Amuk Bay in East Bali includes the coastal towns of Candi Dasa and Padangbai (‘padang‘ is Balinese for grass, ‘bai‘ is Dutch for bay). The name of the bay is famous after the term ‘ running amok. When Balinese wanted to commit suicide, they would (as usual) bottle their emotions, then explode in anger, running around attacking anyone in sight, knowing they would be put to death by the other locals (love civilization don’t you!). The expression spread around the English speaking world, but this is the birthplace.
As any visitor to the area can tell you things are slow, but if you want a mellow place to relax, that is on the coast and within 2 hours of Kuta, Amuk Bay will work. PlanetMole features an article about a tourist submarine that is in operation there, one of only 2 in the world. Sounds interesting.
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The expression “run amok” comes from the Javanese word amok, not the Balinese equivalent amuk. It entered most Western languages during the Soekarno era.
I remember using that expression when I was a kid in England during the 1940s. I’ve had a look and found the following:
http://www.takeourword.com/TOW131/page2.html
“From Rodney:
My friends and I were discussing the origin of the phrase run amuck. One person believes that it comes from Fiji, though most of us believe it is rooted in Anglo-Saxon. Can you shed some light for us, please?
We have to be careful about shedding light here in power-shortage-stricken California, but we’ll see what we can manage. The word, which can be spelled amuck or amok (the latter being preferred), derives from a Malay word, amoq, defined as “engaging furiously in battle, attacking with desperate resolution, rushing in a state of frenzy to the commission of indiscriminate murder.” It was first borrowed by the Portuguese as amuco, and we find it in a Portuguese work of 1516. Its first appearance in the English record is in 1663, when the Portuguese form amouco was used. It was not until 1772, in the writings of the explorer Captain Cook, that we find the English form amock. The amok spelling appeared in 1849. The phrase run amok dates back to 1672, when it was run a mucke in the work of Andrew Marvell. In 1859 Thoreau used it in his Walden Pond: “I might have run ‘amok’ against society, but I preferred that society should run ‘amok’ against me.
Many early instances of the word amok alone (without run) are used with reference to Malaysia or Malaysian people.”
The Portuguese landed in Sumatra (in Aceh as early as 1492, Enggano Island, then in Sunda Kelapa, Manado and Ambon in 1511-1515) then Malacca strait (1509 de Sequeira, 1511 de Albuquerque), and Bahasa Malayu is used across the island and Malaysia. Even today people still refer to Bahasa Indonesia as Bahasa Melayu in parts of Sumatra.
Dont get confused with Malaysian people as at the time majority of Sumatran people are also called the people of Melayu (So Melayu = Sumatra + Malaysia + Southern part of Thailand). Malaysia is part of Kesultanan Malaka with a prince from Palembang (a Buddhist kingdom Sriwijaya in Southern Sumatra) Parameswara (then Sultan Malaka when he converted to Islam) as the king, but the capital is in Malaka (Malaysia).
The Malay word is actually “amuk” (not amoq) and it is the same in Bahasa and usually used in its verb form “mengamuk”.
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