Not for the first, and almost certainly not for the last, Balinese people have been angered by the tawdry antics of tourists – in this case a pair of disrespectful Czech Instagram ‘influencers’.
A man was shown lifting up the skirt of his girlfriend and splashing holy water on her bottom in a temple in Bali’s Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud.
In the ensuing public backlash, Wayan Koster, the island’s governor, said the local government would step up its role in protecting holy sites.
“In the future, if there are tourists behaving like that we should just send them home, they are being disorderly coming to Bali. We will give them this warning,” the governor said in a statement.
The contrite couple tried to make amends by taking part in a ritual purification ceremony where they wore traditional clothes and touched pressed hands to their heads as a show of respect.
And that, of course, gave them more photographs to post on their Instagram site. Priceless.