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

I so love getting up at three in the morning. Well, it got me out of Jakarta and to Bunaken, a small island off the coast of Sulawesi, which is a large Indonesian island northeast of Java. Bunaken is very quiet; there is just one tiny village. People come here for diving. On unrelated news,…

The fastest way to go from Yogyakarta to Jakarta is by train. The luxury executive train may lack elegance (and speed) but it’s certainly spacious and comfortable. Eight hours of rural panoramas of Java: endless rice paddies, little villages, lakes, and green hills in the background. Jakarta continues to fail to enamor me. Not only…

Java isn’t like Bali, it’s more like Indonesia. Gone are the posh resorts, the vans with tinted windows, the busloads of Australians invading temples like cellphone-wielding locusts, and the westernized malls. Yogyakarta, or Jogja as it’s called here, has no synthetic attractions and caters mostly to locals. Very refreshing. Much cheaper too. Rented a becak…

I have been to Bali before but never to the northern end. They have some pretty major mountains and a volcano there. The water temple is on a lake at 1200 meters. The temples themselves are not accessible but they have a big platform where monks do a sort of brief pray-in, scheduled by a…

Time to leave the Gilis… The speedboat I had booked promptly broke down before it could leave, and we had to wait for another one. In Indonesia such things are not a reason to get upset. The minibus that brought us from the harbor to our destinations got stuck in Denpasar’s traffic maelstrom, no news…

The Gili islands are wonderfully relaxing, but after a while it does get a little tiring if every local I talk to drops into that signature whisper after a minute: hashish? Ecstasy? Cocaine? “Super duper mega radical maximum fuckin’ bloody fresh magic mushroom”, end quote? Just a block behind the beach promenade, the locals have…

Drugs are illegal in Indonesia so you have to promise the dealers not to report their offers. Enforcement seems a little lackluster.… Read the rest

There’s three tiny islands off the coast of Lombok, called the Gilis. Small green jewels, quiet, wooded, no motor traffic, endless beaches. Gili Trawangan has the most visitors and the occasional party, so people call it Gili Tralala. I got a traditional hut in a very nice resort. The island is small enough to walk…

The ferry was canceled on Thursday so I was stuck on Flores for another day. Chartered a motorcycle with driver to see more of the Island and some caves. Very friendly, green, and pretty little villages. Afterwards he showed me his home and seven days old son. The Friday ferry to Sumbawa was going, rather…

“There Be Dragons” is what ancient map makers wrote in spaces for which they had no data. They clearly didn’t know the islands of Rinca and Komodo. Here, and only here, live the Komodo dragons. They are big (2m+) scaly lizards with massive legs and claws. What they bite won’t get up much anymore. They…

Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores is not an interesting town. It’s very small, mostly made from corrugated metal and open sewers, and has no sights. People come here for the islands; there’s a small airfield. It’s so small that our little turboprop touched down, did a U-turn on the runway, went all the…

Airports are supposed to have lots of power sockets, but not all of them do. In Lima we actually had to sit down in a Starbuck to charge equipment. In Kuala Lumpur they have little lockers, just big enough for a phone. Inside is a charging cable. Different boxed support different phone types. Cool…… Read…

Finally made it to Bali, after a long sequence of long flights. I’ll fly to Labuan Bajo on Flores tomorrow but I’ll have to stay a night on Bali. My chosen hotel is quite fancy. It’s in Seminyak because it’s the farthest, but least touristic of the three beach towns up Bali’s coast north of…

<p>Went to some precolombian ruins in Lima’s San Isidro district. “Ruins” doesn’t really capture it, they have rebuilt the whole thing so it’s now in absolutely perfect condition. It’s a 20m step pyramid from which one has a perfect view of the residential towers all around. Spoils the impression completely. </p><p>San Isidro also has a…

Lima continues to fail to amaze. Tried to visit some Inca ruins outside town, but they were closed and a look over the fence didn’t impress. The nearby freeway, oil refinery, slums, and dirty beaches with dead birds that vie for the discriminating traveler’s attention made Lima look good again so we returned. Which takes…

Ok, it serves to stow the third of Peruvian who choose to live in this city. But there is very little to see or do here. It’s main property is size. We chose to stay in the Miraflores neighborhood, which is a little less ragged and dangerous than el centro, but it’s not very interesting…

That last photo was taken with my friend’s iphone. Evidently iphone take photos upside down and then set a flag telling the viewer to turn it around. Some viewers do that and some don’t. Blogger doesn’t. So here it is again, after Android treatment.… Read the rest

Machu Picchu is 400 meters above Aguas Calientes. It’s the #1 tourist attraction of South America. It’s an Inca city on top of a mountain, nestled between two other mountains in an incredibly scenic way, as if the Inca designed it as a tourist attraction 700 years ago. The Spaniards who looted the rest of…

Aguas Caliente is a small village boxed in by high mountains. It has a train station, a bus terminal, and as many hotels, pizza restaurants, and massage salons as can possibly be stuffed into the limited space in between. There is totally no reason to pay this tourist trap a visit – except that it’s…

There’s an Inka ruins park here that covers a large section of the mountainside north of the town. They terraced the mountains and built forts and storage buildings on top. Some look almost glued to the wall. Everything is connected with narrow stairs and footpaths hewn into the rock. The scenery is dramatic. We could…

Took a taxi to Ollantaytambo. The taxi costs 20 times as much as local buses but saves hours of time in diesel-filled sardine cans, so we’ll file this under rich Europeans supporting the local economy. Ollantaytambo has its own Inca ruins hanging impossibly from the hillsides that box in the town. We’ll explore those tomorrow.…

We are in the Inca Sacred Valley, and there are Inca ruins all over the place. After visiting the main ones near Cusco yesterday, we took a local business to Pisaq, hired a taxi, and went up the hills to follow the trail there. The trail hugs the edge of the hill, and the views…

Cusco in Peru’s sacred valley was the center of the Inca kingdom. They fought against Pizarro here, and lost. Today Cusco shows almost no trace of its Inca heritage, apart from some foundations here and some walls there. The city was rebuilt by the Spaniards, often by tearing down Inca monuments to build their own…

Perurail runs a luxury train from Puno to Cusco in the holy valley of the Inkas. It feels like a 1920s Orient Express: everything is paneled with dark wood, there are comfortable big chairs, tablecloths, brass lamps, and vases with real roses. Got an excellent three-course lunch and afternoon tea. The next car was a…

This will be the last country in South America before this blog returns to its mission, promise. We spent a little time in Copacabana’s markets, marveling at cubic-meter sized bags of popcorn, and trying Inca Kola, à pale yellow soda that tastes like children’s bubble gum balls. Getting from Copacabana in Bolivia to Puno in…

There’s just a few scheduled boats to and from Isla del Sol and they are not convenient. So we hired our private boat to take us to the north of the island, and from there to the ruins of Chincana, which is said to be the birthplace of the Inkas. Chincana is a maze of…

Titicaca is said to be the highest navigable lake in the world, at 3800 meters. Its largest island is Isla del Sol, reachable by a very very slow boat. There is no way to go from the harbor but up a very long stairway. At the top is another very long stairway. Followed by another.…

La Paz, Bolivia’s seat of government, stretches from an altitude of 3200 to 4000 meters. The center follows a narrow valley, with avenue Prado in the middle. The various neighborhoods climb up steeply on both sides, without much regard for the terrain. Downtown isn’t much to write home about, it’s incredibly congested and mostly built…

Potosi is the world’s highest city at 4070 meters, in the Bolivian Andes. Having visited places in Tibet at up to 5400 meters without difficulty, I underestimated the altitude a little – you need to breathe a lot faster, heartbeat accelerates, and you feel an urge to do everything very slowly. The city spreads out…

Sucre continues to enchant. No amount of white paint was spared to turn this city 2800 meters up in the Andes into a shining colonial architecture monument. UNESCO thinks so too. The Museo de la Recoleta, an old convent built in 1600 on a hill, offers a great view over the city and the surrounding…