Editorial intermission:

If you want to be really pedantic about geography, you might wonder what Melbourne is doing in a blog about Asia. Melbourne is not, in fact, in Asia but on a former penal colony off the coast of Papua New Guinea. At least, when you look my way from Europe, you’ll have to see through Asia’s exhaust fumes. I figured that if Indonesia wants me out, I might as well use the opportunity to visit a place whose distance to home has previously always outweighed my interest in it. I’ll blithely continue to post to the hereinasia blog. Even if I had known that I’d spend some time here, I probably wouldn’t have found a blog name like hereinasiaandmaybeaustraliatoo sufficiently catchy. Bear with me on this for a couple of weeks or so… No worries mate.