IT IS time to get the bogans out of Bali.

Every week, 16,000 rude, lewd Aussies and their badly behaved children head to the Indonesian island of Bali, filling its beaches, bars and hotels.

I’ve heard a lot over the years about how rude Australians are while travelling in Asia, and didn’t think it could be that bad. But I’ve just spent a week in Bali, and was frankly shocked by what I saw.

SECRET BEACH: The Bali tourists don’t know about

I hadn’t even stepped off the plane before I saw my first Bali bogan covered in tatts and wearing a Bintang beer singlet.

He and his mates got the party started on the plane and cracked open their duty-free Jim Beam in the air. They were totally paralytic by the time they landed. Bloated and burping, they stumbled into the airport, groping the beautifully dressed women greeting passengers with flower garlands on the way past.

These Bali bogans will spend their holiday bartering in markets for beer coasters, polyester soccer outfits and cotton dresses, enjoying the power play of bartering stall holders down from $10 each to $6 for two. They’ll feel important when they take a 90c taxi ride and tell the driver to keep the change from $1. They’ll talk in temples, ignore signs requesting they don’t take photos, and put tomato sauce on everything.

They’re easy to spot because the dads have lots of tatts, mums have beer guts, and the kids have rat’s tails and corn rows in their hair.

It’s no wonder locals feel Bali is in danger of losing its identity in its bid to chase the Aussie tourist dollar.

This is most evident on the streets of Kuta, where bar after bar is packed with Aussies drinking all night long. When bars close in the early hours, they spill noisily into the streets, vomiting in the gutters before passing out on the footpaths. Then they wake up the next day and do it all again. They don’t care that the man paid to clean their vomit earns less than the price of one beer a day.

But the scourge of Kuta is spreading to surrounding areas like Seminyak, where we were staying. At night, we got sick of taxi drivers trying to rip us off and men yelling obscenities at us (“You look moist” and “Wanna F--ky?”). Roadside stalls that used to sell local delicacies now hawk bumper stickers with slogans like “Mark is Gay” or “Pete is Gay”, and “Big Fat Pussy”. Nice. So when will it hit Ubud? Or Nusa Dua?

Of course, the large beachfront resorts where you pay $700 a night for a villa, are oases of calm and quiet in the wider sea of boganry. But who can afford to stay in places like that?

In any case, it’s all a mirage, because just a few metres from the fancy resort walls, horizon-edged pools and manicured lawns give way to shacks and rubble where entire extended families live in two cramped rooms.

The real pity is that when you’re a tourist who just wants to take advantage of others, then you miss out on learning anything about the people around you.

There just seems to be no interest in trying to understand what life is like for the Balinese.

Do they secretly hate us for turning them all into our servants? What does the man whose job

it is to hang out in the bar toilets and refold the end of the toilet paper into a triangle want out of life? Is he happy?

I spoke to one young lady in a shop who told me she earns 3 million Rupiah a month, which is about $300 dollars. She has a young daughter and she and her husband live with their in-laws

to save money. She doesn’t think they will ever be able to afford their own place. “My mother-in-law, she makes me uncomfortable,” she said with a sad shake of her head. How can she reconcile people paying more for a jacket in her shop than she earns in an entire month?

The reality is that the Balinese need our Aussie tourist dollars, but it comes at a high price. The wealth that’s pouring into the country isn’t shared, and it’s just forced the majority of workers into low-paying manual service jobs.

This inequality may just be a fact of life in Asian countries, but the problem is that many Aussies have stopped seeing the Balinese as people and instead see them as little more than our servants.

I reckon the bogans should just stay home, and clean up their own vomit.

Blog with Susie at Susieobrien.com.au or follow her on Twitter @susieob