30 yesrs ago now. Different time… beautiful country and beautiful people.

At that time Indonesia had been riding the tiger economy bubble pretty hard and Jakarta in particular was booming. Skyscrapers juxtaposed with straw roofed slums, soaring freeways over neglected and polluted rice fields. Spent a week there working. Still smell those cinnamon cigarettes.

From there to Bali proper; Denpasar and the first thing that hits you was the people - so many Australians. And then when you leave the airport it’s the traffic - horns, mopeds and NO rules.

Got on a plane to one of the outer Islands (the writer Douglas Adam’s told me that this particular airline gets its planes third-hand from Air Uganda and I could kind of believe it). How the thing held together I don’t know…. I was actually glad to get on a rickety open wooden outrigger boat for the next part of the trip.

I went in search of a mythic creature on Komodo Island… but that’s a story for another day….