into the hills

Bali's central volcanoes


Country Road


New bridge


cloudy sunrise



Bali Thursday

At last a morning without rain or threatening clouds, also my last full day with the bike so instead of packing I plan a route up to the volcanoes and set off. Get lost very quickly but recover route and we’re away. First the part familiar road to Ubud then north up the hills into the interior. The bike performs well and I cruise along fast on good roads and more sedately on the narrow potholed country lanes winding up through the forests. The temperature reduces to that of a good summer’s day and with the changing panoramas, the wind on my body and the vroom vroom of the bike this must be the next best thing to sex! Thanks to my pathetic command of the language I think a garage rips me off on the price of a fill-up but everyone else, schoolchildren making their way to or from school, little old ladies and wizened village elders are all keen to help me find my way and I move from volcano to volcano, none of them active like Merapi but none of them hiding in cloud and just one where a small lava spill had occurred last year.

My, hopefully final, Knalpot (exhaust pipe) burn that I got yesterday has not developed like previous ones, I’m obviously getting quicker in moving away if not actually avoiding trouble. My powerful, smelly and unattractive but highly effective ‘deet’ mosquito repellent ran out as I was leaving the village in Jogyakarta and the replacement cream from a local chemist is not so good so I have to be more careful with the mosquito net and using the air-conditioner to move the air about which they do not like. I’m also using my money up on lavish western meals, Italian last night and I’ve found a likely looking Indian restaurant for tonight. Even with wine its still less than six quid though.

A cleverly crafted text message in Indonesian to forecast the demise of my local telephone number looks good but the waiter at breakfast has great difficulty understanding it so re-writes it (really just changing the word order) and I’m able to post off Indonesian/English versions to my contacts.

An interesting book on Raffles in the hotel library – or it would be if it wasn’t a sycophantic novel with him gallantly bringing peace, harmony, justice and fair trade to these foreign parts, fending off the wily Dutch, French, Portuguese and Germans with their wicked plans. He took control of Java (wisely after some initial ‘problems’ leaving the local sultans in nominal control) and other Islands for Britain, probably naming Maliboro Street in Jogya and introducing the left hand traffic rules.

The trusted bike goes back to vso HQ tomorrow – six months of no accidents must be something of a vso record – unless I manage something on the way to the office in the morning that is! Lily is going staight from the annual conference on holiday and will not be back till June – so much for persuading Pak T.O. to build the kitchens and toilets given that the books closed on the ‘Spark’ funding today. I feel as if for ‘my’ project I might as well have stayed in the uk, T.O. could have had his money and would almost certainly have spent most of it on new houses in the village and vso could have saved the not inconsiderable cost of my visit, training, accommodation and so on but there we are, I have certainly had an enlightening time, lost my paunch, learnt a few words of Indonesian and know a lot more about bamboo construction.