The tourist’s guide to Bali, 1920

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

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!