Kuta looks as shitty as it did before 2002, wild growth of ugly buildings :)
I remember that the monument had the names stuck on with bronze-ish letters, not carved. I remember wondering why they used different fonts for all the different nationalities, makes it look rather haphazard.
Last February, tourism seemed to be booming; hotels full, Perama buses busy... seemed to me it was back to normal, though hotel owners told me that there has been a shift to more Europeans and that the package Australians are staying away. This may be a good thing.
The article ignores what most 'Bali bombing articles' do - the fact that tourism on neighbouring Lombok suffered even more that that of Bali, and is recovering much much slower. In Senggigi, the main resort there, you can see abandoned hotels and shops and parts look quite sad despite new efforts to bring back the visitors. Many locals working in tourism now only spend the few high season months on Lombok, forced to work in agriculture or industry in Malaysia or elsewhere for the rest of the year. Bali is doing much better yet gets all the attention.
<blockquote>Quote
<hr>This is a matter of personal style, wouldn't you say? <hr></blockquote>
Yes, run-ons are a matter of style, but there is a point after which most readers find them distracting.
Sentence fragments are defined objectively. Sometimes I leave them in if the writer knows what he/she is doing, but again, they have a tendency to be distracting unless their artfulness is even moreso.
Anyway, it's way off-topic, and I am normally not a grammar critic unless paid to do so. So I'll leave it at that.
A thread descends into bickering about journalistic style! Surely a first, but I'm delighted; please don't stop rajulkabir. I had noticed the apostrophe troubles in the above bit, but decided not to pass comment, given my own tendancies to stylistic wanderings. I'm something of a fan of the fragment myself, and have been told that I use fronted clauses far too frequently which apparently has a tendency to make copy sound like tourist brochure crap... not a problem if it is tourist brochure crap, but troublesome otherwise.... Are you a professional rajulkabir?
#10 makes an extremely good point - and one that has rarely been addressed. While Bali has bounced back (rajulkabir - it's okay to use cliches as long as you know you're doing it - I'm scared of you you now) tourism in Lombok and beyond has not.
I'm scared of no one. Probably a matter of age. And fragments are my signature, so to speak.
Jeroen, Tim: the above was after all an excerpt, and it was not a "Bali bombing article" per se. On the contrary. It describes a bicycle trip across Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa, so of course Lombok is mentioned in the article:
The night is spent in Senggigi, under normal circumstances Lombok’s tourist hub par excellence. Now the virtually empty eateries and streets are reminiscent of Wild West ghost towns: when there’s money to be made entrepreneurs come rushing in from all over the country, setting up saloons and brothels, raking in a quick buck. When the well runs dry, they close the doors and move on.
Good one - that's a bit what it feels like outside high season. Recently there's been some investment in the central plaza area of Senggigi that have done much to bring life back, but the (revamped) art market still has some shuttered houses and the mall near the beach is still nearly empty.
Bali gets over 10 times more tourists than Lombok, but I found Lombok the more rewarding place to visit.
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