Souls Growing Skywards with the Trees
At Pana, the cave graves were easy to find, half of them broken open, looming out of a granite slab in the oncoming dusk and...
Category: Indonesia
Video: Dancing Clownfish
This little guy was defending his nest and his baby just left of the dock in Pulau Derawan: he’s straight out of Finding Nemo. He’s...
Buffalo Soldiers: Living for Death in the Tana Toraja
“Are funerals like this in London?” asks my new Torajan friend. The dead man’s drum-shaped coffin emerges from the matrimonial bedroom where he has “slept”,...
Colours of Makassar
Makassar, Indonesia. The capital of Sulawesi. A hectic, noisy port city, where even the scuzziest scenes are full of equatorial colour. Even the trucks, parked...
6 Signs That Say You’re a Long Way from Home
1: A helpful guide to museum etiquette. Thanks to all at the museum in Fort Rotterdam, Makassar, for these handy hints on how to behave...
Turtle Island, Indonesia
***Researching? For more up-to-date information on Pulau Derawan and the Derawan islands, including Maratua, head on over to pulaus.com, which also has current info on...
Ramadan in Tarakan
Bobby’s minivan has a melodic horn, which intones a three note melody. “It is the only one in Tarakan,” he explains, tootling merrily at a...
Walking Fish & Long-Nosed Monkeys
We were in two minds about whether to stay in Tarakan, Indonesian Borneo, today. But I’m extremely glad we did. Because 300 metres down the...
Walking Fish & Long-Nosed Monkeys
We were in two minds about whether to stay in Tarakan, Indonesian Borneo, today. But I’m extremely glad we did. Because 300 metres down the...
Welcome to Indonesia!
We left Tawau, the port in north-eastern (Malaysian) Borneo, this morning. For Tarakan, on the Indonesian side of Borneo. The boat was late. Terminally late....