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…

Makassar is the largest town on Sulawesi, and has very little touristic value. Found a nice neighborhood at the old port, some distance from the center. Lots of old wooden Bugis boats, tightly packed, being loaded by people carrying sacks of cement, sugar, vegetables, and more. Talked to a sailor who loves to read Goethe…

Just returned from a two-day trekking tour north of Rantepao, with a local guide. The countryside is hilly, with many fields, bamboo forests, and small villages. Everything is bright green, as only rice paddies can be. We followed the walls between the paddies, but it had rained the night before and the paths were very…

Got the full ceremony today. The bodies were brought out after resting at home for a year, and pushed up to the family home (pictured – note the peculiar roofs)  one last time before they’ll be finally buried. There were hundreds of guests in large wooden pavillons built specifically for this ceremony, plus a couple…

More muck diving plus corals. Saw lionfish that looks like a mobile circus, stingrays, and lots more of those oddly named nudibranchs that look like many-colored jewels on the corals. Also a mimic octopus trying but not quite succeeding to blend into the seafloor, until it shot off to safety, away from all those big…

Sounds charming, does it, but it really means diving over a dark sandy seafloor. The guide pokes this and that with his pointer, and suddenly a small school of fish bursts out of the ground, or a warty Devil Scorpion Fish gives up its perfect camouflage and swims away, or a fish with tall fins…

Gave myself a birthday present today: I am now a licensed open water diver, after completing the last set of training dives. All were out in the sea, none of that pool nonsense. You learn how to put the gear together, buoyancy, losing and recovering mask and regulator, emergency procedures, and dive planning. Plus practice…

So what do you do in a dive center? Dive, of course. I don’t have a license but they have instructors. The reefs seem a little less interesting than the ones at Pulau Weh (see way down on this blog) but of course they don’t let me dive the really deep places. Got to change…

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…

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…

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…

The Ulu Watu temple is at the southern end of Bali. It’s small but very scenically perched at the edge of a huge cliff that falls down vertically to a foaming ocean. Admission includes a rental sarong. As before, the temple can’t be visited but the real attraction are the views of the ocean anyway.…

Tanah Lot is a pair of Hindu temples built on large rocks in the sea. The larger one is reached by wading out through shallow water on the lee side of the rock, while the surf crashes on the rock at the other sides. They have a holy spring in a cave at the bottom,…

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…