By Ali Syarief
A three-hour flight delay at Ngurah Rai International Airport. What a charming introduction to Indonesia’s “world-class” hospitality. Passengers sat slumped, scrolling endlessly through their phones, sipping overpriced coffee, trying not to scream. The airport’s announcement system, as usual, delivered nothing but vague apologies—like a broken lullaby for the restless.
And yet, amid this purgatory of waiting, I discovered a little theater of order: the waste bins. Three of them, lined up like loyal soldiers—one for paper, one for food, one for plastic. Beautiful stickers, bright colors, a picture-perfect lesson in environmental responsibility. People approached reverently, pausing to read the signs before placing their trash with almost religious devotion. Ah, discipline! Civilization! A flicker of hope.
But then, the plot twist is worthy of a dark comedy. Enter the janitor with his trolley. With one sweep of the arm, he dumped paper, food, and plastic into the same container. All the meticulous efforts of the passengers were obliterated in seconds. A microcosm of Indonesia’s love affair with systems: we adore designing them, decorating them, and then betraying them the moment they become inconvenient.
A curious passenger confronted him: “Why mix them? We already separated them.” The janitor, with a shrug and a half-smile, replied: “Don’t worry, it’ll be sorted again later.” Brilliant. The kind of answer that could win an award for national sarcasm. Later—that magical Indonesian word, floating in the same time zone as “maybe,” “someday,” and “never.”
And isn’t it poetic? At the same airport where flights are delayed for hours, waste too is delayed in its destiny. Both passengers and garbage end up in the same limbo—dumped together, stripped of categories, swallowed by the great Indonesian system of “we’ll fix it later.”
Ngurah Rai is more than an airport. It is performance art. The bins are props, the janitor is an actor, and the passengers are the unwitting audience. What was supposed to be an education in civic responsibility turned into slapstick comedy.
So here’s the real tagline for Bali’s gateway to the world: “Ngurah Rai International Airport—where time stands still, flights don’t fly, and even your trash learns the futility of discipline.”
Now tell me, isn’t that… Indonesia banget?
