BALI – before the tourists invaded…

Trader-colonisers from the coast of Coromandel brought Hinduism to Java. The religion was adopted by the Majapahit kingdom in the eastern part of the island. Bali was a vassal state of Majapahit and became a safe haven for refugees from the kingdom when Islam became the prevailing religion.

The original inhabitants of Bali are the Bali Aga. Though a few Bali Aga villages remain today, it must be assumed that the two groups socialised and mixed greatly. From then Bali and the Balinese were largely left to their own device. The Dutch, who first appeared in 1597, were not really colonisers, a colonial power, yes, but even that was a slow and cumbersome process. It went like this. After the brothers De Houtman laid a first contact with the island, it took the Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, VOC), and after 1800 when the company went bankrupt and was dissolved, the government of the Dutch East Indies, more than 300 years to become the administrative and governing power on Bali. See map of regions held by VOC/Colonial Government.

evolution of the Dutch East Indies

During the centuries, the Balinese kings remained an unruly and obstinate lot, all nine of them: Klungkung as the most powerful, together with Karangasem, Mengwi, Badung, Bangli, Tabanan, Gianjar, Buleleng, and Jembrana.

Numerous expeditions had to be sent to ensure that trade agreement were adhered to, Dutch ships not plundered, the payment of fines—in one case 75,000 Dutch guilders, that would be millions of euros when converted to the present—and in general to enforce the power of the colonial government. Interestingly, until the British reign (1811-1815) the main commodity traded from Bali was… slaves. The importance of this can be seen from the fact that in 1778 the number of Balinese living in and around Batavia was 13,000. Raffles put a stop to the trade and it was never revived.

Many of the expeditions ended in failure and supremacy of the Dutch was not fully established till the twentieth century. In 1906, the king of Badung together with members of the nobility, some of his wives and children, and the royal household marched into the gunfire of the Dutch troops, preferring death over a curtailment of his power and bending the knee to the Dutch. This puputan was repeated two years later in Klungkung. Unruly elements were deported to Lombok, and law and order was established. This would of course depend on from where this is observed, but Dutch sources of the day report that the local population was not sorry to see the kings, with the accompanying lack of legal certainty for the common people, and the continual state of war, go.

This might, however, be true as only 20 years later a first tourist guide[1] was published, with the writer complaining that woodcarvings of quality were difficult to find, as carvers and traders, having noted that the tourists would be undiscerning in their appreciation of the products, would offer virtually mass produced low-quality work to improve their cash flow.

Tourist flows in those days were negligible according to present day standards. Total length of paved roads was some 800 km, which in 1930 was used by 136 lorries, 264 busses and 787 rental cars, part of these serving the tourist industry. Two hotels in Denpasar offered a total of 56 rooms—Bali Hotel 38 rooms and Hotel Satriya 18. Singaraja had a total of 9 hotel rooms and Kintamani 14 in two pasanggrahan (guesthouse)—one operated by the Royal Packet Navigation Company (KPM) and one by the government. 

pasanggrahan at Kintamani



The KPM maintained shipping routes between the islands and Batavia, and with Singapore, Penang and Hong Kong. The KPM port on Bali was Buleleng.

The full tourist invasion started when the western countries had recovered from WW-II and economic growth and development kicked in. And in the 80s it really took off.

To be continued.



Sources:  Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie;  Martinus Nijhyoff, 1917
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam

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[1] BALI, het land der duizend tempels, G.H. von Faber

GERMAN BRATWURST – highly recommended…

Yesterday I went exploring. The word has a bit of an exotic whiff to it, don't you agree: seafarers explore an unknown coast, and an adventure ventures into the interior… Hardly appropriate for the car journey on 4-lane toll roads to the nearby satellite town of BSD. But I did prepare a map and a written text on what directions to follow and where to get off the toll road. Pounding rain limited the view and on a clear day I might have seen the second exit sign to BSD CITY—the instructions read exit BSD City, take the second exit on the right! That was confusing: highways in a left-hand traffic system would normally not have an exit on the right. So, when taking the BSD CITY exit I realised that it was the first when I spotted another BSD CITY exit some 100 metres down the toll road I had just left…

the German Centre

And the rain was a real non-stop tropical downpour. The roads got flooded in the lower parts, traffic was down to a crawl and I hoped that the floodwater did not hide a major hole in the road surface. It took me a good 40 minutes to get to the road where the second exit would have taken me, and after a few more wrong turns I finally reached my target: the German Centre for Industry and Trade, or more specifically, the Metro Sky Garden restaurant operated by Food Evolution Indonesia.

This company is the producer of what I think is the best bread in Indonesia—I wrote about their bread in a previous post some weeks ago. My present purpose for coming here was no the bread, but the German sausages, the display of which on their website is so mouth-watering. Not only the sausages, by the way, but as I'm particularly partial to sausages, this was my main reason for going there.

After a long talk with Andreas Stokowy, the director of Food Evolution Indonesia, and studying their home-delivery menu, I decided to buy the German bratwurst, mainly because I could compare these sausages to ones produced by other companies in Indonesia.

At home I immediately started to prepare dinner and decided to have the sausages with potato salad and a tossed green salad. In case you are interested, I make the potato salad with extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of red wine vinegar, mayonnaise (Korean), chopped onions and garlic, tomatoes diced, dried crushed red pepper, chives (dried), and salt. For the quantities—tablespoons, teaspoons, cloves, etc—just follow your own taste. I am, for instance, always a bit heavy on the garlic… not everybody likes that.

Back to the bratwurst. They are good!!! Andreas told me that they are made in Bali according to his special recipe. Well done, Andreas! They are excellent! And the best part is that their skin does not pop during frying—the juices and taste thus stay inside rather than being dumped in the pan.

For those who want to enjoy the taste of Germany too, the sausages and other meat can be bought at the Metro Sky Garden, of course, but also at Giant supermarket in BSD and Bintaro. And the bread is available in HERO Kemang.

Enjoy.

JAKARTA – the only change is…

Back in Jakarta, good to be back, Nias is nice but definitely rural, even the main town, Gunungsitoli, is apart from the racing motorcycles, distinctly rural. And something that this urbanite has not seen for a long time is the total blackness at night; if there weren't that many clouds one would be able to see the full magnificence of the Milky Way.

On my last Sunday there I was treated to this double rainbow… as seen from my room in Hotel National.

I have been back in Jakarta for only a few days but have spent several hours already in gridlock. And in unexpected locations and unusual times.

This is of course, long after the protest actions against the announced increase in the price of petrol and the torrential rains that had a devastating effect on traffic flow!

The worst case was on Sudirman. I was stuck in the slow lane and speeds were measured in mph, meters per hour, not miles. The fast lane was moving along nicely, OK, not racing, but driving in second or third gear. Openings from the slow to the fast lane are few and far between, but all except the last one before Semanggi were blocked by concrete blocks and a few policemen. Such a waste of road space, if half of the cars in the slow lane would have been allowed onto the main lanes all lanes could have been moving.

So I think I'll try one more time. In a previous post I called it "Let's advise the traffic controllers…" The response to this call for cases of regulations that actually strangle the flow, not improve it, was zero-nil-zilch-nothing-nix-nada as readers in Jakarta, and outside, remained mum.

But let's give it another try. This  time I'll call it "Let's start an association of concerned car users in jakarta (accu)" and with the right backing we will be able to have a say in the way traffic is regulated in Jakarta. We might even promise the authorities that we will accept an increase in the price of petrol of 1000 or even 4500 Rupiah (a doubling of the current price) if those in charge of traffic control were instructed to listen to accu and use a participatory approach to improve the traffic system.

The first thing to do will, of course, be designing a catching bumper sticker, or in line with common practice, a rear-window stickers. Anyone…? For a small fee of 30% of revenue accu will grant you sole sticker-rights, a sure way to mint money.