It is a special and interesting experience everywhere I go, talking to older people and especially old ladies. It happened in every country on this trip through Asia. The script is similar every time. You meet, smile, greet each other according to local standards and then they start talking. Most of them in their local […]
Sumatra
It’s been a while since I simply wrote a post about being a tourist, about the places I visited and the people I met. So it’s about time I think. Sumatra is the biggest island I crossed in Indonesia. The south is full of agriculture and palm oil plantations. To save some time, so I […]
It hit me
“Bromo is closed” the lady told me. The famous volcano in the east of Java was throwing clouds of ash in the air. Coming from the Netherlands, where hills are rare, mountains don’t exist and volcanos are viewed upon as a completely alien concept, to me this was very exciting news. It wasn’t allowed to […]
The Mancave
As a kid I spend many of my weekend days in my dads garage/workshop. At the back of the house we had a reasonably sized building my parents build themselves. Inside most of the space was taken up by the 5.6 meter long boat my dad sailed around the south of Europe with. An exciting […]
Where did you sleep?
After one month of bike travel through Indonesia it is about time I give its amazing people some credit. In these past weeks I met so many incredibly caring and loving people. Quite a few times now I had the honour of staying with a local family overnight. Without exception, these are all experiences that […]
Pretty places and pretty faces
Travelling can be an eye opening experience. Especially when you leave the tourist tracks. When you look beyond the beauty of the surrounding nature and into the eyes of the people. When you talk to them, when they talk to you, and when you learn from them. It teaches you about other cultures but it […]
In the middle of the sea
The idea of island-hopping through Indonesia inevitably involves taking ferries to get from one island to the next. The longest crossing is the first one, from West Timor to Flores. The ferries I took in Europe and New Zealand are all very organised, pre-booked, on time, clean etc etc. None of that applies to their […]