By Amilia Rosa,Zach Hope

Copyright theage

“Everybody’s talking about it,” says Made, a 54-year-old accountant from central Denpasar. “I had to take back the garbage from outside because no one was picking it up. There was no solution – it was just, ‘You deal with it.’ ”

Many people are confused because in some places, sometimes, these mounting piles of mixed rubbish are eventually cleared by garbage men. In other places, locals say, bags fester in the tropical sun. Until someone dumps them in a river.

Made, who asks that her full name not be published because of the neighbourhood sensitivities, walks us from her home in central Denpasar to a drainage channel cutting through ramshackle buildings and shops.

It was never clean, per se. “But it was not like this,” she says, motioning to the stew of rubbish snagged on the banks.