Westerners in Sanur
It was in the mid-19th century that Sanur was first recorded by
Europeans as more than just a dot on the map. Mads Lange, a Kuta
based Danish trader, at this time mentions the special relationship
that the perbekel of Sanur enjoyed with his great friend the king
of Kesiman, Cokorda Sakti.
In a less flattering light, it was also a perbekel of Sanur who
turned a blind eye to the landing of Dutch troops here in 1906
on their way to the massacre of the royal house of Pemecutan -
one of the most ignoble days in Dutch colonial history. The full
story has been immortalized by 1930s Sanur habitu6e Vicki Baum
in her book, A Tale of Bali.
The BBC has a film of a Sanur trance medium "possessed"
by the spirit of a beer swilling English sea captain (possibly
from one of the merchant vessels which foundered on Sanur's coral
reefs) - to whose semi-divine memory a trance baris, called Ratu
Tuan, is performed by the Semawang Banjar. The costume: Chinese
kung-fu pajamas of black and white checkered cloth.
The first half of the 20th century also saw Sanur's emergence
as prime real estate for the Bali-besotted. Beach bungalows in
what Miguel Covarrubias referred to as, "the malarial swamps
of Sanur," were built by, among others, Dr. Jack Mershon
and his choreographer wife Katharane (inventor, with Walter Spies,
of the very checkered kekak dance), writer Vicki Baum, anthropologist
Jane Belo (author of Trance in Bali); and art-collector Neuhaus,
who was killed by a stray bullet during a skirmish between local
guerillas and Japanese occupation forces in 1943, while playing
bridge on the verandah of his home - site of the present-day Hotel
Sindhu Beach.
These early "Baliphiles" hosted a steady stream of celebrity
visitors to the island during the 1930s, including Charlie Chaplin,
Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke and Harold Nicholson. It was probably
more from the travel reports of these sophisticates than from
the movie with a sarong-draped Dorothy Lamour that Bali traces
its fame abroad.
Bali's most famous expatriate of this era, artist-writer-musician
Walter Spies, was a frequent visitor to the shores of Sanur, but
it is to one particular visit that we may trace his aversion for
coastal Bali. It was the day of a lunar eclipse and the birthday
of Spies young nephew who was visiting him in Bali. A Balinese
soothsayer warned the boy not to go near the water that day, but
he defied the warning and swam in Sanur, where he was taken by
a shark. A weird coincidence: the Balinese symbol for an eclipse
is the giant toothed mouth of the demon spirit Kala Rauh devouring
the moon goddess.
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