Bali - Enchanted Isle

 

 

"For centuries Bali has been a forgotten medieval island where sun-bronzed women dress as Eve, a land where nobody hurries, and all is peace. It is a little paradise where men wear flowers in their hair, and strange gamelan bells ring all night; a paradise where people live happily without money, without clothes, and without enmity; a paradise where you can buy a little thatched bale for a song, and live easily on fruit and sunshine."

So begins "Bali - Enchanted Isle" by Helen Eva Yates, a travel book published in 1933. That was then, when Jakarta was still known as Batavia, from where it took three days on a Dutch steamer to reach Bali. In today's globalised jet-age, when millions of tourists invade Bali every year, it would be almost impossible to find the Bali described in this book.

Yes, there are still some remnants of it left to be seen after you've survived the chaos of Denpasar and turned your back on the fleshpots of Kuta Beach; I even believe I found a few and, had I been in circumstances different from the ones I was in then, I might have been tempted to join the expat lotus-eaters I encounters in those places.

That was many years ago, and my current circumstances are even less conducive to turning my back on the material world that surrounds me, but I'm still allowed to dream, aren't I? So here we go with Chapter I of "Bali - Enchanted Isle".