Travelling to Bali: Four Hundred Years of Journeys (Oxford Paperback Reference)

This collection of writings about the Indonesian island of Bali is a presentation of the various facets of travel and the myriad persepctives on the island. The anthology covers four hundred years of journeys, including reports of the 1957 Dutch 'first fleet', Francois Valentijn's baroque account of slavery and sodomy, the effusive outpourings of 1920s travelllers to 'paradise', and the reflections of Balinese writers on what was happening to their island in the 1970s and 1980s. Extracts are grouped broadly by theme - getting to Bali, encounters on the island, political and social events, the wonders of nature, places, culture and the arts, and religion - which together form an entertaining and edifying collection which can be read for its prose, for its amusing stories, or as a historical 'reader'.