A topic of world news in the past few weeks has been the insolvency of the travel company. The news was shocking because of the impact on its 22,000 employees in 16 countries.

Thomas Cook founded the company in 1841, initially offering one-day railway tour packages to visit interesting areas across the United Kingdom. As time went by, Thomas Cook continued to thrive until the end of the 20^th century, when it opened its own airline business.

However, the economic troubles in Europe, coupled with the UK’s planned exit from the European Union, caused the collapse of Thomas Cook. The impact was devastating, with hundreds of thousands of tourists around the world who used its services left in limbo.

The fall of Thomas Cook has not only troubled vacationers, but also saddened the fine art community of Indonesia because the travel bureau once assigned one of its employees, James “Jim” Pandy, to help promote Indonesia’s visual arts.

Pandy (1916 -1982), a European man born in Manado, North Sulawesi, joyfully guided international tourists to Lake Toba, Borobudur temple, Mount Bromo and Bali, when he was working as a tour guide for Thomas Cook before World War II.

After World War II, in 1947, Pandy quit his job and set up the Pandy Art Shop on Sanur beach in Bali. He utilized his tour guiding experience and continued to approach Thomas Cook to make Pandy Art Shop a main destination in Bali.

Popular

The fragile promise of pluralism, religious freedom in Southeast Asia

Furniture exporters decry new quarantine rule

BRICS shows internal rifts as ministers fall short of joint statement