As tourist infrastructures developed and improved, travel in the Dutch East Indies took on a different character in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the emergence of a new type of traveller. Now, travel was not so much about making ‘discoveries’, mapping ‘unknown’ territories and satisfying one’s curiosity as, increasingly, about following in the footsteps of earlier travellers. Vicarious, non-authentic experiences thus came to replace authentic ones; activity was replaced with passivity, spontaneousness with predictability, and sober renunciation and discomfort with luxury and comfort. Tourist travel was still mainly reserved for the happy few, however: it still entailed high costs, especially for holiday-makers from abroad. Thus, most pleasure travellers came from the upper or middle classes.

Initially, it was particularly Java that was suited to tourists. Only in the first half of the twentieth century did international tourism grow to extend to most of the well-known islands in the whole Indonesian archipelago. Tourist experience and perception are for a large part determined by ethnicity, gender and socio-economic status. Many sources describe the experiences of European tourists. There is, however, much less documentation on the experiences of Eurasians and, particularly, Indonesians. This chapter features three different types of traveller: the Javanese nobleman Tjondronegoro V, the Eurasian writer Dé-Lilah and the successful author from The Hague, Louis Couperus.