Welcome to Indonesia Archipelago

History of Bali

2011-09-26T18:36:00.002+07:00

An old manuscript, the Catur Yoga, tells of the formation of the world and places Bali in the centre of the universe, as an island resting on the back of a turtle floating in an ocean, beneath a canopy of “perfumed sky, beautiful and full of rare flowers”. Another story tells of a great Javanese priest drawing his finger across the isthmus which joined Bali to Java and cutting the island free. At one time Bali was indeed connected to Java-the strait separating the two islands is just 3 km wide ad no more than 60 metres deep.

The earliest written records found in Bali are stone inscriptions, dating from around the 9^th century AD, by which time the foundations of the Balinese society of today had already been laid. Rice was grown with the help of a complex irrigation system probably very like the one in use now; metalwork and stone and woodcarving were developing; and a political system of regional princedoms had arisen, later presided over by a king when the first Balinese dynasties evolved-a few stone tools are the only traces of the earliest in habitants, though certainly by the onset of the metal age around 300 BC the island was well-populated and an orderly village life had developed. It was during the first half of the 11^th century that Hindu Java began to spread its influence into Bali and from then much of Balinese history is inseparable from event on Java.

It was during the 11^th century that the first royal link between Java and Bali was established-during the reign of the east Javanese King Airlangga who ruled somewhere to the south of Surabaya around 1019 to 1042. At the age of 16 Airlangga had fled into the forests of Java when his uncle lost his throne. He gradually built up a following, won back the kingdom ruled by his uncle and became one of Java’s great kings. Airlangga’s mother had moved to Bali shortly after his birth and had remarried a Balinese prince, so when Airlangga ascended the throne of Java there was an immediate link between the Javanese and Balinese royal families. It was during Airlangga’s reign that the courtly Javanese language known as Kawi came into use amongst the royalty of Bali and the rock-out memorials at Gunung Kawi, near Tampaksiring, are a clear architectural link between Bali and 11^th century Java.

After Airlangga’s death Bali was ruled by the descendants of his mother and retained a semi-independent status for two centuries until Kertanagara became king of Java’s Singasari dynasty. The last and most powerful prince of that dynasty, he conquered Bali in 1284, but was murdered 8 years later. Although his kingdom broke up his son later founded the powerful Majapahit dynasty in Java and Kertanagara’s conquest of the island began a turbulent period in Balines history – for the next 200 years the indigenous rulers of Bali were in constant conflict with the Javanese for control of the island.

With Java in turmoil after the collapse of the Singasari dynasty however, Bali was able to regain its independence for a while and the Pejeng Dynasty, centred near modern-day Ubud rose to power. The last king of the dynasty, the legendary Dalem Bedulu-said to have had the head of a pig and the powers of a magician-refused to recognize Majapahit supremacy. Consequently the Javanese armies, under the command of the Majapahit prime minister and military leader Gajah Mada, invaded in 1343 and brought Bali back under Javanse control. Gajah Mada appointed a Javanese Brahmin as king of Bali, and along with a number of Majapahit nobles came to Bali and established his palace at Samprangan. Sometime towards the end of the 14^th century the capital was moved to Gelgel, near modern day Klungkung, and for the next two centuries Gelgel remained the seat of the Balinese kings.

Ironically the significant changes on Bali were wrought not by the Majapahit conquest but by the dynasty’s demise. Gajah Mada had been the real power behind the dynasty, and within 25 years of his death, in 1364, the Majapahit kingdom was on the decline. As Islam spread into Java, luring converts amongst the newly independent princes, the kingdom fell apart and many of its intelligentsia, artisans, dancers, musicians, scholars and priests retreated to Bali. Among them was the priest Nirartha who is credited with developing many of the complexities of Balinese religion. The final great exodus to Bali took place in 1478. As the Majapahit kingdom collapse into disputing sultanates the Gelgel dynasty in Bali, under Dalem Batur Enggong, gained strength and extended its power eastwards to Lombok and even crossed the strait to the western end of Java.

So the curious mixture of position and events accounted not only for Bali’s relative isolation from the rest of Indonesia history and religion but also for the amazing vitality of its culture. The island’s extraordinary fertility had already encouraged the development of a highly active arts and culture and the injection of creative energy from Java sparked off a level of activity which has hardly faltered to his this day.

The first Europeans to set foot on Bali were Dutch seaman led by Cornelius Houtman in 1597. At that time the Balinese aristocracy was enjoying unprecedented prosperity and the Balinese king, who befriended Houtman, is said to have had 200 wives, a chariot pulled by two white buffaloes, and a retinue of 50 dwarves whose bodies had been bent to resemble kris handles! Setting a tradition which has prevailed to the present day some of his crew fell in love with the island and refused to leave when Houtman set sail. Despite Houtman’s other blunders around the archipelago this first meeting with the Balinese seems to have gone gloriously well. Although the Dutch returned to Bali they were primarily interested in profit not culture and since Bali offered little of the former it escaped the attentions of the Dutch East Indies Company which decided to plunder Java and the spice islands of Maluku instead. But, as with so many other places, the seeds of eventual conquest were sown through that first “innocent” contact with Europeans.

In 1710 the Balinese king shifted from Gelgel to Klungkung, thereby becoming the rajah of Klungkung, considered by the Balinese ruling class to be the highest position of authority. But many of the local rulers – descendents of Majapahit nobles who had been given land to rule as dependencies of Gelgel – were gradually breaking away from Gelgel authority and the Dutch, now interested in control, used the local discontent to divide and conquer.

The first military confrontation with the Dutch was in 1846 when the Dutch used Balinese salvage claims over shipwrecks as a pretext to land military forces in north Bali. In 1882 the northern states of Buleleng and Jembrana were placed under the direct administration of the Netherlands East Indies government. With northern Bali under Dutch control, the south of Bali was not going to last long. Once again it was disputes ver the ransacking of wrecked ships that gave the Dutch the excuse they needed to move in. A Chinese ship was wrecked and “looted” off Sanur in 1904 – the owners held the Dutch government responsible and the Dutch government demanded that the rajah of Badung (Denpasar) pay damages and punish the culprits. Those demands were rejected and two years later the Dutch used the incident as an excuse to land a force of several thousand soldiers at Sanur. The first battles were fought on the beach and along the road to Denpasar, and within four days the Dutch had reached the outskirts of the town.

On 20 September 1906 the Dutch mounted a naval bombardment on Denpasar and then commenced their final assault. The three princes of Badung realized that they were outnumbered and outgunned and that defeat was inevitable. Surrender and exile was, however, an even worse alternative and they decided to take the honorable path of puputan or the suicidal fight to the death. First the palaces were burnt then, dressed in their finest jewellery and waving golden krises, the rajah led the royalty and priests out to face the Dutch.

The Dutch begged the Balinese to surrender rather than make their hopeless stand but their pleas went unheard and wave after wave of the Balinese nobility marched forward to be gunned down by the Dutch. In all, 4000 Balinese were massacred in a single day outside the Denpasar and Pemecutan palaces. Some days later the Dutch marched to Tabanan, west of Badung, taking the the rajah of Tabanan prisoner but he too committed suicide rather than face the disgrace of exile. The kingdoms of Karangasem and Gianyar had already capitulated to the Dutch, and the rajah of Klungkung obliged the Dutch by carrying out his own bloody puputan. With this last obstacle disposed of all of Bali came under Dutch control.

In just a few days the Dutch had wiped out the power of the island’s aristocracy but little changed for the ordinary people in the villages. There were different faces to pay the taxes to but traditional Balinese culture and society remained almost entirely intact and surprisingly for the next three decades the island underwent a cultural renaissance. While the remaining princes were deprived of their political powers they retained much of their importance as patrons of the arts. On top of that some far-sighted Dutch officials encouraged Balinese artistic aspirations and together with a new found international interest sparked off an artistic revival. By the 1930s western artists like Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet had started painting in Bali and their influence gave Balinese art a short in the arm. For the elite circle of world travelers and minor celebrities who lived in Ubud and Sanur in the 1920s and ‘30s Bali became the isle at the end of the rainbow.

Sadly, the second half of the 20^th century has been much less kind and the islands has undergone three great convulsions in the past 25 years. The huge eruption of Gunung Agung in 1963 killed thousands, devastated vast areas of the island and forced many Balinese to accept transmigration to other parts of Indonesia. Only two years later, in the wake of the attempted communist coup, Bali became the scene of some of the bloodiest anti-Communist killings in Indonesia, perhaps inflamed by some mystical desire to purge the land of evil. On the other hand the killings were probably no more brutal than elsewhere in Indonesia, but simply conflicted with the stereotyped image of the gentle Balinese.

While the Balinese may have survived Dutch control, the anti-Communist bloodbath and intermittent lava flows it’s debatable whether they’ll survive the tourist boom of the 1970s and 1980s. This is potentially more tragic that any of the other convulsions since it threatens the survival of a remarkable culture, the very feature which makes the island so interesting. While you can hardly expect the Balinese to set themselves up as a living museum you can’t help but wonder in what direction their island is heading.

Bali

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For many westerners, Bali doesn’t extend beyond the tourist leaflet: idyllic tropical beaches, lush green forests and happy islanders who work and play in childlike innocence. This vision of paradise has been turned into a commodity for the tens of thousands of western tourists who flood into Bali’s Kuta Beach every year, who see nothing but Kuta Beach, and go away leaving the sand scarred end to end ith motorcycle tracks. In actual fact the tourist trade is only a peripheral thing; away from the commercial traps of the southern beaches you can still find Bali’s soul, towards the mountain where it has always been. It is there you will find rice paddies tripping down hillsides like giant steps, holy mountains reaching up through the clouds, dense tropical jungles, long sandy beaches, warm blue water and crashing surf. And it’s there you’ll discover the extraordinary resilience of the Balinese people and their culture.

History of Indonesia – The Early Kingdoms: Srivijaya, Shailendra & Mataram

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The Sumateran Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya rose in the 7^th century AD and while its power has been absurdly romanticized, it nevertheless maintained a substantial international trade – run by Tamils and Chinese. It was the first major Indonesian commercial seapower, able to control much of the trade in South-East Asia by virtue of its control of the Straits of Melaka between Sumatera and the Malay peninsula.

Merchants from Arabia, Persia and India brought goods to the coastal cities to exchange for both local products and goods from China and the spice islands. Silk, porcelain, Chinese rhubarb (peculiar for its medicinal properties) came from China in return for ivory, tortoise shell, rhinoceros horn, cloves, cardamom and pepper, as well as precious wood like ebony and camphor wood, perfumes, pearls, coral, camphor, amber and the dull reddish-white precious stone known as cornelian or chalcedony. Exports to Arabia included aloes for medicinal uses, camphor, sandalwood, ebony and sapanwood (from ehich a red dye is made), ivory, tin and spices. By the 13^th century woolen and cotton cloth, as well as iron and rice were being imported by Sumatera.

Meanwhile, on Java, the Buddhist Shailendra and the Hindu Mataram dynasties flourished on the plains of Central Java between the 8^th and 10^th centuries. While Srivijaya’s trade brought it wealth, these land-based states had far greater manpower at their disposal and left magnificent remains, in particular the vast Buddhist monument of Borobudur and the huge Hindu temple complex of Prambanan.

Thus two types of states evolved in Indonesia. The first, typified by Srivijaya, were the mainly Sumateran coastal states-commercially oriented, their wealth derived from international trade, their cities highly cosmopolitan. In contrast, the inland kingdoms of Java, separated from the sea by volcanoes (like the kingdom of Mataram in the Solo River region), were agrarian cultures, bureaucratic, conservative, with a marked capacity to absorb and transform the Indian influences.

By the end of the 10^th century, the centre of power had moved from Central to East Java where a series of kingdoms held sway until the rise of the Majapahit kingdom. This is the period when Hinduism and Buddhism were syncretised and when Javanese culture began to come into its own, finally spreading its influence to Bali. By the 12^th century Srivijaya’s power seems to have declined and the empire broke up smaller kingdoms.

History of Indonesia – The Development of Early Sea Trade

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Foreign traders were attracted by the Indonesian archipelago’s unique local products – the foremost were spices, which were used as flavorings and also to preserve food (meat in particular). Sumatera was famous for gold, pepper and benzoin (an aromatic gum valued especially by the Chinese) – but the real ‘Spice Islands’ were the tiny specks in region now known as Maluku (the Moluccas): Ternate, Tidore, islands off the coast of Halmahera, Ambon and Banda. On these islands grew nutmeg and cloves which could be used as spices and preservatives, in the manufacture of perfumes, and for medicinal purposes. By the 1^st century AD Indonesian trade was firmly established with other parts of Asia, including China and India. Indian trade, the more active of the two, linked India, China and Indonesia with Greece and Rome-Ptolemy mentions the island of Indonesia in his writings as early as 165 AD.

History of Indonesia - The Coming of Hinduism & Buddhism

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One of the puzzles of Indonesian history is how the early kingdoms on Sumatera, Java, Kalimantan and Bali were penetrated by Hinduism and Buddhism. The oldest works of Hindu art in Indonesia, statues from the 3^rd century AD, come from Sulawesi and Sumatera. The earliest Hindu inscriptions, in Sanskrit, have been found in West Java and eastern Kalimantan and date from the early 5^th century AD.

Several theories regarding the influx of Hinduism and Buddhism have been proposed. Large scale immigration from India is generally ruled out and there is no evidence for the theory that Indian princes, defeated in wars in India, fled to the islands of South-East Asia and established kingdoms on the Indian model. Certainly Indian traders brought Tamil, the language of southern India, but only Brahmins could have brought Sanskrit, the language of religion and philosophy. Some Brahmins may have followed the traders as missionaries-although Hinduism is not a proselytizing religion. On the other hand Buddhism is a proselytizing religion and was carried far from its Indian homeland.

Another theory holds that the early Indonesians were attracted to the cultural life of India in much the same way Elizabethan English were to Italy, and the Indonesian Aristocracies played an active role in transferring Indian culture to Indonesia by inviting Brahmin priests to their courts. Possibly it was hoped the new religions could provide occult powers and a mythological sanction for the Indonesian rulers – as had happened in India. This theory fits in well with the mythological and mystical view of history which has persisted since the beginning of recorded Indonesian civilization. In the Hindu period the kings were seen as incarnations of Vishnu and even after the arrival of Islam the dynasties traced their lineage on one side back to Mohammed and from there to the prophets and Adam – but on the other side it was traced to the heroes of the wayang, the indigenous puppet theatre of Java, and to gods whom orthodox Muslims considered pagan. One Sumateran dynasty even claimed descent from Alexander the Great and as late as the second half of the 19^th century the rulers of Solo were boasting a special alliance with Nyai Lara Kidul, the Goddess of the South Seas, and with Sunan Lawu, the ruler of the spirits on Mt. Lawu.

History of Indonesia - In the Beginning

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From the 7^th century BC there were well-developed and organized societies in the Indonesian archipelago. The inhabitants knew how to irrigate rice fields, domesticate animals, use copper and bronze, and had some knowledge of sea navigation. There were villages – often permanent ones – where life was linked to the production of rice, the staple crop.

These early Indonesians were animists, believing that all animate ad inanimate objects have their own particular life force, semangat or soul. Certain people had more semangat than others – such as the tribal and village leaders, and the shamans or priests who had magical powers and could control the spirit world. The spirits of the dead had to be honored since their semangat could still help the living; there was a belief in the afterlife and weapons and utensils would be left in tombs fr use in the next world. Supernatural forces were held responsible for natural events, and evil spirits had to be placated by offerings, rites and ceremonies. In a region where earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and torrential rainstorms are common events, a belief in malevolent spirits is hardly surprising.

Villages, at least in Java, developed into embryonic towns, and small kingdoms (little more than collections of villages subservient to petty chieftains) developed by the 1^st century AD, together with their own ethnic and tribal religions. The climate of Java, with its hot, even temperature, plentiful rainfall and volcanic soil, was ideal for the wet-field method of rice cultivation, known as sawah cultivation, and the well organized society it required may explain why the people of Java and Bali developed a more sophisticated civilization than those of the other islands. The dry field or ladang method of rice cultivation is a much simpler form of agriculture and requires no elaborate social structure.

The social and religious duties of the rice-growing communities were gradually refined to form the basis of adat or customary law-a traditional law that was to persist through waves of imported religious beliefs-Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity – and which still remains a force in Indonesia today.

The Wayang

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The Wayang

Javanese culture is a product of pre-Hindu, Hindu and Islamic influences. The rise of the 16^th century Islamic states brought a rich new cultural heritage but the Hindu heritage also managed to continue its influence.

The Javanese shadow-puppet (wayang) theatre has been a major means of preserving the Hindu-Buddhist heritage in java. The main wayang form is the wayang kulit; the word wayang means shadow, and the word kulit means leather. Thus the wayang kulit indicates a form of shadow theatre using puppets made of leather. In the wider sense the word wayang refers to all dramatic plays:

Wayang Kulit, The shadow-puppet theatre, in which perforated leather figures are manipulated behind an illuminated cotton screen, is the best known of the wayang forms. The stories are usually based on the Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, although other pre-Islamic stories are also performed. In a traditional performance a whole night might be devoted to just one drama (lakon) from a legend. A single puppeteer (the dalang) animates the puppets and narrates and chants through the entire night to the accompaniment of the gamelan orchestra.

The real origin of the wayang kulit is unknown. Shadow puppet theatre is not unique to Java, it can also be found in India, China and parts of South-East Asia. Strangely enough, given that the wayang kulit tells stories from pre-Islamic days, Javanese tradition credits the creation of the wayang to the nine walis, the semi-legendary apostles of Islam in Java. Many wayang kulit figures and even whole stories have a specific mystical function; certain stories are performed for the purpose of protecting a rice crop (these incorporate the rice goddess Dewi Sri), the welfare of a village or even individuals.

By the 11^th century wayang performances with leather puppets were flourishing in Java and by the end of the 18^th century the wayang kulit had developed most of the details of puppets design and performances techniques we see today. The standardization of the puppet designs is traditionally attributed to King Raden Patah of Demak (an Islamic kingdom on the site of modern-day Semerang) who reigned in the first half of the 16^th century.

The puppets are made of leather, water buffalo leather from a young animal being the most favored material. The outline of the puppet is cut using a thin knife and the fine details carved out using small chisels and a hammer. When the carving is finished the moveable arms are attached and the puppet is painted. Lines are drawn in and accentuated with black ink which is also used to increase the contrast of the carved holes. The cempurit, the stick of horn used to hold the puppet upright, is then attached.

The leaf-shaped kayon is meant to represent the ‘tree’ or ‘mountain of life’ and is used to end scenes or to symbolize wind, mountains, obstacles, clouds, or the sea. Made of the same flexible hide as the other puppets the kayon might be waved softly behind the cloth screen while a puppet figure is held horizontally-a surprisingly effective way of indicating flight through the cloudy sky. There are a number of symbolic decorations on the kayon including the face in the centre of the tree which symbolizes the danger and risk that all people must confront in life.

The characters in wayang are brought to life by the dalang. To call him a puppeteer belittles the extraordinary range of talents he must possess. Sitting cross-legged on a mat before the white screen the dalang might manipulate dozens of figures in the course of a performance. He recounts events spanning centuries and continents, improvising from the basic plot a complex network of court intrigues, great loves, wars, philosophy, magic, mysticism and comedy. He must be a linguist capable of speaking both the language of his audience and the ancient kawi language spoken by the aristocratic characters of his play; he must be a mimic capable of producing a different voice for each of his characters; he must have great physical stamina to sustain a performance which will last from the evening until the early hours of the morning; he must be a musician, able to direct the village’s gamelan orchestra which accompanies the performance; he must be versed in history, as well as have a deep understanding of philosophy and religion; he must be a poet capable of creating a warm or a terrifying atmosphere; but he must also be a comedian able to introduce some comic relief into his performances. Understandably, the dalang has always been regarded as a very special type of person. Most dalang are men but today there are a number of female dalang in Java.

The dalang directs the gamelan orchestra using a system of cues, often communicating the name of the composition to be played using riddles or puns. The player of the kendang or drum acts as the liason between the dalang and the other gamelan players, in setting the proper tempo and changes of tempo for each piece, and executing the important signals for ending pieces. The dalang may communicate with the orchestra using signals tapped out with the wooden cempala (a mallet) held in his left hand. Or there may be other types of cues; for example, one of the clowns in the performance may announce that a singing contest is to be held, then announce the song he intends singing and the gamelan will play that song.

The mass of the audience sits in front of the screen to watch the shadow figures, but some also sit behind the screen with the dalang, to watch the master at work.

Economy and Geography

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Socially Java is an island of contrasts, geographically it is an island of great and varied beauty. Java provides leadership in politics and trade, abundant manpower and great potential markets but also, in terms of population pressure, the nation’s greatest economic problems. In the late ‘60s foreign investment went initially to the area surrounding booming Jakarta.

Java is predominantly a land of mountain peaks and smoking volcanoes, fertile green field and terraces, but to the north is the flat coastal plain and the sluggish Java Sea while the south coast faces the onslaught of the crashing waves of Indian Ocean. It’s a land of strong contrasts: wealth and squalor; majestic, open country and crowded, filthy cities; quiet, rural scenes and hustling, modern traffic.

Java is a long, narrow island which can be conveniently divided into three sections. In West Java is the capital Jakarta, a city which seems to epitomize all of Indonesia’s problems. Tourist attractions like Bandung (the cultural centre of the Sundanese), Cirebon, Pangandaran and the Ujung Kulon National Park are also found in West Java. In Central Java you will find temples and royal cities that tell of the rise and fall of the Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim kingdoms. Here too the old Javanese-Hindu traditions were least altered by the Muslims and outside influences and this region remains the vital centre of Javanese culture. Java is people and lots of them. Wherever you go it’s hard to escape the fact that this is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, but there are isolated places where you can find yourself out of sight and sound of other people. There’s the huge Dieng Plateau in the beautiful central highlands and, in East Java, the area around the spectacular Mt. Bromo volcano is as wild and desolate as you could hope for.

History Of Java

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In this story Javanese history begins with a migration, rather than a creation myth which considering the successive movements of people from South-East Asia into the Indonesian archipelago is hardly surprising. The harmful spirits which inhabited Java were pushed into the mountain and forests or into the ocean, the helpful ones were adopted as protectors and advisors.

The island’s exceptional fertility allowed the development of an intensive sawah agriculture which in turn required close co-operation between villages for the maintenance of the irrigation systems.

Introduction

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Like a string of jewels in a coral sea, the 13,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago stretch almost 5000 km from the Asian mainland into the Pacific Ocean. And like jewels the islands have long represented wealth. A thousand years ago the Chinese sailed as far as Timor to load up cargoes of sandalwood and beeswax; by the 16^th century the spice islands of the Moluccas were luring European navigators from the other side of the world in search of cloves, nutmeg and mace, once so rare and expensive that bloody wars were fought for control of their production and trade. The Dutch rule for almost 350 years, drawing their fortunes from the islands whose rich volcanic soil could produce two crops of rice a ear, as well as commercially valuable crops like coffee, sugar, tobacco and teak.

Endowed with a phenomenal array of natural resources and strange cultures, Indonesia because a magnet for every shade of entrepreneur from the west – a stamping ground for proselytizing missionaries, unscrupulous traders, wayward adventures, inspired artists. It has been overrun by Dutch and Japanese armies; surveyed, drilled, dug up and shipped off by foreign mining companies; littered end to end with the ‘transmigrants’ of Java and Bali; poked and prodded by ethnologists, linguists and anthropologists turning fading cultures into PhD theses.

But one group which Indonesia has never really attracted is the tourist. With the exception of Bali, Toraja land, and the huge Hindu-Buddhist monuments of Borobudur and Prambanan in central Java, all of which attract huge numbers of visitors, the islands of western Indonesia are often seen as places to pass through on the way down to Australia or on the way up to the Asian mainland – rather than as destinations in their own right – whilst the outer islands are considered too expensive to reach or too difficult or time-consuming to travel in. Both views are out-of-date. Travel in some parts of the outer islands can still be tedious, but over the last few years things have improved considerably; there are more roads and more buses, more ferry, shipping and air connections between the islands, and the rather neglected tourist industry is finally being given a significant push by the government Indonesia – making it easier to travel there than ever before.

Indonesia possesses some of the most remarkable sights in South-East Asia and there are things about this country you will never forget: the flaming red and orange sunsets over the mouth of the Kapuas River in Kalimantan; standing on the summit of Keli Mutu in Flores and gazing at the colored lakes that fill its volcanic craters; the lumbering leather-skinned dragons of Komodo Island; expatriates in Yogyakarta using an Asian language – Bahasa Indonesia – as the common means of communication; the funeral ceremonies of the Torajas in the highlands of central Sulawesi; the Dani tribesmen of Irian Jaya (now Papua) wearing little else but feathers and penis gourds; the wooden wayang golek puppets manipulated into life by the puppet-master of Yogyakarta; the brilliant coral reefs off the north coast of Sulawesi.

You can lie on your back on Kuta Beach in Bali and soak up the ultra-violet rays, paddle a canoe down the rivers of Kalimantan, surf at the island of Nias off the coast of Sumatera, trek in the high country of Irian Jaya (Papua), catch butterflies the size of your hand in central Sulawesi, eat your way through a kaleidoscope of fruit from one end of the archipelago to the other, stare down the craters of live volcanoes, learn the art of batik in Yogyakarta or the techniques of kite-making from any Indonesian kid – almost anything you want, Indonesia has got!