Travel Blog Posts
September 8th 2007
After Jakarta I flew to Kuala Lumpur airport, at the airport I found a cheap flight to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. After bumming around Malaysia for 2 days I fly to Phnom Penh. In my 5 days there I visited Tuol Seng (Pol Pots execution chambers), The Killings Fields, and read 2 books about Khymer Rouge so it was all quite depressing. The history is so recent and its strange to walk down the street knowing that anyone over 35 has lived through starvation and auto genocide. The most amazing place I went to was a rubbish dump. Its on the outskirts of Phnom Penh in a suburb called Stung Meanchey. Every day hundreds of people spend hours and hours sifting through the rotting waste to look for something of interest. Its not like a scrap ... read more
September 8th 2007
In the more remote places of Indonesia, there are no hotels so you have to rely on getting an invite to stay with someone. I usually would turn up somewhere, wander around, swim, talk to people about what what life is like here and answer questions about my life. Its just luck if you bump into someone nice or interesting. There are no "attractions" and the goal is just to try to get into the swing of life. But after Lembata I headed to Flores and the difference was depressingly obvious. People in the touristed parts of Flores are completely different. The attitude to tourists in parts of Flores is basically that we are just walking wallets. Every hotel and bus in Flores except one hotel tried to rip me off. Luckily I'm stubborn enough to ... read more
September 8th 2007
This is the first blog in a LONG time and my excuse is... err... I been busy. I got you all hooked and then took away the drug and for this i apologise. But im leaving tommorow and thought I would right my wrongs and do a whistle stop tour of the second half of my trip. Im now writing from Bangkok but wishing I was still in Indonesia. In Indonesia I had 60 days, just over 200 hours on boats and buses, saw 8 Komodo dragons, 3 albinos, 1 buffalo sacrifice, 5 scuba dives and 3 midgets. While I came to Indonesia because of its beautiful nature, its the people who make it awesome. I will definitely have to return to explore the HUGE parts I missed, and you should too. After finishing the blog ... read more
July 20th 2007
In Makassar I realised that my original plan of getting to the far side of Nusa Tengarra (South East Indonesia) by taking a ferry to Java then using small ferries and buses would take me 87 hours of travel time (not including waiting for transport). So I decided to wait for a ferry going straight to Kalabahi which was going in 5 days. It was a good decision and the fact that I made it just after I boarded the boat to Java does not make it any less brilliant. Just by Makassar is a small island which I decided to visit for a few days but once I got there I realised it was like the butlins of indonesia. I only stayed one night and on the morning after I was strolling on the ... read more
July 15th 2007
Shortly after writing my last blog I hopped on a bus to Tana Toraja: an area filled with beautiful mountains and a strange culture. On the bus I met an Oil executive from Jakarta who was returning to his village to attend his friends fathers 50 buffalo funeral and he invited me to come. Funerals in Tana Toraja are the most interesting part of a very interesting culture. While most Torajans have been contaminated by christianity they still keep their old beliefs about death: that the dead can take animals and possessions into the afterlife and if enough animals aren’t sacrificed at their funerals they can come back to haunt you. When someone dies the family keep the body in the house (often for years) until they have enough money for a huge number of ... read more
June 29th 2007
The trip so farI have been in Indonesia for 3 days now and the first real tragedy has struck: the CD containing the only copies of all my photos so far has been cracked in 2. Does anyone know if you can just glue them back together or do something a bit more advanced to get the photos back. Anyway the diffence between Malaysia and Indonesia is huge. Whereas in Malaysia lots of people spoke english and only some were interested in you, in Indonesian no one speaks english but you are treated/ harrased like a celebrity. My plan was to take a ferry from Nunukan (Indonesian Borneo) to Pare Pare in Sulawesi but I had a hell of a time trying to find when the ferry left. The trip was made once every two ... read more
June 25th 2007
The day after we got back to Bario I flew to Miri and I was keen for some more jungle trekking so booked a flight to Gunung Mulu national park. I had heard about a mountain trek but instead of the challenge I had hoped for it turned out more like a walking holiday in Torquay. Guides, boats and food means that going solo is very expensive so I joined a group arranged through my hostel in Miri. Turns out that 3 of them were over 30 and we climbed the mountain at a snails pace while I spent the whole time cursing my companions aging limbs. Instead of the 5 days I had planned there I spent two and then flew to Kota Kinabalu the capitol of Sabah (Northern Malaysian Borneo). I was booked in ... read more
June 19th 2007
Kuching to Miri to Bario to Long Manamut I went from Bako to the tiny town of Bario via Miri (where i met and joined forces with a Swiss called Fred). Bario is a kooky place. It was completely isolated from the west until the second World war when english paratroopers dropped in and gave the locals guns to fight off the invading Japs. Even now there is no road connecting Bario to the coast so the only way in is by air. This is made all the more ridiculous when you realise that all metal, furniture and cars must be flown in. About a thousand people live there and when we flew in we found one of the nicest: Nancy. she put us up and arranged everything. Nearby villages are more primitive and most ... read more
June 13th 2007
UntitledThe last time I wrote my blog I was in Kuching waiting to visit a Taoist psychic session. Since then I have broken the CD containing the only copies of my photos (FUCK!), visited a tribe, scuba dived and read a couple of books. My lack of updates has been because of busyness, tiredness and lacking of internet cafes. So today I have done 4 and dated them roughly from when I wrote them. On the 8th june at about 9pm Ho Minh (my link to the psychic world of Borneo) picked up me, Harriet and Paddy. Harriet and Paddy were a dutch/english couple who stayed at the same backpackers and had witnesed the whole Jade debaucle and expressed interest in the paranormal. Ho drove us to his brothers house where we had an hour ... read more
June 9th 2007
Ahoy! Just to remind you my name is Richard I study and like philosophy and my lifelong dream is to kill a man and make a soup from his bones. Im spending 101 days in Asia this summer in the following order: Singapore Malaysia Indonesia Malaysia Thailand Cambodia Thailand. its been 8 days away and I have an afternoon spare so I will now enlighten you lucky people on my hijinx. Short version: Singapore: ok. Borneo: excellent. Items lost: 3. Locals offended: 1. Interesting people met: some. Wildlife spotted: none. Long version: The flights were pretty bad but managed to get do some reading even tho i got no sleep. If I ever own a plane company I wiill train my cabin crew in hypnosis and just after they ... read more
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