chris douglas
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Travel Blog Posts
February 4th 2007
with the intent of hitch hiking my final leg of indo- i set out, loaded up and walked the 4 km out of town to meet the joining highway, nothing more than a bumpy single lane road stood between me and my last stop apart from about 1000km of nature. waiting 5 hours i wondered if anyone was going my way or as far as me, my only potential means of transport were trucks- stopping everyone in sight they greeted me with laughs and nos', the night was closing in, the rain began and the villages were gathering to watch my every attempt. not wanting to be stranded through the night, my determination was over riden by 'boring safety' and it was time for plan B- flag down the next night bus that passed. sure enough ... read more
January 20th 2007
3 days at sea and 3 days in jakarta i saw the sights and encountered the good and bad- with a free place to stay my money was going further. overly cramped sardine trains, shanty-type towns, polluted rivers and immaculate malls could sum up the city- but my stay was followed by a mammoth 40 hour bus ride to central sumatra, day and night and day and night i spent on the same bus, leaving only for a couple of pit stops and food breaks, a lack of sleep resulted in my immediate sleeping in a closed bar as i arrived at 4am in bukittinggi, the stool and table were to be my bed for the next couple of hours, well until the sun rose. seeing the sights and organizing my trip to the mentawai islands ... read more
January 10th 2007
leaving tana toraja with a fello english man, we both had our eyes set on a cheap and cheerful travel plan. 8 hours on a cramped bus seat took us to malili, in the north of south east sulawesi. we had our sights of traveling south but with every map we could find having a 100km section showing no roads and no way through we decided to chance it. fed up of buses and arguing about prices we tested our ability to hitch hike the 300km plus route to kolaka. with just about every form of transport available we made it, the invisible map roads took the form of logging routes and pot holed dirt tracks. we could only hitch from village to village- changing transport often and mixing the infrequent passing vehicle with stretches of ... read more
January 3rd 2007
seeing much of the local area by motor bike and only having day visits to certain areas, i began to want something that lasted a bit longer. i came across some good information about where i could hike. after shopping for some emergency supplies to last 5 days i left the shop with 1 bottle of water and a packet of the cheapest biscuits, which later turned out to have a split down the under side of the packaging so turned soft and absorbed the jungles damp humidity. trying to find a bus or bemo to my chosen village 15 km away was hard and being sent in the wrong direction every time i asked i decided to take the route in stages, asking to get dropped at road junctions to where i could find more ... read more
January 1st 2007
new years was spent visiting a few churches, the gospel type of singing attracted my attention but the noise from roaring motor bike and cars attracted it more. at midnight i wondered into town a short walk from my hostel, the streets were dead and no one around. i followed the noise and turned a few corners, to where i found the midnight club, rantepaos street racers. the streets were now packed and like any street race the pavements and curbside have to be filled by stupid people who want to get 'too' close- so i took my seat and jumped and dodged the speeding, out of control bikers watching them handbrake turn their 125cc scooters was quite impressive but the falls and pile-ups really got the crowds excited- getting hurt was just part of the ... read more
December 23rd 2006
leaving dili behind and returning to indonesia filled me with excitement, but it seemed i wouldn't make it as i planned, my dili bus to the border was late leaving and continued to plod along, 1 hour later something to do with the accelerator broke and 30 mins on, still nothing, another bus bus passed and our already over crowded bus pilled into another over crowed bus, with no space to breath, let alone sit i was pleased we were moving, 2 hours later the tyre blew on the second bus and a couple of fag breaks and a casual wheel change, we set of again. i had no watch but i knew time was against us and knew how important it was for me to make the border crossing in time. some how we made ... read more
December 7th 2006
A 6 hour bus truck ride to the ferry port and 30 hours on board an even older vessel I headed for east timor. A short stop in the port town and the clear observation that this town, kupang, only had mangos, cassettes and fake import clothes to offer I took the next 12 hour bus ride into east timor- crossing the boarder and arriving in dili. For a city or rather, country, that had nothing to offer and no personal reason to stay, my 10 day stop over was fuelled only by the new 60 day indonesian visa I would get. For a country that I couldn't decide if it was having, going to have or if it had just had a civil war, daily encounters made me wonder why I was there. Having first ... read more
November 26th 2006
Sumba was the next stop, and with a 36 hour ferry ride ahead of me I felt like I was sailing to the end of the earth. A mix of characters amused me for the duration and with a wooden plank for a bed and an infinite supply of cockroaches and bugs I had to quickly adjust to this change in lifestyle. Luckily I could see it as just ‘being one of those things’. I was offered gifts and food, people just wanted to sit next to me so they could see the only white man on the 2000+ passenger ship and it wasn’t long before I was invited to stay at peoples houses, fortunately it just so happened their houses were in the same direction as where I was going. My arrival in waingapu at ... read more
November 20th 2006
after some delayed goodbyes at the airport, lottie returned home and i was left to go it alone. the lack of enthusiasm and desire to prolong my stay in bali, due to the abundance of crazy surfer dudes who can only give directions to the beach and local irish bar and hold a limited conversation about a knarly tube or sick pipe, along with the persistent and some what flirty older massage ladies on the beach. the following day and 6 hours of buses and 7 hours of trains later i had left the tourists and imitated western ways behind and reached east java. with the intent of climbing another volcano and relaxed beach-side week i was ready to go. a final 4 hours of travel and 2 hours of riding on the back of some ... read more
October 18th 2006
with money burning a whole in my pocket and the the boredom of producing endless bottles of lucozade day and night for months i booked a one-way ticket to indonesia with a rule in mind, that any return journey must be overland and flying for any reason was out of the question. accompanied by lottie for one month, we had a basic 5 island route, bali to lombok, lombok to sumbawa, sumbawa to flores, flores to komodo and then back to bali. in between shopping for souvenirs, finding restaurants where we could get 3 square meals a day for less than $2, we saw the sights, everything from hindu temples to waterfalls, cramming everything in, and all around daily visits to the beach. after some tough persuasion i managed to talk lottie into a 3 day ... read more
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