Police Presence In Bali’s Ubud Increased For Tourist High Season

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Bali’s arts and cultural capital Ubud is one of the most popular tourist destinations on the island.

A bustling wonderland of temples, traditional markets, incredible cafes, and gorgeous boutique hotels, Ubud is an essential bucket list destination.

The high season is in full swing in Bali. The island is busy and bustling, and tourists from all around the world are exploring everything Bali has to offer.

In light of ongoing work to eliminate badly behaved tourists in Bali, police in Ubud have increased their patrols of the cultural capital to ensure both tourists and local communities can continue to thrive side by side. 

Police in Ubud are increasing patrols of the most popular tourist areas of the town.

They have been tasked with monitoring tourist behavior and instigating ‘dialogic patrols’ to make sure that tourists in the area know what they can and can’t, should and shouldn’t be getting up to. 

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Ubud is an incredibly popular destination with international tourists, but the area also attracts a significant amount of domestic tourists too.

Ubud is becoming increasingly accessible to the masses, and as the town becomes busier, the risk of disrespectful or disorderly behavior on the part of tourists increases.

Police and other tourism stakeholders across the island have been asked to take a preemptive and proactive approach in order to eliminate any illegal or disrespectful behavior by tourists. 

The Ubud Police Chief, Kompol I Made Uder, spoke with reporters about the increased patrols. He shared his hopes that the increased police presence will help establish a greater sense of comfort and safety amongst local communities and tourists. 

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Kompol Uder said that the center of the patrol from Ubud’s Sacred Monkey Forest out into the surrounding tourist streets.

In recent weeks police officers have been stationed along Jalan Hanuman, Jalan Monkey Forest, and at the intersection by Ubud Palace on Jalan Raya Ubud.

Traffic officers are also stationed at the key intersections that feed traffic into the center of Ubud. 

Ubud is not the first of Bali’s leading vacation destinations to increase police patrols in order to increase public awareness of appropriate behavior and public safety. 

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Down in Seminyak, police teams started increasing their patrols two weeks ago.

Seminyak remains one of the most popular beach resorts in Bali and has been welcoming hundreds of thousands of tourists to the vacation of their dreams over the last few months. 

Officers can be seen patrolling the whole of the Seminyak area, which runs from Double Six Beach through to Petitenget Beach, both on the beachfront and in town.

The increased patrols in Seminyak have been put in place with the same intention as in Ubud, to ensure that tourists are kept safe, know that they have a clear point of contact in a crisis, and that potential unruly behavior can be discouraged before it begins. 

Since the beginning of the year, over 4,000 ‘naughty’ foreigners have been reported to police teams in Bali.

This has included reports of theft, public nudity, illegal driving, disrespecting temples and other sacred sites, drunken or unruly behavior, and acts of violence.

There have been dozens of cases of tourists breaking their visa conditions, either through working on the island or operating businesses illegally.

Speaking from the Ngurah Rai Immigration Office in mid-July, Sandro Bobby Raymon Limbong, the Head of Immigration Technology, Information, and Communication (TIKIM), explained what has been done so far to tackle the rising number of formal complaints reported against foreign tourists. 

Limbong explained that there have been 4,366 formal complaints since the 1st of January 2023, which has resulted in 85 foreign nationals being deported from Bali.

Of these 85 deportations, 36 people were sent home due to violations of law, order, or cultural disrespect, and a further 49 people were deported as a result of overstaying their visas.

As Bali works to move into a new era of tourism, the authorities are putting a series of new solutions in place to tackle the issue of disrespectful and illegal behavior by some tourists in Bali.

This includes increased police patrols, new information billboards, scannable QR codes, social media awareness campaigns, and even the launch of a hotline where concerned citizens and visitors can report violations.