Travellers' Checks | The Indonesian island of Bali made quite an impression on early Western visitors
When English anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer set eyes on the Indonesian island he was ‘convinced that I had seen the nearest approach to Utopia that I am ever likely to see’
Encouragingly billed as “The Most Sensational Event in Local History”, the appearance in Hong Kong of The Royal Balinese Dancers, in March 1935, was a great success.
Among many VIPs in the opening-night audience at the Queen’s Theatre, in Central, an effusive Phyllis Juby of The China Mail recommended that “the beauty of these dancers, gentle as a shadow on the earth, or warm as the blood of human passions, must be seen by all who love the sunshine and the tenderness of jungles”.
Less than a month later, the Central Theatre, in Sheung Wan, screened Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935), promoted in the local press as “an all-technicolour South Sea romance […] filmed in Bali with an all-native cast”.
Hongkongers thus inspired to visit the Island of the Gods could travel south with the Java-China-Japan Lijn (JCJL), which advertised regular steamship connections to Bali and Java, which it called “the Isles of Romance and Beauty”. The trip took just over a week each way, with “excellent accommodation for passengers, a European Doctor and Wireless telegraphy”, and cost from HK$300 for a round trip.
Those lacking the time or funds to visit Bali could instead attend popular amateur lectures given by those who had recently returned. Armchair travellers could find occasional articles in the local press, or put their feet up with books such as Bali and Angkor (1936), by Geoffrey Gorer, who visited the island around the time that the Royal Balinese Dancers were in Hong Kong.