Living in Canggu Makes You Feel Like a High Schooler All Over Again

It is nice to know that nobody’s perfect, at least when we talk about Canggu’s residents. Yes, 90 percent of them look very nice, with great bodies and all that. However, they also have shitty personalities. From reckless drivers to rude, entitled trashy tourists, when you observe these people you begin to wonder whether the reason they work so hard on their physical appearances (they work in a gym like 3 hours every day and the cosmetic surgery industry is also thriving in Canggu) is because it’s easier for you to fix your body than your shitty personality?

And most of the people there are really not friendly. No one will ever say hi to you, or even smile at you when you run into them in public. They usually already have a posse of friends that they surround themselves with and they never socialize with people outside of their little cliques.

When hanging out with their group of friends, they also behave as if they are the coolest people in the world. If you’re quite unfortunate and you don’t really have your own little social circle in Canggu, you could easily feel as if you are in high school again, surrounded by these little cliques.

And this is not a positive thing: instead of making you feel young, you feel surrounded by people whose mental growth is stunted. Plus, try to listen in on their conversation and you will notice that these Canggu cliques usually spend most of their time gossiping about other people. It is no surprise that people in Canggu like to gossip given how many Instagram accounts such as Canggu Pole, Canggulosophy and Pawang Canggu that are dedicated to exposing fellow residents’ most shameful behaviors online. With most of them working as social media influencers and investors to earn a living, they have nothing intellectual or serious to talk about.

A while ago, I met some expat friends through a meditation retreat in Ubud. They’d used to stay in Canggu for a few months, they had difficulties making friends and thought this was kind of the norm in Bali. Then they all decided to move to Ubud and Uluwatu upon discovering that the people in those two places were relatively friendlier.

When that American friend and I went to eat in a restaurant in Ubud one evening after the retreat, all of a sudden two people who were sitting right next to us started to talk to us. They asked us where we came from, what we enjoyed most from Bali and so on. “This kind of thing would never happen when you’re in Canggu,” she said.

Another expat friend of mine who ended up relocating in Uluwatu also complained of the same thing. He said he became quite lonely because he could not find any friends in Canggu for six months. Luckily in Uluwatu he managed to find his tribe.

Many advice articles on how to make friends as a digital nomad suggest you to go to social circles or meetups. I already tried this one when I stayed in Canggu. First I was quite optimistic because Canggu had quite a lot of social activities, from poetry nights, jamming sessions, BDSM club (I kid you not!), crypto meetups and workout club, to name a few.

First I joined a poetry night. From the get-go, it was apparent that everybody there felt like they were the coolest “poets” ever were, because they kept on talking about themselves and their work. Not to say that their poetry was bad, though. They were good performers and all had something to say through their writing. Of course, everybody was nice to me and we exchanged contacts. However, in the following weeks, when I tried to contact them to arrange some meetup or hangout, they were either being flaky or did not reply to my messages at all.

Because it was my first experience, I tried to stay positive and think that perhaps they were just busy. Afterward I tried to join some jamming sessions in Canggu with some foreign and Indonesian musicians. Of course, when I met them for the first time there they were super nice and all. But later when I tried to contact them again to see whether we could hang out and jam together again, none of them replied to my message.

I took music lessons as a teenager and I wasn’t tone deaf. And after all, we were just a casual music group, not people rehearsing for live cafe shows. But still, I wasn’t welcome in their tiny little group. Upon hearing from other people about just how difficult it was to make friends in Canggu, I realized the reason why people never replied to my messages was not because they were busy. I also realized that they were simply trying to be nice to me when they said they liked to hang out with me during our first meetings on the hobby groups.

I followed those people on social media so I was checking out their stories. Very regularly, they uploaded photos and videos of their most current activities. And I noticed that those people never really hung out with people outside their little cliques. They also never seemed to try other activities rather than their set hobbies, whether it was playing music, reading poetry or working out. Considering they never reached out to me again after our first meetings, I assume that they really do not welcome any new people into their circles. I am glad that at least they are not rude to me.

These musicians and writers also all looked pretentious in their social media postings, behaving like celebrities by posting lots (could be dozens) of IG stories every day to let their “fans” know what the latest thing that they were up to. To be fair, they do have celebrity status in Canggu with their very own devoted followers who really liked their work. But perhaps staying in Canggu for too long has turned them into big fish in a small pond. But perhaps it is still much better to be a mini celebrity in a little town rather than being totally invisible people.

So, if you’re thinking of moving to become a digital nomad in Canggu, you’ll have to think about this challenge and how to overcome it. It is next to impossible for you to penetrate an established clique here, but if you’re lucky enough, you can find a posse of friends who happen to also be alone, form your own clique and remain exclusive for the rest of your stay there.