Viral TikTok shows rubbish, brown water at Bali beach

A viral TikTok has shown the dark side of Bali welcoming back tourists, with footage showing brown waves crashing onto a beach littered with rubbish.

Confronting footage has emerged showing a beach in Bali littered with rubbish and murky water in the wake of borders reopening to tourists.

TikToker human4800 posted a video two days ago showing a brown river of water flowing into the ocean at Seminyak.

The video also showed brown waves crashing onto the beach, with garbage littering the sand.

Captions on the video read: “Bali: reopens for tourism. Businesses: you think things will return to normal quickly? Me: um, yes?”

“Seminyak has some good soup to swim in,” the woman wrote alongside the video, referring to the dirty water flowing into the ocean.

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A TikTok has shown a beach in Bali littered with rubbish. Picture: Human4800/TikTok

Brown waves could be seen crashing on the beach. Picture: Human4800/TikTok

Last month, Bali officially scrapped quarantine requirements for vaccinated tourists and reintroduced visas on arrival.

The video has since gained more than 25,000 views and hundreds of comments from shocked social media users.

“This makes me sad, the land needs to be maintained,” one person wrote.

“Can you imagine the paradise Bali would have been 100 years ago. I’d give anything to live there during that. Amazing beauty,” another said.

When users questioned how officials could let the pollution get so bad, the TikToker noted that there are actually “multiple tractors and clean up crews working every day to try and keep it at bay”.

The woman who posted the TikTok is an American who lives in Bali.

She told the Daily Mail that Bali already has an “overflowing waste infrastructure” and any influx of visitors burdens the system even more.

She also claimed a local river near Seminyak turned red after businesses poured dyes into the water after making clothes to sell to tourists.

The TikToker urged anyone planning to visit Bali to ask businesses and hotels about how they dispose of their waste to put “pressure” on them to do better.

“For example, most of the clean-up crews on the beach are hotel employees. They do it because they know tourists don’t want to see trash on the beachfront,” she said.

The woman did not want to be named over fears authorities would deport her for addressing the issue.

Many commenters were quick to point out that it is not unusual to see rubbish along the beaches in Bali.

“This could have been filmed any time from 1984 till today,” one person said.

Another claimed it was “always like that”.

Tourism is starting to return to Bali after the country was closed to travellers for two years. Picture: iStock

In late 2017, Bali declared a “garbage emergency” across a 6km stretch of coast that included popular beaches Jimbaran, Kuta and Seminyak.

Officials deployed 700 cleaners and 35 trucks to remove roughly 100 tons of debris each day to a nearby landfill.

“People with green uniforms were collecting the garbage to move it away but the next day I saw the same situation,” said Claus Dignas, a German who claimed he saw more garbage with each visit to the island.

“No one wants to sit on nice beach chairs and facing all this rubbish.”

Bali’s rubbish problem is at its worst during the annual monsoon season, when strong winds push marine flotsam on to the beach and swollen rivers wash rubbish from riverbanks to the coast, according to Putu Eka Merthawan from the local environment agency.

Thousands of tourist have been pouring into Bali over the last month, after the tourist hotspot was largely shut off to the world for the past two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Vaccinated tourists from more than 20 countries, including Australia, can now visit the country without having the quarantine.

Tourists are exempt from isolation if they’ve received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine and have tested negative with a PCR test prior to their flight.

They also need to get tested for coronavirus after landing at Denpasar and show proof of a four-day hotel booking.

If they test positive to Covid on arrival, they’ll need to quarantine for four nights, hence the hotel booking.

Travel insurance, which covers you for up to $100,000 if you catch the virus, is also required.