A police investigation is underway on the Indonesian island of Bali following the mysterious deaths of two Chinese nationals whose bodies were found in a hotel.
A 22-year-old female from Jiangxi Province and a 25-year-old male from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were found dead in their hotel room.
The couple was staying at the InterContinental hotel in Jimbaran, an area near the most southerly point of Bali and just south of I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport.
Coconuts.co – an alternative media site based in Bali, as well as other cities in Southeast Asia – quoted a report from BALIPOST regarding the sequence of events leading up to the discovery of the bodies.
WARNING: Readers may find some of the following details distressing.
The hotel operator reportedly received a distress call from room 4223 at 6.43am on May 1. Staff rushed to the room with a wheelchair and found the male's naked body covered in blood.
Chinese media outlet South Shandong Online (鲁南在线) reports that the male's body was found on the balcony of the hotel room.
Staff then reportedly found the female's dead body in the bathtub of room 4223; she had wounds on her neck.
According to Coconuts.co, CCTV footage showed that the female was a guest at the hotel and that the male came to visit her shortly after midnight on May 1.
Friends of the female are reportedly “angry” at suggestions that the pair’s deaths were suicide or murder-suicide. They say that the couple had been in a relationship for 2-3 years – a relationship the friends described as “loving.”
On Weibo, a hashtag related to the friends’ comments has been viewed over 180 million times, as of press time.
Prior to border restrictions due to COVID-19, Bali proved a popular travel destination for Chinese tourists. According to Statista, 1.36 million and 1.18 million Chinese nationals visited the Indonesian island in 2018 and 2019, respectively. There were 117,000 visitors in 2020, zero in 2021 and 13,000 in 2022.
[Cover image via Pixabay]
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