Travelling to cities broadens the mind, or it did in the Netherlands East Indies. One Balinese prince, Anak Agung Made Djelantik, could recall the experience in 1931 of being sent to junior high school in the town of Malang, in East Java, leaving behind his primary school days in Bali's largest town, Denpasar. Djelantik had grown up in East Bali, in a palace that was an extended set of house yards, around which were clustered some of the dwellings of his father's subjects. He spent his early years in a society that was rigidly hierarchical and where life revolved around farming. For his preliminary schooling he had to travel five hours from the family palace to Denpasar, then a town of 15,000 people, just over a hundred of whom were Europeans.

In 1931, after a six-hour drive to Singaraja in North Bali, the young Djelantik caught a KPM steamer en route from Ambon and Makasar, for an exciting journey to Surabaya. From Surabaya he took another car 80 kilometres south to Malang – population 87,000 – where he met not only local Javanese, but people from all over the Indies. He boarded with a Dutch teacher's family, where he learned new kinds of behaviour. He had to learn to wear pyjamas, say wel te resten (sleep well) and turn off the lights at night, to eat breakfast of chocolate granules sprinkled on bread spread with Palm Tree brand margarine, to do the opposite of Balinese politeness and comment on a meal, as well as converse during it, and to like cheese, cauliflower and brussels sprouts.