The Last Entry

The number of days I have left in Indonesia is dwindling to an end. At present, I’m back in Bali enjoying the sun in the pleasant little town of Padang Bai, and killing time until my flight out from Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport.

I’ve had a great experience the past months travelling through Indonesia and taking a more focused look at the tourism industry in Java, Bali, and Lombok. It’s been very informative speaking with people involved in so many diverse aspects of the travel sector and to see the progress of various responsible travel initiatives. Implementing projects is not always easy, and the outcomes are sometimes different than originally intended, but there is something to be said for all the hard work and creativity being applied to try and improve tourism.

In this last blog entry, I’d like to mention an innovative organization called Wild Asia who is working to promote sustainable tourism throughout Southeast Asia. I first discovered the Wild Asia website before I left for this trip while I was searching for information on responsible traveling in Indonesia.

As I mentioned, it isn’t always easy to implement programs geared toward sustainability, but what Wild Asia does is provide the resources - print, multi-media, and video information, as well as inspiration, to help travel businesses do just this. Each year the Responsible Tourism Awards they host promotes best practices. By recognizing tour operators working towards responsible tourism Wild Asia is providing a showcasing of positive ideas that other operators can then think about adopting. Wild Asia is also involved with projects at the local level such as seed grant programs and other sustainable agriculture initiatives. And, while Wild Asia helps and encourages tourism businesses to adopt responsible practices, they also do an excellent job promoting responsible travel through online articles and a RT resource library.

So, of course I was excited to find their website, and I contacted the Responsible Travel Coordinator, Rebecca. I explained to her the project I was doing and she was happy to send me some useful information materials. Not to mention, further inspection of their website provided a great resource to learn about various responsible travel initiatives in SEA, and to read entries in the resource library about other people’s experiences travelling through Indonesia. I decided while I was travelling to also submit some entries to Wild Asia, to further add to their library. A site like this is a great way for travelers to participate and share information on places and organizations demonstrating responsible travel characteristics, which was one of my original goals with “The Exotic Durain.”

Anyway, check out their site at:

That’s it for the blog. Or maybe, I should say “to be continued …” at some future date unknown ;)

P.S. If anyone would like to see additional photos of my trip they are located on Flickr for "travelbaxter"