In July 2026, Indonesia’s social media universe was flooded with discussions surrounding a ‘fun run’ event in Canggu, Bali, which was accused of being discriminatory towards locals and Indonesians in general.
Videos of the early morning running event circulated in social media with many commenting that the time it was held was insensitive towards locals’ working schedules, since the event took up space in public roads.
However, there were also complaints and accusations of the event not accepting Indonesian participants. The discussions surrounding it thus developed into one about discrimination and behaviours of tourists and migrants in The Island of the Gods - a popular nickname for Bali.
Entourage, who held the event, have issued clarifications through their Instagram account, saying that a technical glitch has caused difficulties in registering participants using Indonesian numbers. Two of the main organisers have left Indonesia and are banned from re-entering the country, as reported by Antara news.
Julia Winterflood, an Australian writer who has been living in Bali for 11 years, said that such incidents have occurred before, and that they were natural consequences of expatriates remaining in what she labeled, the ‘bule bubble’ - ‘bule’ being a slang for white people in Indonesian.
Ryan Onara is an Indonesian currently working as a personal trainer in Bali. He said that he personally has never experienced any discrimination as an Indonesian, and he did not consider Entourage to be discriminative in their actions. However, he lamented the time of the day chosen to hold the controversial running event.
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