Indonesia on wheels

Quite what has inspired Indonesia’s love affair with small wheels will probably remain a mystery but it seems as though the country has embraced the modest wheeled vehicle like no other. Many countries have their iconic forms of transport: jeepneys in the Philipines; decorated trucks in Pakistan and the London Bus, just to name a few, but Indonesia has adapted bicycles and motor bikes to perform a whole range of functions. You won’t get very far, anywhere in the country before…

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Kolorful Kalimantan

As its new year I am sure you all need a bit of colour to cheer you up, particularly after some of my more gruesome posts recently. If you are languishing in post-Christmas poverty, having mortgaged your soul to pay obscene heaps of food and booze to wash away the pain of regular employment, let me at least offer you a hint of sunshine. After a few weeks in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, buildings back home are going to seem rather…

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To live and die in Toraja

Warning: animal lovers may find some of the images distressing    In the lush hills of Tana Toraja in central Sulawesi the most important part of life is, without doubt, death. It is an event which calls for a great deal of time and expense and is firmly rooted in ancient traditions, despite the majority of the population being Christian. The piety of the Torajans disguises the fact that Christianity is largely a very recent arrival: attacks from Muslim lowlanders (which…

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The bus stops of Toraja

Passing through the many villages scattered over the hills of Tana Toraja in the central Sulawesi highlands, you soon begin to wonder why they have so many bus shelters, sometimes several in one village. Some may be modest affairs but many are decorated with bright colours and patterns, clearly built with love and care. Even the design of traditional homes and rice stores is replicated for some. In reality the function of bus stop is just a fringe benefit, for…

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A dog is for lunch, not just for Christmas

Warning: animal lovers may find some of the images distressing Tis the season of good cheer to all God’s creatures, or at least that is what the Christmas card manufacturers would like us to believe. However, as you are probably aware by now, I am that nagging voice in a dark corner of the travel blogging world, reminding you that things aren’t always as nice as the travel brochures want you to think. So, I hope you have fully digested …

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Beach holiday showdown: Bali vs East Timor

If your idea of holiday heaven is to be packed onto a beach with thousands of like-minded souls, knowing that MacDonald’s tastiest treats and a Starbucks Latte are only a stagger away, then Bali is the place for you. Even if days of sun-drenched inertia raise a twinge of guilt you could always go for a day trip to something cultural to justify your sandy stasis. Or, you could just say, “fuck it! I’ll have another beer”. After all the…

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Welcome to the new colonialism: West Papua

You may have thought that colonialism had been consigned to the dusty, historical cupboards of European guilt but in one corner of Indonesia it is alive and well. In a slight twist on the old school model, many West Papuans (who are dark-skinned Melanesians) converted to Christianity under the influence of Dutch colonial rule but are now under the yoke of the largely Muslim Indonesians. The central pillar of the injustice is the 1969 Act of Free Choice initiated by…

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Learning to love the cockroach

If you haven’t stayed in cockroach infested dumps, you haven’t traveled, as someone famous ought to have said. Anything else is just plain tourism. The scuttling horror of the cockroach, that all right minded travelers must dread, is one that you never truly get used to, no matter how often you share a room with them and I have done so more than most on my tours of the world’s less salubrious destinations. Some indefinable trait of unpleasant, alien otherness…

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A strange kind of tourism: Sidoarjo Mud Flow

There can’t be many disaster areas that you can drive past and not notice but Sidoarjo in East Java is one such oddity. Back in 2006 a drilling operation caused a natural gas well blowout, creating the world’s biggest mud volcano. All these years later and it is still merrily chugging away, spewing out mud and steam. Although the rate has slowed considerably it has the potential to continue for years. As letting it gradually overwhelm the entirety of this…

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Baliem Valley, West Papua: guys and gourds

Well! that’s certainly the first time I have been welcomed at an airport by a man wearing only a gourd on his cock. Admittedly, when I say airport, the structure at Wamena in the Baliem Valley, West Papua tends more towards the idea of a cow shed than what you would traditionally imagine an airport to be. This however, did nothing to make the experience any the less superb. Plenty of destinations around the world would benefit from having more old men’s…

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