'You're scared of me because I'm English': Singaporean shares experience of racism while on holiday in Bali

One Singaporean woman has shared how she found herself a victim of racism, after being cornered and verbally "attacked" by a Caucasian woman in, of all places, a washroom in Bali.

In a TikTok video posted on Saturday (Oct 1), user Fuwari indicated that it was their first day of her Bali vacation where she and a friend "encountered racism".

Speaking to AsiaOne, Fuwari, 24, indicated that she was holidaying with a group of friends but only one of them was with her at the time.

The incident occurred on Friday (Sept 30) at Penny Lane, a popular restaurant located in Canggu known for its "very Instagrammable" decor.

In the video, Fuwari shared that she and a friend, fellow TikTok user Kaelia, were just "minding our own business" taking selfies at a corner of the toilet when a Caucasian woman approached them.

"She's like, 'is this what you all do with your life?'" shared Fuwari, to which she replied with a simple but curt, "Ya."

Not letting up, the woman proceeded to ask if they are influencers and "K-pop idols", to which Fuwari coldly and sarcastically, "no, J-pop".

Fuwari explained that they were being deliberately aloof and did not want to engage in conversation with the woman as she was "obviously trying to bully us into feeling bad about taking hot pictures of ourselves".

Their tactic didn't appear to work, however, as the woman proceeded to badger Fuwari and friend Kaelia to "speak Japanese for me".

After Fuwari tried to brush her off by stating, "My parents told me not to speak to strangers", the woman commented that they were being "so elusive", shared Fuwari.

"Do you even know what 'elusive' means?" came the zinger, dripping in condescension.

The woman continued to taunt Fuwari to provide her with the definition, voicing her scepticism that the pair "speak English back home".

Frustrated, Fuwari told "this b**** that I don't owe her an explanation".

In the clip, Kaelia then jumped in to share that Fuwari was still "speaking very nicely" the whole time while the Caucasian woman was "super rude".

The kicker, however, was when the lady stated that Fuwari and Kaelia "didn't know English", and "you're scared of me because I'm English".

"Good for you lah. So proud to be coloniser is it [sic]?" exclaimed Fuwari in exasperation.

[[nid:593584]]

"At this point, we'd already figured out that it was racism," she shared, adding that only when she took out her phone to start filming the Caucasian woman did she finally leave.

Reactions to the video have been supportive of Fuwari and Kaelia, with netizens expressing disgust at the woman's behaviour. 

Some commenters hazarded a guess that the woman might have been inebriated at the time.

Responding to AsiaOne's queries, Fuwari, who declined to give her real name, shared that the woman was intoxicated "for sure", but it "doesn't give her the right to speak to me like that".

In hindsight, the designer regrets not recording the entire incident from the beginning, "so that people can see how rude she was".

Fuwari also expressed that she was "appalled" by negative responses to her video, appeared to gloat at the Chinese-Singaporean's plight, indicating how "the tables have turned".

She shared with AsiaOne that it's not her first brush with racism overseas but declined to elaborate on all of them as "it's not a competition".

In a subsequent video posted on the same day, she shared: "I'm gonna say for the last time [that] your experience doesn't invalidate my experience," said Fuwari.

candicecai@asiaone.com