Balinese locals worry Russian-backed development behind Eat Pray Love house could threaten Ubud's culture

Ubud, the mountainous region of Bali, has become a congested tourist hub.  ( CC BY 2.0: Jorge Franganillo)

On a main road in Bali, scooters weave through bumper-to-bumper traffic.

This is Ubud — the spiritual heartland of what’s known as the “Island of the Gods”.

This mountainous region became famous for its Hindu temples, terraced rice fields, and sacred monkey forest.

Now, it’s a congested tourist hub.

But one block back from this busy road it’s like stepping back in time.

The only signs of life on this quiet street are the stray dogs and chanting filtering over the wall of an ornate temple.

The homes here look hundreds of years old, and among them is the one that helped bring the tourists to Ubud.

This family compound featured in the book, that became the movie, and the inspiration for a million memes: Eat Pray Love.

It’s the home of Ketut Liyer — the Balinese healer who helped Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert put the “pray” into Eat Pray Love.

Ketut has since passed away, but his grandson Gede continues to heal people at the front of the compound with a modern twist: he’s a doctor.

“I went into the modern medical [system] because my grandfather asked me to, he hoped I can combine it with the traditional [Balinese medicine],” he says.

While Gede sees patients at the front of the compound, his wife, Puspita, runs the guesthouse out back. She’s bright and engaging with an infectious smile: it’s little wonder tourists feel at home here.

More than a decade after Eat Pray Love, the family is still riding the wave.

But virtually overnight something has caused them to pause.

A forest is razed

It started with the snakes.

In the early months of 2023, snakes and birds began descending on the Eat Pray Love compound.

Then, Puspita heard chainsaws coming from the forest behind their home.

Next, there was dirt in the compound’s water.

Puspita went to her rooftop, and what she saw stunned her.

The forest — where Gede spent his childhood playing, and which locals believe was home to spirits — had been razed. In its place was three hectares of dirt.

“I’m shocked, very shocked,” says Puspita.

“Why has no one asked permission when our village has been broken like this?”

Soon, construction noise was going all day and all night — “from 7am to 3am,” according to Gede.

Under the cover of darkness, a hidden city was beginning to emerge.

‘Cities of the future’

Hidden City — that’s the name of the development replacing the forest behind the Eat Pray Love compound.

The “city” will include 100 homes, shops, restaurants, a gym and even a nightclub. It’s billed as one of the biggest projects in Ubud’s history, and it’s backed by Russian business.

The idea is you have everything you need where you work and sleep, and these self-contained “cities” are popping up across Bali.

They offer a loophole for foreigners wanting to invest in the island. Owning land is illegal for foreigners — as the law poetically puts it, “Only Indonesians may have the fullest relation with the earth, water and airspace”.

These developments offer the next best thing: decades-long leases on villas, apartments and townhouses, that can be sublet to tourists and expats.

At the Hidden City, a 30-year lease on a villa will set you back around $US600,000. So one thing is clear: these cities are not aimed to house locals.

Hidden City won’t be finished until 2025, but there’s another flourishing “city” just a short drive away, that’s already raking in Russian roubles.

On the outskirts of Ubud, a cluster of concrete Soviet-style buildings looms above the rice paddies.

This is Parq, a community for “visionaries, creatives and entrepreneurs”, which calls itself a “city of the future”. “Digital nomads” work from the packed pool bar, where a self-styled guru films himself beneath a palm tree.

There’s a Las Vegas-style mini Colosseum out front, which will soon be a shopping mall.

Inside, a Russian opera singer is serenading visitors, her voice bouncing off the marble walls of the cavernous foyer.

A giant warplane hangs suspended in mid-air. It feels poignant: this place has become a haven for Russians and Ukrainians escaping the war.

The developers, who aren’t themselves Russian, said they had to scramble to get more apartments ready for the influx, which soon formed 90 per cent of their clientele.

It appears Russian expats are a key market for the Hidden City too, if its Russian language marketing materials and Russian backing, are any indication.

This ritzy, closed-in city model has been so successful that Parq is now building a second development on a beach where it claims 90 per cent of all Instagram photos from Bali are taken. (No, we couldn’t verify that.)

The Russian war has accelerated a gold rush for developers spruiking a package deal of Utopian ideals and passive income. Whether you’re a “heart-centred human” or a bare-naked capitalist, there’s something for everyone.

But to locals, these cities for “visionaries and creators” are little more than gated communities.

“Is there any connection to our village? That’s the most important thing,” says Puspita.

Ubud has changed since the influx of Russian tourists, according to Puspita.

“We’re happy because people are coming, but we’re not happy when people attack us [by being] very rude in the street. And also they don’t respect our culture because they’re like… riding bikes naked!”

Bikinis on bikes is a sore spot for the deeply religious Balinese. Tensions boiled over when two Russian tourists rode a scooter off a pier half-naked during the pandemic. It was a tipping point, and the Russians were deported.

Puspita says incidents like this, and emerging developments like Parq and the Hidden City are all connected.

She worries they’re leading to the erosion of Ubud’s traditional way of life.

“I’m just afraid with my generation and the next, people will forget about the culture,” says Puspita.

“They will forget about the spiritual.

“You can enjoy Ubud because of the rice fields. You enjoy Ubud because of the temples. Now a ‘city’ is coming, what will happen?”

So, faced with a city over their back fence, Puspita and Gede got talking.

‘A lot of money’

On the other side of the village, children are packing up after dance class at Dewa Berratha’s house.

He’s an old friend of the couple and runs a school to pass Balinese culture on to the kids.

He too is opposed to the mega-development that’s springing up in their traditional village.

“They’re using my village to get money,” he says.

“Not just money, a lot, lot, lot of money.”

As his students wave goodbye, Dewa shows off the petition against the development that he circulated in the community.

Getting signatures wasn’t easy.

Since the pandemic — when tourism dried up — locals have been wary of turning down any potential business.

“After COVID we’re starving,” says Dewa. “So [the developers] promise they’re going to make us better. They use us.”

And there’s another factor stalling the campaign. Bali is a Hindu island, and the belief in karma guides everything the Balinese do.

The villagers feel that if the developers do wrong to the village, they will get their comeuppance — it’s not their role to intervene.

Dewa says developers and governments exploit this attitude.

“We are calm people who don’t want to make a problem, and they know that,” he says.

“People in Jakarta, everywhere, they know Balinese people are like that. They use it.”

Despite the obstacles, Dewa, Gede and Puspita managed to cobble together around a hundred signatures.

They took their petition to the village leadership and waited for a response.

Asked why they didn’t approach the developers directly, Puspita seems shocked by the very idea: “A small person complaining to the big company? Of course not!”

If this is a David and Goliath fight, it seems David is afraid of facing Goliath.

“If I talk with big people like that, they have everything,” says Dewa. “They have power. So how to talk?”

But after weeks of construction, the villagers did score an audience with the Hidden City team. It was their first chance to find out exactly what was planned in their backyard.

Online, the Hidden City looks like a vast modern glass and steel structure, set amid swimming pools, terraces, and gardens.

But Gede and Puspita say the developers told them the designs on the website were “just for promotion”.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Background Briefing, the developer said several of those apartments have already been sold off the plan.

The company denied misleading the locals, but the villagers insist they were deceived.

“When people would like to make good money, they don’t want to tell the truth,” says Puspita.

So who exactly is behind the Hidden City, and what’s their take?

The developer

If his Instagram profile is anything to go by, Ukrainian expat Nick Markov is living his best life in Bali’s bars and beaches.

He looks more like an influencer than a property developer. But his website — all in Russian — promises big returns for those willing to invest in Bali. Profits can even be paid in Crypto.

Hidden City is by far his most ambitious vision.

And chatting with Nick, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was no campaign against the development.

He says the local leadership raised the problem of the jack-hammering through the night, but that was resolved and now they’re on good terms.

But he does admit to some local backlash.

“I think maybe some people don’t like us. Many people have a bad rumour to us.”

He believes the village should welcome his development, claiming “More than 700 people will work inside”.

Asked about the forest that was felled to make way for it, he says each tree removed will be replaced by three more.

“We don’t want to make like an urban style city,” he says.

“We still live in Bali. We’re addicted to Bali. We would like to keep Bali as Bali.”

The way Nick sees it, he’s improving the place he’s called home for six years.

“Our living space, it’s totally 100 per cent without cars. You can walk around full circle.

“The people will come and can stay all day because they have restaurants, they have gym, they have co-working space, offices and living space.

“This will grow the tourism in Ubud for sure.”

There’s no doubt that Hidden City, and others like it, are growing tourism in Ubud.

The question is when the “Island of the Gods” becomes a “city of the future”, who wins?

Before our interview, the Hidden City website had said its main partner was MBM — a Moscow firm that builds industrial precincts across Russia. Following our interview, all references to MBM were removed.

Over Zoom, Nick — a Russian-speaking Ukrainian — seems keen to downplay his Russian partner’s role: “These are old friends with very good experience in construction, that’s just why we work together.”

But the website hinted the Russian firm may be more than simply a construction partner: investors are signing their leases with an MBM subsidiary, it said, suggesting the money trail ends with the Moscow company.

Plus, Nick says the project has been partly financed by Russian investors.

Still, he insists he’s not developing a “Russian village”.

“At the moment we have zero buyers from the post-Soviet Union.”

In fact, he says Australians are enquiring weekly.

But the project’s marketing materials appear in Russian as well as English.

And to some analysts, there’s a more significant risk from Russian tourism than bikinis on bikes.

For Professor Alexey Muraviev, these scrabbles over individual developments are part of a broader contest for influence.

Soft power and foreign influence

Professor Muraviev is one of Australia’s foremost experts on Russia’s influence on Asia and advises governments on national security.

He says Russian tourism empowers the Kremlin.

“For Russia, tourism has become part of the soft power expansion,” he says.

“Russian tourists play an important role in bringing in foreign income to a number of destinations. And certainly, the sheer volume of Russian tourists and the tourist dollars that they bring have an impact on how host countries perceive their strategic relations with Russia.”

Professor Muraviev cites a laundry list of countries where Russian tourism has transformed into Russian power — Türkiye, Egypt, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

“It’s almost like the Russian government is following the Russian tourists,” he says.

And those tourists are drawn to developments like Parq and the Hidden City, which allow them to feel at home abroad.

While other countries have rejected Russian tourists since the Ukraine war, Indonesia has welcomed them, even discussing direct charter flights between the two countries.

There’s big money to be made, but Professor Muraviev says there’s another factor, too. While Russian tourists might be eating, praying and loving on the Hindu “Island of the Gods”, Moscow’s wooing an Islamic government in Jakarta.

He says Russia uses its large Muslim community to bond with Islamic countries like Indonesia.

Moscow’s friendship with Jakarta should concern our whole region, according to Professor Muraviev.

He says the Russian navy regularly receives a warm welcome at Indonesian ports, and the two countries have an intelligence-sharing agreement.

So when it comes to Russia, Bali is open for business — but that’s a fight far too great for Dewa, Gede and Puspita to put up.

It has been months since they sent their petition to village leaders, but still they’ve heard nothing.

When Background Briefing contacted the village leaders, they were unable to confirm whether or not they had approved the development, or who was responsible for such an approval.

Nick Markov, the developer, insists the project was granted a permit, but would not supply Background Briefing with a copy unless we attended his office in Bali in person.

With each passing day, the concrete foundations of the Hidden City grow from the razed forest behind the Eat Pray Love temple. Short of a miracle, there’s no stopping the developers now.

A cursed night

It’s 7pm, and Puspita is rushing to the village temple, holding a woven bamboo box full of intricate offerings she’s stitched together.

It’s a cursed night in Bali, and she has to get to the temple immediately to pray away bad spirits.

The traffic is bumper to bumper on the narrow streets.

When she arrives, her son Kadek is playing gamelan, the traditional Balinese instrument, on stage with other boys.

Dewa, their teacher, is wearing his signature grin as he watches his young proteges.

Then the girls come out, shrouded in red cloth with dark red lipstick, they freeze like statues, then wriggle like snakes.

After the performance, Kadek is elated.

“I’ve been practising for nine months,” he says.

“I’m always excited to get to know more about my favourite passion.”

He just put all his savings towards buying his gamelan. It should pay for itself: playing for tourists is “the best way to get money in Ubud if you’re a kid”.

But the family fears that could change. “Maybe people will not use gamelan anymore, it will change like karaoke music and nightclub — who knows?” says Gede.

On the higher level of the temple, the family is splashed with holy water at the end of their prayers, a piece of rice placed gently on their foreheads.

Looking around the vibrant temple, Kadek says he has no intention of becoming a doctor like his father, Gede.

“I want to be a palm reader like my grandfather,” he says. “I’ll be the seventh generation.”

He’s not about to let the Eat Pray Love legacy die, not in this family anyway.

This — the gamelan, the temple — is the Ubud that Dewa, Gede and Puspita are fighting so hard to keep alive. It’s what attracted the tourists to Bali in the first place. But can it survive them?

Gede’s family have lived beside the Hidden City plot for generations.

“But if it becomes a modern city, it will impact my children, my family, my land, my water and everything,” he says.

Moving isn’t an option. In Bali, men stay in their family compound from birth to death. Every compound has a family temple, and it’s their duty to maintain it as their connection with their ancestors.

“My child’s story is in there also,” says Gede.

“I must stay there.”

It’s this that they’re praying about as they kneel amongst the incense and chanting on this “cursed night”.

The jackhammering is no longer keeping Gede and Puspita from sleeping.

Now, it’s the birds.

“I used to fall asleep with the birds crooning,” says Gede.

“Now, I hear them screaming all night because they’ve lost their homes.”