Across the Equator: A Holiday Trip in Java

by Thomas H. Reid

In the matter of the personal attention to their guests by the management of some of Hotels in the interior, and the supply of information, there could easily be an improvement, and doubtless there will be a great change when tourist traffic becomes more general, as it promises to do in the near future. Our own experience was that we were left, almost invariably, to the tender mercies of the servants, and as one's Malay was limited this led to avoidable inconvenience.

Nothing, however, could exceed the courtesy and attention of the management at the Hotel des Indes, in Batavia, and the Hotel du Pavilion in Samarang, and the Manager of the Hotel at Sindanglaya.

We have already mentioned Stamm and Weijns Restaurant in Batavia. Coupled with it for excellence of table is Grimm's famous restaurant in Sourabaya.

This year, thanks to the efforts of some of the leading hotel proprietors, the government of Netherlands India has awakened to the possibilities of Java as a country for tourists. Co-operating with the Hotels and steam-ship companies, special inducements were held out to visitors during the months of May and June, in the way of reduced fares, and the success of the venture will doubtless lead to its continuance.

The Koninklyke Paketvaart Maatschappij (Ship's Agency, late J. Daendels and Co.) issues tickets at single-fare rates to Batavia and Sourabaya, the fare to Batavia and back being $45; to Sourabaya and back $63; and to Batavia and along the Coast Ports to Sourabaya and back to Singapore (sixteen days on board ship) $74. The tickets are available by the steamers of the Royal Nederland Line and the Rotterdamsche Lloyd.

Travel by rail throughout the Island is cheap. For the convenience of visitors with limited time to devote to Java, a tourist ticket has been arranged. This may be obtained from the Steamship Company in Singapore. The price is $40 (Singapore currency). The tour laid down by the coupons covers the whole of Java from Tanjong Priok, the port of Batavia, to the easternmost end of the island beyond Sourabaya on the way to Tosari and Bromo. Buitenzorg and the Preanger health resorts may be visited on the tickets, the famous Hindu ruins near Djocjakarta, and the health resorts of Eastern Java. The journey may be broken wherever the tourist cares to stay, and the ticket is available for sixty days.

Directions are printed on the ticket in English in regard to baggage and other matters, and a small outline map is a useful adjunct.

Throughout the island, the carriages for hire are execrable. The four-pony victoria which took us from Djocjakarta to the Buddhist ruins at Parambanan had not gone half a mile when one of the wheels came off, and we were lucky to escape without serious damage. It will always remain a marvel to us how the ramshackle kreta held together which took us from Buitenzorg to Sindanglaya, over the Poentjak Pass, and we are astonished that the Dutch authorities, who are exacting in other respects, do not exercise a wholesome supervision over the ponies employed in these cross-country carts and carriages, for a more wretched collection of horseflesh could scarcely be imagined.

We have already commented on the Toelatings Kaart. This relic of a past age, which did not add much to the revenue, and impressed one unfavourably with a rigid officialism at the port of entry that did not obtrude itself upon one's notice in the interior, may now be avoided by the traveller registering at the Tourist Bureau. In our own case, we were never called upon to produce the kaart.

The general impression left by one's visit to Java is the excessive cleanliness of town and country and the widespread cultivation. There are, of course, black spots in the towns; but they are as nothing to the traveller who has perambulated the native quarters of any British Colony in the Far East. When we think of the millions of dollars Hongkong has expended to cope with filth-created plagues and to reduce the native rookeries of China town, it fills us with the highest admiration for Dutch administration in Java. The Government of the Straits Settlements is entering upon a similar campaign to rectify past sins against the laws of sanitation and hygiene, and hundreds of thousands of dollars might have been available for other purposes had the Chinese been handled as the Dutch handle them in Batavia, Samarang and Sourabaya. It may be overdoing the cult for whitewash to whiten the walls of every bridge and the stack of every sugar mill in the country, but it is pleasing to the Europeans to see that one nation has been successful in carrying its ideas of cleanliness into the tropics and in making the Oriental conform to the ordinary laws for the protection of the health of the common people.