I’m going to Bali again. For the third time this year. Leaving behind me the turdgit waters of Jakarta’s Venetian canals and exchanging them for the clear, aquamarine seas of North Bali. Not a bad deal huh? But there’s a catch. Because just as Cinderella couldn’t stay at the ball, I can’t stay forever in Bali. That’s just the way it works. The clock strikes midnight and before you can say “Schapelle Corby” you are in the departure hall of Bali’s Ngurah Rai International airport and carefully nursing an overpriced can of warm Beer Bintang…

Tourists have been going to Bali for ages now, of course. But that sort of got me thinking – exactly how long? Now I know the hippy dudes first set up camp in the small village of Kuta in the ‘70s (yep just imagine that, Kuta as a small village!), but that hardly marks the beginnings of tourism in Bali.

For that, you have to go back much further.

To the 1920s and 1930s, and even before.

A time when the Yanks banned booze, the term for a loose woman was “charity girl”, and cigarettes were 10 cents a pack.

Anyways, here’s me guide; now “only” about 90 years out of date :)

The tourist’s guide to Bali, 1920

1. Getting there. Well, you can forget about a nice easy trip on some budget airline for a start. Tourism in Bali really owes its beginnings to the creation of an official government Tourist Bureau in 1908 in Batavia – now Jakarta of course – which sold Bali as the "Gem of the Lesser Sunda Isles”. But it wasn’t until 1924 that the Royal Packet Navigation Company (KPM) laid on a weekly steamship connecting the capital with Bali's north coast port of Buleleng (Singaraja). Traveling this way must have been a lot like traveling on one of today’s huge Indonesian PELNI passenger ships I guess – but without the millions of mattresses laid out everywhere (including under the stairs). Once in Bali, you’d probably rent a car – much like you would today. Except that it wouldn’t be Japanese of course, but some huge old banger that you have to wind up by hand. Wonderful!

They certainly knew how to promote Bali in the old days!

2. Where to stay. There certainly weren’t many hotels in those days. As for the first ever tourist hotel in Bali? Well, it was built in Denpasar and some highly imaginative Dutch chap named it “Bali Hotel”! Even more preposterous was its location: on the site where the puputan massacre and mass suicide took place in 1906! Another hotel was built in Kintamani - the perfect location to take in the spectacular vistas around Lake Batur.

But by the 1930s, Sanur was the place to be. It attracted expats, artists with a fondness for painting nude Balinese women, writers and other luminaries, as well as its fair share of degenerates such as pedophiles and other unsavory types (much like today, really). One of the most famous painters was a Belgian chap called Le Mayeur (1880-1958). He married a Balinese dancer called Ni Pollok and for some reason or another painted her nude as often as he possibly could, with one of his paintings of her recently selling by auction at Christies for the cool sum of US$22,682.


Le Mayeur could certainly paint (although he’d probably be arrested in today’s less enlightened Indonesia)

3. Wildlife. Incredible as it may seem, early tourists to Bali still had a chance of seeing a real Bali tiger - in the wild!!! Now of course the only tigers in Bali are gonna be in the Bali safari zoo – and they aren’t gonna be Bali tigers either. The last confirmed sighting of a tiger in Bali was in 1937 when some idiot decided to shoot the rare beast. Shame the WWF was not around back then. Amazingly, the Balinese tiger was never captured alive on film and neither was it ever displayed in a public zoo. All we have now is a few skulls and bones and some old photos of the dead cat.


Some hunter types have just shot dead a Bali Tiger. Twats.

4. Beer. Ever wondered what tourists used to guzzle before Beer Bintang, Anker Bir or the incredibly insipid Bali Hai beer? Well it was something called Java Bier, and it was brewed under the name of NV Nederlandsch Indische Bierbrouwerijen.

Heineken became the major shareholder in 1936 but in the backlash against foreign companies following independence, the state took over the company and it was given a new name: Perusahaan Bir Bintang!

5. Celebrity tourists. Old Mr big lips himself (Mick Jagger) and David Bowie are both said to love Bali. Michael Jackson also visited on a number of occasions. But possibly the first ever celebrities to visit Bali were funny man Charlie Chaplin and his traveling companion Noel Coward, who wrote this pretty much unknown yet rather witty ditty:

As I said this morning to Charlie,
There is far too much music in Bali.
And although as a place it's entrancing,
There is also a thought too much dancing.
It appears that each Balinese native
From the womb to the tomb is creative,
And although the results are quite clever,
There is too much artistic endeavor.

Which pretty much sums up the place today.

Some things never change, eh?

Bizarre medical conditions. So strange you’d think someone was pulling your leg (or perhaps hacking off theirs). Yep, that’s called Body Integrity Identity Disorder and it ain’t very nice. Then there’s Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (that must be hard to come to terms with!), music-induced seizures, Fatal Familiar Insomnia and even – would you believe it – a condition affecting people who are unable to open their eyes!

But the bizarre medical condition which is sweeping Indonesia at the current time is slightly different.

Stiff neck syndrome. And here’s a sufferer from Jakarta being examined:


So what’s causing the problems? Well, at first the doctors were completely perplexed. But after collating data from a large number of cases, they were soon able to ascertain some interesting facts:

Many of the affected were either office workers or university students!

Further investigation finally pinpointed the cause of the problem:


Yep, that’s right, Indonesians have been spending too much time watching the leaked Indonesian sex videos that seemingly feature two very prominent female celebrities, a guy called Peter Porn, and a little mouse called Jerry.

But not everyone is impressed and the Minister for the Empowerment of Women, Linda Amalia Sari Gumelar, said that she simply “couldn’t bear to watch” the two celebrities being bedded by Indonesia’s new Don Juan.

Being an ostensibly conservative society where “good people don’t have sex”, Indonesia’s moral brigade are in uproar of course and calling for the culprits to be punished severely under Indonesia’s highly contentious IT and anti-porn laws (I actually wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted Peter Porn hung by the b**** - although I admit he should certainly have his head examined for wanting to record his sordid trysts on his handphone in the first place).

But what the moralists need to remember is that Peter Porn is a GUY. And guys are hard wired to be the alpha male and get all the women they can. That’s not a choice but biological engineering (thanks God). I mean even former president Sukarno was a noted lady-charmer, gaining acclaim for bedding a beautiful Japanese nightclub hostess who also became his wife (Dewi Sukarno).

I’m not saying that we should condone what Peter Porn got up to (or down to as the case may be), but to simply admit that with the same temptations and opportunities that somebody like Peter Porn has, a lot of us guys might do something similar.




But please.

Leave the handphone at home!!! Hahaha!

Money can't buy back your youth when you're old
Or a friend when you're lonely, or a love that's grown cold
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
Compared to the man with a satisfied mind
>The late great Johnny Cash

One of the strange characteristics of “developing” countries is that they tend to have “silly” money. What I mean by that is that a coffee will cost you twenty thousand and a TV four million. A house could well cost you above a billion!

It takes some getting used to, but it’s a nice feeling to know you are a millionaire (well, at least until you receive a six hundred thousand electricity bill in the post.)

I’m not sure why it’s worked out like this but I guess it’s a sort of compensatory gesture by the central banks of developing countries to make their country’s impoverished citizens feel richer – through the astute use of the good old “zero” (costs nothing right?)

Going down the scale, the smallest Indonesian banknote I can remember using is the old red Rp100 note.

This is worth about 1 cent.

And I even have a very old Rp10 note! (about 0.1 of a cent)


But those days are long gone and heading in the other direction we have now advanced to the Rp100,000 note. Seemingly large (about US$10), but actually kid’s stuff compared to what the rocket scientists in Zimbabwe have come up with:

WTF! A 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion dollars) banknote!!!!!!!!!

Nope: this is NOT a joke, although you probably feel it must be – the idea of a credible central bank issuing a note this large is just absurd.

In the US, this amount would be the total output of the entire US economy for about six years. And in Zimbabwe? Well, it doesn’t even get you a cup of coffee (although you’d probably get to become a bloody good mathematician after doing the shopping for a few months – if you could find anything to buy that is!)

As for the Indonesian Rp100,000 note, I was surprised when it came out a few years back because unlike all the other Indonesian banknotes that are made of paper, this note is made from some sort of high tech, glossy material - very much like an Aussie note. And why is that? Well because – as I have just discovered - it IS an Aussie note. Or at least a note made by the Aussies – a company called Securency to be more specific.

But how could this be so in a country where nationalism does most of the talking?

Well, you really should know the answer to that already, shouldn’t you?!!

1. You mark up the price 20 per cent in your first quotation.
2. Our friend will reply to you, the price is too high and please kindly reduce your price.
3. Your second letter agrees to lower 15 per cent.
4. Our friend will issue their final offer which reduces the additional 5 percent.''

Yep folks. One of the most amazing Aus-Ind corruption cases ever!