Travellers leave island en masse after break

Ary Hermawan, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Cesilia, 25, flew into Bali on a one-way ticket for a relaxing vacation over the long Idul Fitri holiday. She assumed it wouldn't be too difficult to get a ticket back to Jakarta so she could be back at work Monday. She was wrong.

After some serious scrambling and numerous phone calls, Cesilia was finally able to book a seat on a Lion Air flight on Saturday for Rp 1,149,000, or almost three times as much as she paid to fly to Bali with the same airline.

Still, she was glad for the ticket. Cesilia, who works as a journalist for a daily newspaper, had already been told by several airlines that there were no seats available on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, the last three days of the Idul Fitri holiday.

"I have had my holiday, which was quite long, so I have no excuse whatsoever to prolong it. I have no choice," she said.

With the end of the national holiday, probably the longest "joint-leave" in the country's history, people who left Bali to celebrate Idul Fitri in Java have begun to return.

And all the holidaymakers who packed Kuta Beach and filled the island's hotels are now crowding Ngurah Rai airport to fly home.

An official at the airport's Idul Fitri post, I Ketut Gusti Arsana, said the number of passengers leaving Bali on Friday -- the fifth day after Idul Fitri -- was 9,625 on 73 flights.

The number of arriving passengers was 6,341 on 67 flights.

"Last year, the number of departing flights on the fifth day after Idul Fitri was only 59 with 5,903 passengers," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

He said he was pleased by the situation.

"This is a clear sign that Bali is now considered safe, while more domestic tourists now have the money to spend on a holiday in Bali," he said.

On Friday, he said, the airport served 5,438 passengers on international flights arriving on the island.

Arsana predicted Saturday would be the peak day for holidaymakers flying out of Bali.

An official at the Ubung bus station, Agus Juliantara, said Thursday was the peak day for people returning to Bali after celebrating Idul Fitri in their hometowns, mostly on Java.

"On Thursday, the number of buses entering Bali was 100 with 3,752 passengers. The figures declined to 90 buses and 3,099 passengers on Friday," he said.

Gede Putrawan, head of Gilimanuk Port in Jembrana regency, said he expected the number of people returning to and leaving Bali to peach its peak Saturday.

"Domestic tourists will check out of their hotels on Saturday afternoon and they will crowd the port on Saturday evening," he said.

"Motorcycles are already lining up at Ketapang Port, waiting for their turn to board the ferry to Bali," he said

Ketapang Port is in East Java.

Authorities have said the number of people, particularly jobseekers from Java and Lombok, entering Bali after Idul Fitri is expected to go up this year from past years.

In 2006, the busiest post-Idul Fitri day for Ubung bus station saw 99 buses carrying 3,605 passengers enter the island.

Those figures have already been surpassed this year.

Authorities have begun to take measure to prevent jobseekers from entering the province.

Security officials at Gilimanuk seaport, which links Bali to Ketapang Port in Banyuwangi, East Java, have turned away 600 people who were unable to show valid identity cards.

A sociologist from Udayana University in Denpasar, Gde Made Suarjana, said he supported administration efforts to tighten controls on arriving jobseekers, but warned the policy could be interpreted as discriminatory.

"The policy has to be seen as an effort to maintain social order as the issue of rising population has long been a problem for any city. It is not aimed at preventing the movement of people," he said.

However, he said if people saw the issue as one of ethnicity, it could aggravate social problems.