the street, saying, ‘You want ephedrine, hashish, ganja?’, displaying the fake drugs in their hands, or digging into their pockets and magically pulling out whatever drug the person wanted.

  Shaking off these dealers was often difficult, as they were poor and desperate to find stupid, preferably drunk, tourists. Wayan, a long-term fake drug dealer, rode around on a metallic green scooter, bought from money he won in an illegal gambling racket, with a boutique of imitation drugs in his pockets. Every night he trawled the streets for hours, hunting for fools. On a good night, he’d also snare a tourist wanting sex and pass him along to his friend Nyoman – for a cut. He didn’t like his job, but it was cash, needed to buy his kids an education and a chance for a better life than his.

  Customers sometimes they beat me, kick me, say, ‘Fuck you.’

  Well, you’re ripping them off.

  Yeah. I don’t want to but I make this point to them: ‘Sorry, brother, but it’s very hard to live here, to get some money, because my system of the government not so good.’

  – Wayan, fake drug dealer

  Wayan had been arrested many times when undercover cops did a sweep of the Kuta beachfront area, scooping up all the dealers, taking them to a police station, testing their drugs, then releasing them the next morning.

  There were also plenty of dealers with the real stuff, in clubs and on the streets; often in cahoots with the police so they’d all get a slice of the payoff from a busted tourist – who’d almost always be willing to pay big bucks to eliminate the problem before it went further.