The Yearly Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (Bali)
The
Ubud Writers & Readers Festival is an annual glitzy celebration
aimed at Asian and ASEAN authors to be featured extensively. The event
is held by the NGO, Yayasan Mudra Swari Saraswati, under the helm of
Janet DeNeefe, co-founder of the Foundation, who put together the first
reader's festival.The writer and reader's festival is the
largest and most renowned cultural and literary event in Ubud, Bali.
Creating cultural exchanges and sharing of ideas among regional authors,
the diverse backgrounds of attending writers and book lovers, both
local, regional and visiting western scribes enjoy a week of authors
speaking, book launches, and shop talk. Accomodations
in Bali are still affordable, getting a condo that is still well
appointed can run you around $100 or so a month. Indonesian food is
cheap enough and even when you decide to live it up, you still get great
value for what you spend. From $400 up to $1000 a month is the
estimated budget for expats--backpacker dude setting up a bootstrapped
web business or someone relocating in Indonesia to get the most bang out
of their meager life savings and enjoy a quality of life unlike their
western homeland where the high cost of living would eat away at their
meager nest eggs.
Indonesia is still has some of the most modern ASEAN urban centers
where one can work or invest time and money or just have fun
traveling, shopping and sightseeing.
In Bandung, areas such as Pasar Palasari have second-hand book and magazine flea markets are a huge thing for people looking for Malay or Bahasa langauge textbooks and many ASEAN students and book hunters from Malaysia, Thailand or Singapore cross borders to check the place out to find the books they need.