Feb 23
The dive guide looked at me in alarm. “January? That is not a good season for diving in Bali. He held a map of the balloon-shaped island, and with his other hand he brushed its upper portions. “It’s rainy season; storms come from the north, and the sea has a lot of trash… sometimes guests complain about all the rubbish – we say sorry, sorry, but what can we do?” Read more
Feb 19
The rambling, stony trail beckons us deeper into the forest. Three identical wooden gateways stand straight ahead, pure Japanese in their simplicity, the green and gold patterns on their rough-hewn columns evoking the hollyhock crest of the Tokugawa shoguns. But this is Indonesia, and instead of a perfectly manicured landscape of framed views, Bama and I are about to discover a different kind of serenity. Read more
“It’s easy,” Tinus says.
He grips a sword in one hand and a scabbard in the other, swivelling his wrists in a fluid, effortless motion. “First you will practice on a banana tree, then you can cut open a coconut.”
Of all the things I had planned to do at Nihiwatu – hiking, stand-up paddleboarding, perhaps even a cooking class – I never imagined a Sumbanese sword lesson would be on the cards.
Nov 30
In the darkness, the sound of the crashing waves grew louder still. They churned up a hundred thousand grains of sand, gouging them from the depths and sweeping them up onto Nihiwatu beach. The rocks dotting the foreshore were pockmarked and worn – great stumps that doggedly clung to the land as the Indian Ocean surged and foamed around them, its waters quickening with the rising tide. Read more
Sep 16
The 1930s were an age of unrestrained decadence. Radio had displaced newspapers as the most popular form of mass media; cinemas from Shanghai to Sao Paulo screened the latest in Hollywood films; ballrooms on both sides of the Atlantic echoed to the sounds of jazz and big band swing music; and the world seemed blissfully ignorant of the storm clouds brewing on the horizon.
Sep 9
The cyclist is frozen mid-pedal, against a luxuriant backdrop of flowers spreading up into the sky. He appears wide-eyed, the traces of a moustache above his lips, and a full head of hair crowned with the folds of a Balinese udeng. Read more
Sep 1
A flickering tongue tasted the air, and the giant lizard turned in a momentary pause from his lunch. Together with a handful of Australian visitors, we stood on the edge of a mud pit, watching in hushed excitement as a young Komodo dragon feasted on a water buffalo carcass, its horns and bare ribs protruding from the muck. Read more
Aug 18
There was a time when migrants from the fishing village of Labuan Bajo sought better opportunities in other parts of Flores. “They used to look down on people from Labuan Bajo,” a local guide tells us offhand, “but now it’s the opposite.” Today his once-sleepy hometown is in the midst of a tourism boom, attracting labour from the rest of the island and even further beyond. Read more
Aug 13
Sipping on a mug of strong, sweetened local coffee, we sat cross-legged on a mat, across from the village chief as he smiled and folded betel leaves, his dark teeth showing between red-stained gums. Read more
Aug 1
10 kilometres south of Bajawa, the near-perfect cone of Inerie stands tall over Ngada territory. The verdant highlands around the volcano are dotted with many ancient villages, of which Bena is the most famous, perched on a lip of land rearing up over the adjacent valley. Here, the houses of wood, bamboo and alang-alang grass line a series of interlocking terraces populated with megalithic structures, culminating in a shaded lookout and a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Read more
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