Vagabonding in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, without plan or destination.

After hurrying about hectic Bali for a few days, I decided to conclude my visit to Indonesia on the quiet little Gili Air island just off the coast of Lombok, the next major island past Bali. Perama runs a boat there from Perambai in Bali. There are no piers in Perambai, Lombok, or any of…

Quiet day. I have spent so much time in buses, hurrying from one place to the next, that I thought a rest day was in order. I went to the beach, and walked for several hours through rice fields and little villages. They have lots of roadside shrines, mostly consisting of a little empty throne…

Ubud is a town north of Denpasar, close to the center of the island. It’s known as an artist’s village. I went there by shuttle, motorcycle, and finally a bemo (a minivan with benches in the back) all to myself. Ubud is a quiet village with none of the hustle of Kuta. It’s very green…

I have been warned about Kuta. It’s a tourist trap gone wild, with big ugly malls and resort hotels, souvenir shops, brand clothes stores, fast food, billboards, and taxi drivers yelling “transport”. It’s also quite modern and clean. But this is also Bali, and a smile and some friendly words quickly make easy friends. And…

It’s three km climbing a steep dirt path up the forested slopes from the minibus parking lot in Ijem to the top of the crater rim of the Ijen volcano. A stream of workers carrying a pole with a basket full of big sulphur bricks at each end over their shoulders. I talked to Suleiman,…

A jeep picked me up at 3:45 to take me to the top of Mt. Penanjakan. The view of the sunrise is fantastic there. Much of the large crater with the Bromo volcano in the middle and its white plume are spread out before us. The bottom of the crater is with a sea of…

I woke up in my bungalow the next morning with a view of the Gunung Bromo. This is a small volcano in the middle of a vast crater ten kilometers across, and my bungalow is just meters from the edge of the caldera. There is a road from the hotel to the bottom of the…

The bus from Solo to Gunung Bromo National Park takes ten hours, plus a change of buses in Probolinggo. It’s basically ten solid hours of risky passing maneuvers. The road is in excellent condition but has only two lanes, and there are many trucks that crawl along at 30 km/h. So long lines form, and…

Prambanan is a Hindu temple complex of enormous 7th-century stupas on a large terrace, dedicated to Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. It’s a Unesco World Heritage site and under extensive restauration; one stupa is all scaffolded and sevaral are closed to visitors. The stonemasons are clinking away on the stupas and on the ground to prepare…

Went on the back of a motorcycle to Borobudur, a large Buddhist temple in a forest before a backdrop of green hills. It’s a square of 120 meters at the base, with four square terraces topped by three round ones. The four square ones are walkways with very intricately carved panels on both sides, topped…

Yogyakarta’s main street is Jalan Malioboro, a busy road with separate rickshaw lanes. It’s one long shopping mall with clothes stalls in narrow dark arcades. It ends at the sultan’s palace. The sultan lives there but a cluster of very large reception pavilions and smaller attached buildings that house exhibits can be visited. The central…

Spent 15 hours in buses. People here work with numbers loosely – eight hours become twelve, and 5,000 Rp is the same as 50,000 except when paying. And we spent over two hours just leaving Bandung’s downtown gridlock. And the bus from Bogor to Bandung decided to flit by Jakarta. Arrived in Yogyakarta – or…

Puncak pass is at 1450 meters, 25km east of Bogor. The scenery is beautiful – lots of very green hills with tea plantations to both sides of the winding road. Unfortunately much of the scenery in hidden behind something like the world’s biggest shantytown strip mall. Only the last few kilometers allow some views. The…

Bogor is a town south of Jakarta that is in grave danger of getting swallowed by its big neighbor. The train station spits out passengers directly into a shantytown bazaar made of tarp and corrugated metal, very crowded and dimly lit. At the opposite end of the bazaar, across a small street, is the Abu…

Took the ferry back to Uleh Leh, VIP class this time. They are running a Karaoke video of ’60s rock songs. A becak driver took us into town, chatting all the way. Banda Aceh is known to the world as the place of a civil war between a fierce Islamic separatist movement and the military…

There is no beer on the island, officially. Sumatra is Islamic. But they aren’t too religious about Islam here so they smuggle beer to the beach, and store it in a separate refrigerator and list it on the menu as “B”. A can costs as much as a meal but it’s not going to run…

No scuba diving today. We rented snorkeling equipment instead and explored the bay for three hours. They have quite a lot of corals close to the beach, green, yellow, brown, sometimes with blue tips; in all kinds of shapes from big mushrooms to spindly treelike ones. Fish dart in and out of the corals and…

Pulau Weh is an island in the Sea of India off the northern tip of Sumatra. We chose Kabang Beach to stay. That’s just a beach, not a village, and it looks exactly like a beach on a tropical island is supposed to look like: green warm water, a crescent of white sand lined by…

Saturday was mostly a travel day. Settled the hotel bill – 65 euro for two people, three nights, and all meals and juices – the ferry to Parapat, a minibus to Medan, and a flight to Banda Aceh. There is a restaurant with a juice bar at the airport, but no matter what you order…

Rented bicycles to ride to Tomok a little south on the island, but it’s basically a cluster of souvenir shops. The ride north to Simanindo was much more interesting. The road at first ran between the lakeshore and the mountains, through incredibly green fields and tiny villages, and grazing oxen led by ropes. Later the…

Didn’t do very much at all. There isn’t really a town on Tuk Tuk, just a long circular road around the peninsula we are on. It takes about 90 minutes to walk the loop. There are lots of small children playing, and they all want their picture taken, posing for the camera, jumping into the…

Danau Toba is a volcanic lake four hours southwest from Medan and 900 meters up, with an island called Tuk Tuk where all the good hotels are. It’s cool up there, and our hotel is a tranquil resort at the lakeshore with small huts built in the traditional style with steep swept gables, in a…

Medan in Sumatra is not a major tourist hub and boasts exactly two important sights. The Mesjid Raya mosque has impressive black domes, and a simple and elegant, although slightly worn, interior. People were sleeping on the carpets. To get in, we had to hide our shorts with sarongs available for tourists at the entrance.…

The boat from Penang to Medan, crossing the Strait of Malacca, takes six hours. It’s fairly small, old but in good repair, and rather loud. The passenger deck is dark and crowded with seats, but only 10% full. It’s refrigerated and drafty. We got invited upstairs to the pilot cabin (“kaptan”) and could watch them…

Penang National Park is at the northwest corner of the island. It’s a primeval jungle, overgrown, full of animals calling (why do most wild animals sound like ringtones?), with a few paths leading to the main attractions. The Canopy Walk consists of 250 meters of 30cm wide walkways strung between trees some 10 m above…

Cheong Fatt Tze was the Asian Rockefeller a hundred years ago. When he died, he left his huge mansion in Georgetown to his son under the condition that it won’t be sold until he dies, so after the family fortune went south they had to sell the furniture and rent rooms to over 30 families.…

Pulau Pinang, aka Penang, is a large island off the west coast of Malaysia. The main town is Georgetown. Our hotel, the Segora Ninda, is a heritage building opoen to visitors. It’s charming but not as cosy as expected, and its heritage DHCP server is unbearably slow. Georgetown’s Chinatown is a Unesco world heritage. It’s…

The twin Petronas Towers are the main landmark of Kuala Lumpur. It takes four hours to get tickets and enter, but bwe had reserved tickets at the hotel the night before. First, visitors have to sit through a cheesy company PR video with bad 3D effects and an excited narrator praising the Petronas oil company…

I have been keeping count of all the countries I have been in over the years, and this is an anniversary: Malaysia is number 50. The “executive bus” from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur is spacious, comfortable, and falling apart inside, but I found a seat that worked. The formalities at the border are simple, the…

Orchard road is Singapore’s main shopping street, but it’s unimpressive. The nearby Fort Canning Park is quite pleasant though, although the fort is curiously absent except for one remaining gate, and the little lake is fenced in and hidden, with big red no-trespassing signs showing a policeman pointing a rifle at a stick figure with…