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

Pangkalan Bun has an original wooden palace, the kraton, three centuries old. I went there for a look. Turns out that they were in the last day of the traditional Initiation rites. The main hall was covered in golden drapes, and everybody wore yellow or traditional tribal costumes made of tree bark. The son of…

I was walking down the waterfront boardwalk of Pangkalan Bun to the market, enjoying chatting with the locals. One of them was an English teacher at a primary school nearby, and he asked me if I wanted to visit his school and let the children practice some English. Sure! The school had a large yard…

There’s a village across the Sekonyer river, just outside the national park. People there used to be farmers, but there is a palm oil Plantation nearby and the fertilizer runoff and the extremely high water use for Palm oil production has poisoned their soil, so no more farming. When the villagers protested, the farm oil…

In the 1950s, Professor Leakey sent out three researchers out to Africa and Indonesia to study primates: Jane Goodall, Dian Foster, and Birute Galdikas. Galdikas still lives in Pangkalan Bun on Borneo and runs a hospital. Her research camp can be reached by boat up the Sekonyer river from Pangkalan Bun, and a little hiking…

Orang-Utans live only in the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. I came to Pangkalan Bun in the south of Borneo to see these great apes. I had rented a boat with a guide (and a captain, and a cook, and a guy for everything else) to take me up the Sekonyer river into Tanjung…

The long-tail boat keeps going upriver, and the river is increasingly narrow. In one place it was blocked by a logjam big enough to build a house on, so we couldn’t just run over it at high speed. So the guide and Captain did what must be part of any respectable jungle trek: they got…

The Mahakam River in East Kalimantan is nearly a thousand kilometers long. Along its shores are primeval rain forests where one can spot some unusual animals like the long-nosed monkey and colorful kingfisher birds. I went up the river with a guide and a fast long-tail boat to see what nature has to offer, and…

To the south of the South Chinese Sea, complete wrapped by the other Indonesian islands, the Phillipines, Vietnam, and Malaysia there is a large white spot on my map: Borneo. Most of the island is part of Indonesia, called Kalimantan, and the main city is Balikpapan. From here I’ll start my explorations with a trip…

Eilat is a strange city. There is the eastern half with residential areas and industrial zones, and the western half with most of the big hotels, the marina, and the beaches. They are divided by the airport runway, making it awkward to go from one side to the other. The arrangement also means that all…

Petra in Jordan was the center of the Nabatean culture, abandoned in the 7th century after an earthquake. It’s built mostly in and above an extremely narrow two-kilometer canyon that is in some places no more than a few meters wide. Except that the city wasn’t built, it was carved, like a sculpture: start with…

The big thing at Eilat, besides buying tawdry souvenirs, is diving. One dive yesterday and three today. They have sunk an old missile command ship of the Israeli navy, which is now sitting on the seafloor at 25m. The sea is very clear and visibility is excellent, so one gets a good sense of the…

It’s over 200km from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, 400m higher, through the Negev desert. For Israel, that’s a long distance. The bus was packed and I sat next to a soldier who I hope had his machine gun set on safety. Israel only has a few kilometers of coastline at the Red…

Ein Bokek is the main Dead Sea resort. It consists of a dozen nondescript concrete hotel towers, lots of parking, two malls of the kind they were razing first when East Germany joined the west, lots of ailing palm trees, and gigantic construction sites that were blocking more than half the beaches. Ein Bokek has…

The Dead Sea is a short bus ride east of Jerusalem. The scenery become4s very arid quickly, with only rocks and a few shrubs visible as we got closer to the sea. The elevation kept falling slowly until we were 340 meters below sea level. We kept passing through desert until the Oasis of Ein…

Jerusalem has a large number of attractions, most of which involve Jesus, and the bad time he was having at the end. I saw the place where he had his last supper, was betrayed and arrested, where he stumbled and held his hand to the wall (now a deeply worn stone because everyone puts their…

The third-party Bloggeroid app works! Here are the Akko pictures.… Read the rest

… Read the rest

Akko is old. Very old. It was inhabited without interruption for over 4000 years. It did get destroyed and rebuilt a few times but it still feels that old. It reminds me a bit of the medina of Marrakech, with the same maze of narrow alleys and markets,  except better maintained and cleaner. The main…

I am still amazed how close everything is in Israel. In a few hours you can go all the way up or down the coast from Tel Aviv. Caesarea is an hour north. It’s an old town dating back before Roman times that was turned into a fairly large city by the Herod.  Many large…

Asia – images of elephants, pagodas, monks in orange robes, and noisy scooters. But not this time. I am in Jaffa, Israel, at the western edge of Asia. It’s easy to get here, there are no formalities of any kind and none of the interviews and inspections I was expecting. Israel is far nicer to…

Time to say goodbye to the Philippines, this was only a brief vacation and it’s time to get back to work. One last look at Manila from the plane, on my way to Bangkok. Bangkok is a convenient stopover on the long flight home, and I have friends here I can say hello to. Bangkok…

Went back to Manila. It’s a monster of a city with an unbelievable traffic problem, but the oldest part of it, walled Intramuros, is a (mostly) quiet oasis with restored historic buildings, narrow streets, and a much slower way of life than outside. Part of it is given over to tourists, but just a few…

Malapascua is still unspoiled, beside the few dive centers at the beach most of it is still villages, fields, narrow sandy paths, and friendly people. I have walked for many hours on the island and chatted with people. They went through difficult times after the taiphoon, but there is a smile on everyone’s face. But…

Malapascua is a small island off the northern tip of large Cebu Island. Like on Boracay, diving is king here, but it’s no party island. No McDonald’s, no souvenir shops, no fancy resorts, no crowds of tourists. Apart from a few motorcycles, there are no motor vehicles on the island. You can walk all around…

Left Boracay. Beautiful place that reminds me in some ways of Bali away from Kuta and the Australians. But it’s also clear then the Filipinos lack the Balinese’s sense of beauty. Time to get away from the beach crowds. From Caticlan it’s a long van ride along the coast of Panay to the town of…

There is a large airplane not far off White Beach in Boracay, at a depth of close to 30m. They floated it there from the airport and let it sink. Unfortunately it flipped and is now upside-down. One can look into the cockpit and the cabin, see the toilet hanging from the ceiling, and admire…

Boracay is a small island but one of the most beautiful destinations in the Philippines. The sand is white, the weather is balmy, people walk barefoot on the two-kilometer beach promenade shaded by palm trees. There is a dive shop every fifty meters, and the dive boats have trouble finding a spot to park on…

Sabang is a typical beach town. Laid-back, slow, sunny, and not very crowded (a fact that has the shopkeepers very worried). The big business here is diving, and keeping the divers supplied with alcohol in the evenings. I went out with a very relaxed long-haired dive master ate South Sea Diving who has been here…

The Philippines consist of many islands and countless beaches. I am going to visit a few, beginning with Puerto Galera, the galley bay. Getting here from Vigan took 15 hours by bus, van, and ferry. This is going to be a short post because I need to catch up on sleep, but I still wanted…

I don’t like Vigan food.  It’s mostly deep-fried greasy animal pieces, like pork belly and sausages that resist description. I don’t see people visiting the Philippines for the food. Vigan,  the city,  is very pleasant. Its entire downtown has completely preserved Spanish colonial architecture.  A Spanish traveler I have met has felt right at home,…