Once more into the East, dear friends

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I haven't been overseas for a while, in fact I haven't been anywhere at all for a while because I've been saving up all my pennies for a trip over to Indonesia. I shall be leaving in two days. I've never been there before so I'm looking forward to all the wonderful creatures I shall spot over the course of the next five months. Initially the plan was to start in Darwin (with a side-trip to Kakadu) because there was a regular Air North flight from Darwin to West Timor but unfortunately the rumour in 2008 was that that flight was going to be canned just a couple of months before I was due to set out, so I changed the plans slightly. Instead of going from Darwin to West Timor and then working my way westwards towards Bali, I got a cheap flight from Christchurch to Bali, from where I will make my way eastwards through the Lesser Sundas (namely Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, Komodo, Rinca and West Timor; not necessarily in that order), and then fly back to Bali for the next leg of the tour, Sulawesi. After Sulawesi I shall traipse around west Borneo (Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah) looking for proboscis monkeys, orangutans and rhinos, then head back to Bali from where I shall progress northwards through Java and Sumatra, after which I set course up to Thailand because my plane home leaves from Bangkok. Of course any of these plans may well be changed or scrambled en route, depending on what eventuates.

Apart for wildlife spotting I'm also going to undertake a rather disgusting experiment where-in I shall refrain from washing my hair during the trip. Saying that I won't be washing my hair is a bit of a misleading statement. What I mean is just that I will not be using shampoo and conditioner. What happens, you see, is that the shampoo strips out the hair's natural lubricating oil so the hair responds by producing a constant vast over-supply of that oil, which is why your hair gets so greasy if you don't wash it for a few days. But if you stop using the shampoo and rinse it with just regular water, after a rough few weeks the hair settles down to a natural cycle and just produces enough oil to keep the hair nice and clean. At least that's how its supposed to work. It will be interesting to see how it works for me in reality. Hopefully all my hair won't just fall out. That would suck. Once everything is settled I think I might try not washing it at all for the last few months of the trip, and see what happens then. According to people who do use the no-shampoo regime, their hair is very nice; and of course they're not putting all the carcinogenics and other baddies all over their scalps.

I'm also not going to shave, so I can see how big a beard I can grow. I would wager that come the end of the trip I shall look remarkably similar to a decomposing yeti.

When I first went to Asia in 2006 I made as my first blog entry a tongue-in-cheek list of the possible reasons for which I might be forced to return home early (preferably alive). That trip was for three months, and seeing as how on this trip I'll be gone for over five months I thought I'd make an updated list of misfortunes that may befall me, because to be honest I will almost certainly die while I'm there.

1) Dengue fever -- 50%
2) Japanese encephalitis -- 50%
3) Malaria -- 10%
4) Swine flu -- 98.333%
5) Other diseases -- 10%
6) Snake bite (or insect, spider, scorpion, giant centipede, etc) -- 20%
7) Eaten by Komodo dragon -- 2%
8) Mauled by sun bear -- 5%
9) Mauled by tiger -- 2%
10) Mauled by leopard -- 2%
11) Mauled by clouded leopard -- 1%
12) Elephant attack -- 4%
13) Gored or trampled by rhinoceros -- 1%
14) Transportation malfunction (eg, bus crash, ferry sinking, etc) -- 40%
15) Aerial transportation malfunction (ie, plane crash) -- 90% (it is Indonesia after all)
16) Killed by Muslims for being called Israel -- 95%
17) Accidentally shot by hunters (or "accidentally" shot by poachers) -- 4%
18) Murdered for other reasons -- 2%
19) Rabid animal bite -- 40%
20) Falling off cliff -- 10%
21) Natural disaster (eg, tsunami, volcano, earthquake, etc) -- 1%
22) Missing without trace -- 10%
23) Crocodile biting off face -- 1%
24) Stabbed through heart by stingray -- 0%

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Photos

route for places to wot I will be going to
I got this map off the internet but I changed five percent of it so that makes it mine.

Comments

[Peter]

hairdo
Well, looking like a dirty hippy or like one of the many insane folks one can see scrunging for food might not go over that well at border crossings! Why not try another method: cut it short! Ha!

[J]

Stuff
Nicola says shes misses you....however the rest of us dont. P.s all your fish are dead