Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
BOOKS
While plenty has been written on the culture, temples and arts and crafts of Bali,
there has been little coverage of Lombok. We have included publishers' details only for
books that may be hard to find outside Indonesia. Ganesha (
in Ubud offers an online ordering service. Titles marked
are particularly recommen-
ded; “o/p” means out of print.
TRAVEL
Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love
. This insightful, funny journey of self-discovery, now a
bestseller and a film, climaxes in Ubud with various life-changing encounters of the sensual
and spiritual kind.
William Ingram
A Little Bit One O'Clock: Living with a Balinese Family
. Warm, funny,
warts-and-all portrait of the author's life with an Ubud family in the 1990s. Both the author
and his adoptive family still live in Ubud.
Louise G. Koke
Our Hotel in Bali
(o/p). The engaging true story of two young Americans
who built the first hotel on Kuta beach, in 1936. Some of the topic's photos are displayed in
Ubud's Neka Art Museum.
Adrian Vickers (ed)
Travelling to Bali: Four Hundred Years of Journeys
(o/p). One-stop
anthology with accounts by early Dutch, Thai and British adventurers, excerpts from writings
by the expat community in the 1930s, and the musings of late twentieth-century visitors.
CULTURE, SOCIETY AND HISTORY
Susan-Jane Beers
Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing
. Fascinating look at
the role of herbal medicine (
jamu
) in Indonesia.
Kathryn Bonella
Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali's Most Notorious Jail
. Ex-
traordinarily revealing exposé of Kerobokan Prison, the corrupt system that sustains it and
the tourists and locals who end up doing time there. Bonella followed it up with a wider ex-
posé of the Bali drugs world,
Snowing in Bali
.
Miguel Covarrubias
Island of Bali
. An early classic (first published in 1937) in which
the Mexican artist and amateur anthropologist explores everything from the daily routines of
his adopted village household to the philosophical significance of the island's arts, dramas
and music.
Dr A.A.M. Djelantik
The Birthmark: Memoirs of a Balinese Prince
(o/p). Fascinating
autobiography of the son of the last raja of Karangasem, who was born in east Bali in 1919,
became Bali's most influential doctor, and lived through Dutch rule, World War II, the erup-
tion of Gunung Agung and the communist killings.
