Category: Indonesia

We went snorkelling again. Diane is really enjoying this now. There is no stopping her. The ship had arrived at the Barat Daya Islands. This small and remote archipelago is located off the eastern end of East Timor. Most of the islands are barren, infertile and minimally forested. Another way of looking at them is to say they are perfect little tropical islands with clean, bright beaches ideal for a snorkelling trip. This is what we did. I think we had the island to ourselves.

The snorkelling here is extremely good. There is a wide variety of corals close to the beach. This attracts many different fishes. Big, small, brightly coloured, plain white. I have never seen such a variety of fish in one place. Not even in the Dubai aquarium. Diane is turning into quite the little mermaid. She will even let go of my hand occasionally. The water is warm and clear. Just the perfect temperature for some gentle swimming. The sun still feels hot but that just means there is no need to dry off and get dressed. We just hop back into a zodiac and go back to the ship.

Snorkelling in the morning and then we set sail for the island of Banda Neira. Late afternoon the bridge spotted a blue whale. I tried to get a photograph and managed a blurry picture of its dorsal fin. Even so, I was still pleased. My first Blue whale.

This is a small island, just 3 km long, in the centre of a caldera. For a while, it was the only place in the world where nutmeg was grown. The Dutch arrived there in 1600 hoping to monopolise the nutmeg trade. The fell out with the locals, the islanders revolted killing 30 Netherlanders. The Dutch came back with an army and began a campaign of genocide against the locals. The monopoly was broken in 1810. The invasion of the Spice Islands was a military invasion by British forces on and around the Dutch owned Maluku Islands also known as the Spice Islands in the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic Wars. The British attack on Fort Belgica, Banda Neira was a bit chaotic but they were aided by heavy rainfall which rendered the defenders cannons inoperative. By 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch once more took control but not before the British had spread nutmeg and cloves far and wide. Trees were transplanted, complete with soil, to Sri Lanka, Penang, Bencoolen, and Singapore. From these locations they were transplanted to other colonial holdings elsewhere, notably Zanzibar and Grenada. The Dutch finally relinquished control in 1949.

We arrived early the next morning. Some canoes came out to greet us. The Banda islands are the visible part of the volcano Gunung Api. Banda Api is the active cone that last erupted in 1988. Ash rose several kilometres into the air. One of the lava flows was clearly visible as we approached the island. Nearly 10,000 people needed to be evacuated from the archipelago. Most of the inhabitants of Banda Api have since relocated to Banda Neira.

The landing was done by zodiac to a small quay. We got divided into small groups and then herded around the island in different directions.

Our first stop was Fort Belgica. This has been restored and is in quite good condition. The top of the towers afford and excellent view across the town. The volcanic cone of Banda Api towers above the fort.

Next, we went to see a nutmeg plantation. This was in the shadow of the fort. As far as I could tell, it was still being run in a very traditional and manual way. The owner demonstrated cutting some cinnamon bark off a tree. I have since learnt that Cinnamon is the name for several species of trees and the commercial spice products that some of them produce. Typically, the trees are managed through coppicing.

The nutmeg fruit is a rather unassuming thing about the size of a plum and pale green or yellow. They are traditionally harvested using a bamboo contraption which catches the fruit as it is taken from the tree. This stops it hitting the ground. The fleshy part of the fruit can be used to make jam and sugar crystalised sweets. Splitting the fruit open reveals the nutmeg seed surrounded by a red covering. The covering is mace. A similar flavour to nutmeg but more subtle. Nutmeg and mace, commonly used as food spices, have been traditionally employed for their psychoactive and aphrodisiac effects.

Last event on the agenda was some more dancing and music. Everyone got together for this one. The major presented the captain of Le Soleal with a present and made a speech. We slipped out after the second round of dancing and wandered back to the ship. On the way, we noticed the street lamps had been fashioned to look like nutmegs.

It was late in the afternoon when we sailed from Banda Neira. I took a few photographs as we passed the islands. Eventually the sunset, we had a cocktail and retired for the evening ready for another early start at Kitikiti.

The day after the excitement of the dragons, we turned up at Maumere, population 80,000, on the island of Flores. The reefs in this area were once considered some of the finest diving in the world. Sadly, a 2007 report found that 75% of the coral reefs had been significantly damaged or destroyed by the practice of bomb fishing, the use of toxic chemicals in fishing, and due to earthquakes.

We were loaded into a coach and driven for an hour up into the hills and to a small village. Here we were welcomed with some traditional dancing and music. Optionally, we were given some betel nut to chew as well as their local hard spirit. The betel nut is the fruit of the areca palm. It contains a mild alkaloid stimulant which is released by chewing it with calcium hydroxide (slaked lime). I had a nibble but it did not taste too good and I was not too sure about putting slaked lime in my mouth. The local spirit tasted like a grappa.

I was not too sure about the dancing. Clearly it was put on for our benefit but I was dubious about the extent to which it genuinely reflected local culture and customs. I am pretty sure that as soon as we left that the locals would put their proper clothes back on and go back to work. Some of the others in our group loved it. I imagine they thought we had penetrated deep into the unexplored jungle and were the first white people to be witnessing these rituals. By the side of the bus was a group of lads hanging out with their mopeds, smoking cigarettes and facebooking on their mobile phones.

The last part of our visit was the ubiquitous carpet shop. The women were hard at work spinning cotton into thread by hand. Next to them were a couple of looms and beyond that an awful lot of fabric hung out for display. They appeared to be doing a brisk trade.

The rest of the day we were on the ship sailing towards the town of Kalabahi on Alor Island. Our ship, Le Soleal, was built in 2012 in Italy. It is run by the French, Compagnie du Ponant. It is slow. Typically, we only do around 7 knots. However, it is remarkably quiet, stable and comfortable.

Next morning we were up early again for a zodiac landing. Fortunately, they could put us ashore on a stone jetty. We did not need to get our feet wet. In something of a repeat of the previous day we were loaded into some small and battered coaches. The trip to the village was a shorter drive but then we had to walk. Not too far. Just a couple of hundred metres up a steep slope. Here we found a carefully laid out market area and beyond that a cleared area with seating around it.

There was a lot more dancing. More whooping and waving of spears and rusty swords. I wandered around the village a little while this was going on. The construction of the huts was quite interesting. The lowest platform was over a metre off the ground. This gave a big living space, open on the sides. In the centre was a fireplace. The posts supporting the roof and attic had wooden barriers to prevent rodents getting up into the top section. The roof was steeply sloping to be effective with the heavy rain that often occurs here.

 I spent a while photographing the dancing. For the most part, I was not very comfortable doing this. For a start, it feels quite invasive. I know the dancing is put on for us but even so I am not sure about pushing a camera into someone’s face. Also, I was having to fight with all the other photographers, mostly taking video using their phone. Why do people do this? Hundreds of hours of small, shaky video that nobody will ever watch.

Eventually, it all stopped and we got to spend time in the make-shift market. Eventually, that ended as well and we walked back down to the coaches. I thought we might get back to the ship then but instead we were taken to a market. This one really baffled me. A market selling fruit, vegetables, fish and meat. The fish and meat was getting rather revoltingly smelly in hot tropical sun. There was also a lot of rubbish.

Next we were taken to a museum. They have a bit of a thing about drums in Kalabahi. In particular, Moko drums, which are ancient and valuable bronze kettledrums. The Moko drums are believed to have originated from the Dong Son culture of North Vietnam, possibly imported to Indonesia by traders between 600 BCE and 300 CE. Their exact local origins remain a mystery to the Indigenous people of Alor. The museum has a large and diverse collection of drums which they are very proud of.

First day on the ship is all about finding your way around. We had mandatory briefings about the use of RHIBs. We were loaned some snorkelling gear. We discovered the restaurants and bars. We attended a lecture about Komodo dragons. In the evening there was a gala dinner. Some people got dressed up for this. I put my cleanest shirt on but still managed to enjoy the champagne. Life from a 23 kg suitcase does not allow for dressing up clothes.

The Komodo Dragon is the biggest lizard in the world. Up to 3m long and 150 kg. These monitor lizards are endemic to a handful of Indonesian islands in the Komodo National Park. They are the apex predator and live off a diet of deer, wild boar and carrion. The Komodo dragon was the driving factor for an expedition to Komodo Island by Douglas Burden in 1926. They returned with 12 preserved specimens and two live ones. This expedition provided the inspiration for the 1933 movie King Kong.

We arrived early in the morning. A few people live on the island and they had set up a small market area to sell things to tourists. We were divided up into small groups. Each group had a guide and two national park rangers armed with long sticks. They went in front and behind the main group. Occasionally, dragons attack and bite humans. Sometimes they consume human corpses, digging up bodies from shallow graves. This habit of raiding graves caused the villagers of Komodo to move their graves from sandy to clay ground, and pile rocks on top of them, to deter the lizards. The guide was just explaining how it was not guaranteed that we would see any dragons when one wandered past the market area.

These dragons do not breath fire but they are still fearsome warriors. Komodo dragon skin is reinforced by armoured scales, which contain tiny bones called osteoderms that function as a sort of natural chainmail. They have orange, iron-enriched coatings on their tooth serrations and tips, as an adaptation for maintaining the sharp cutting edges. It used to be thought that the bacteria on their teeth could make even a small bite ultimately fatal. This has since been disproved. Dragons do have venom glands that secrete several different toxic proteins. The extent to which these are used for killing prey is uncertain.

We walked round a track through the forest. It was only quite short although the whole trip took nearly two hours with many stops to listen to the guide and watch the dragons. In all, we saw half a dozen dragons. They did not appear to take much notice of us. One of them was digging out a nest.

We got to an area where we could smell decaying meat. There was not anything to see but the guide assured us that a dragon had been eating here. Loosely articulated jaws, flexible skulls, and expandable stomachs allow them to swallow prey whole. Copious amounts of red saliva help to lubricate the food. Sometimes a dragon will ram the carcass against a tree to force it down its throat. A single meal can be 80% of their body weight. This means they only need to eat every few weeks.

Further down the track, our guide pointed out a young dragon in a tree. Poaching and loss of habitat make the dragon endangered these days. Across the whole Komodo National Park there are about 3000 dragons left. Young dragons mostly live up trees where the mature reptiles cannot catch and eat them.

I was quite happy to get to the end of the track. It was very hot and I was starting to wilt. Our route was arranged so that we needed to go through the market area to get back on the ship. There were t-shirts, little model dragons and various other tat that looked suspiciously like it was mass produced in China.

In the afternoon, the ship moved to another island, without dragons, and we went snorkelling. Diane’s first ever snorkel. She was a bit nervous but soon got used to it. Buoyed up by two pool noodles she was soon swimming around like a pro.

It is only a short flight from Singapore to Bali. Our flight was late afternoon. It was dark when we landed. Another country, another culture. Here the taxi drivers were pitching for our custom even before we had collected our luggage. It was roughly ninety minutes drive to our hotel in Ubud to the north of the airport in Denpasar. After a little negotiating, this ended up costing us about £20.

In the morning, we could see that we had arrived in the middle of a jungle. The last part of the drive had been through rice paddies and a banana plantation. Now we could see that we were on the shoulder of a steep sided valley. Dense with rich, green vegetation and alive with jungle sounds. Our accommodation was compact but we had a balcony with a view over the trees and valley. Breakfast was in a large, open sided building that overlooked an infinity pool.

Bali is an Indonesian island, east of Java and west of Lombok. It is Indonesia’s primary tourist destination. 80% of the economy is tourist related businesses. Bali is the only Hindu-majority province in Indonesia. 86% of the population are Balinese Hindus. In India there are many Hindus. They are vegetarian as required by their belief. Our taxi driver explained that in Bali most people are not vegetarian because they are Hindu. Religion seems a bit arbitrary at times. Bali has received numerous awards as a tourist destination. It is also suffering from some of the problems associated with over tourism . David Bowie’s ashes are scattered in Bali.

We spent the day pottering around the hotel. I spotted a medium sized lizard. There were many monkeys. Mostly long-tailed macaques. We were warned to avoid them. In the afternoon we were drinking tea when a monkey hopped on our table and went for the cake. Diane was having none of this. She jumped up and shouted, loudly at the monkey to go away. She did not literally say “Go away”, instead she used the Rotherham Equivalent Expression (REE*). This was remarkably effective. The monkey beat a rapid retreat and the other guests, sipping their tea, were momentarily stunned into silence.

*A REE is a sentiment delivered in local Rotherham vernacular. It is typically concise, direct, insensitive and occasionally incomprehensible to outsiders of the South Yorkshire area.

The hotel had a kitchen garden where they were growing chillis and pineapples. The pineapple is an odd fruit. Pineapples grow as a small shrub. The individual flowers of the unpollinated plant fuse to form a multiple fruit. Originally from South America, the pineapple was first introduced to Europe in 1500s. It was difficult to grow in Europe and expensive to import. The pineapple became a symbol of wealth and status. By the second half of the 18th century, the production of the fruit on British estates became the subject of great rivalry between wealthy aristocrats. The fruit was rarely eaten. Instead, the pineapple was used for display, repeatedly, until it began to rot. To this day, you can still see pineapple carvings used on the walls and gateposts of old manor houses as a sign of prestige. In the 19^th century, pineapples were being cultivated in tropical areas all around the world. The Victorians had no fear of invasive species and were happy to spread plants and animals to wherever they would prosper. In the 1960s Hawaii became one of the world’s major supplier of pineapples. Foods incorporating pineapple became known as Hawaiian. Sotirios “Sam” Panopoulos, a Greek-Canadian cook, is credited with putting pineapple on pizza first in 1962 at his Satellite Restaurant in Ontario, Canada. Whether or not this was a good idea is still hotly debated.

Next day we took the shuttle bus into town. It was hot and busy and there were plenty of tourists around. Our first stop was the Ubud Water Palace; “a serene sanctuary that combines traditional Balinese architecture with the tranquillity of nature”. We both had to don purple sarongs, jackets and head gear to get in. It was genuinely nice in a fiddly, water feature sort of way. Rather ornate statues and a plethora of gods. Fountains with smoke and numerous images, carvings and ponds. The palace was not especially large. Some stepping stones, a couple of dinky wooden bridges and some seats arranged to look like thrones. These were particularly popular with some of the other visitors. There were small queues of people waiting to get their photograph taken sitting on a throne. Next to the palace was a coffee shop. As palace visitors, we got an irresistible 10% discount.

I gave the purple sarong back. Despite the colour, it did not really seem my style. At the coffee shop we had “cappuccino brulee”. Essentially, a cappuccino with a crisped sugar topping. Interesting but only for its novelty value. After coffee, we took a walk around town. Here was an endless supply of tourist orientated shops selling assorted tat. Fridge magnets, small statues, t-shirts, wooden bowls and scarves. Diane eventually succumbed and bought a sarong.

We only had a couple of days in Bali. It would have been interesting to stay longer but we had a ship to meet. In pondering how to get to New Zealand by Jan 2026, we had lucked on a nice last-minute deal with the small expedition ship “Le Soleal”. From Bali this would take us to Cairnes in Australia by way of some of the Indonesian islands and New Guinea. We got down to the port with several hours to spare. The ship was docked but not allowing new passengers onboard. It was hot and humid, as ever. We wandered around the port area for a while but mostly got hassled by taxi drivers and hawkers selling bracelets. We did manage to find a shop selling cold beer. We also found a comparatively quiet corner outside where the pressure from taxi drivers was not actually continuous.

Eventually, we were allowed onto the ship. Found our cabin and were reunited with our luggage. It was on the lower deck, near the bows, one of the few without a balcony. However, comfortable enough; nice TV screen, large bed and a good shower. Before we could begin settling in, we needed to attend a mandatory safety drill. This required turning up in the main lecture theatre wearing our life jackets. We were given a talk about abandoning ship, had a look at the lifeboats and listened to the disturbingly loud ships alarm. Finally, we could get to the bar and enjoy the sunset as we sailed from Bali.