so this is economics

Just a few hours remain of my three weeks in Indonesia. Having signed away my rights to a shower, and with a day's journey ahead, I'm hiding away from the tropical sun in an Internet cafe in Bali touristville, aka the Kuta beach area.

Two J-school friends and I met here for the holidays and spent the many sun and rain-filled days sampling the sites, tastes, hobbies and escape of Indonesia's Number 1 island for tourism - in fact, one of the top tourism destinations in the world. This little island - about 90 miles wide by 55 miles deep - and other neighboring locales (we stayed three nights at the Gili Islands, off the west coast of Bali's neighboring island, Lombok) house all the classic tropical-island attractions: reefs, volcanoes, beaches (black and white), famed surfing waves, ancient artforms, teeming markets, legions of resident artisans, lush vegetation, exotic animals, and that relaxed island culture.

It's a beautiful place, undoubtedly a little oversold as a tropical paradise, but still fascinating and multifaceted. Known for its tolerance in oft-militant Indonesia, Bali has the country's most diverse religious climate (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity), and the tourist machine there represents Indonesia's main outreach to the Western world. The Dutch have been regularly visiting for centuries - one of which they owned the place - and it's a major Aussie holiday destination. Several Japanese frequent the island; Koreans, South Africans, Russians, Brits and other Europeans come in lower numbers; and you can even find the occasional odd American. Estimates vary, but some say tourism makes up as much as 80 percent of Bali's economy, which makes the island - in the middle of an impoverished nation and region of the world - extremely vulnerable to threats to that industry, such as the terrorist bombings here in 2002 and 2005. Each shopkeeper, each cabdriver has a before and after story, particularly about the 2002 blast, which killed an estimated 200 people in a nightclub. Twenty were killed in 2005.

Since the blasts, tourism has slowly regained steam, with an estimated 5 million people visiting the island each year (statistics from the Indonesia's bureau of statistics). Bali is once again claiming its place as one of the wealthiest territories in the country. But it's still an island where poverty and luxury intertwine in an uneasy co-dependence.

And I find I am still a naive traveler.

In American eyes, I'm working-class, earning my own living in the lower white-collar trades. In European and Korean eyes, it's something at least similar. I travel, edging me into the realm of elite, but on my own it's mostly a no-frills style ... staying at budget hotels, navigating public transport and schlepping my own bags. It's a role I've felt mostly comfortable with, smugly self-righteous and benignly ignorant in. But this world is brown and (almost entirely) white, and coming here marked the first time I independently, irrevocably found myself part of the part of the rich, Western world. The served. The employers. The ones who buy adventure, who purchase culture. Who have more in their wallet than their waiter makes in a month.

I'm not sure how I imagined it would be ... can't say with any certainty that I thought about it at all, short of anticipating some sun, beautiful sights and good social time. But it definitely was a jolt upon arrival to find myself so classed for the first time of my adult, independent life. It's something that makes me uncomfortable, and yet right or wrong (some of both, I think) won't stop me from traveling, from spending, from hiring. I understand the business aspect of things, the fact I bring valuable cash and other benefits to struggling people. I just don't want to entirely lose that shock, to expect to live in this role. I don't want to relish my happenstance boon in social order, or to forget it. Mostly that.

It's a world of gray, this tourism business, especially to impoverished regions, but one I want now more than ever to explore. And I will bring my dollars, my camera, my glasses and my empathy.