Imagine a day when you start, at 3.30 am driving up a mountain to watch the sun rise over a live volcano........and eighteen hours later find yourself sitting in a bar full of football fans watching, live, transmission of Arsenal v Chelsea! Well that was Sunday. Began with a four wheel drive up some mountain roads to watch the sunrise over Mount Bromo and then followed that by a horseback ride up the volcano side to a point where you then walk to the crater e...

Well I should just say that I am having a better time now that I have escaped from Jakarta. If 'they say' that travel broadens the mind they haven't sat on an Indonesian tran and local bus for fourteen hours or they would know that its much more than the brain that gets broadened....and deadened at the same time. Never mind, we passed trees hanging with mango, banana, jack fruit and, strangest of all, snake fruit whose skins so resemble their namesake that ...

........so think attractive, appealing, welcoming, safe, friendly, interesting and smiling then add the prefix UN and you've arrived in Jakarta. From the airport taxi driver who asked me, before we had cleared the car park, "you are not scared to be here?", to the state of the pre-booked budget roach palace where I was assigned for the night, Jakarta got off to a bad start. The hotel I changed, after I had exterminated two thumb sized roaches within fiv...

Well the picture that should come with this card should be of one of eighteen, five storey shopping malls which sit on only one street in Singapore. This city must be the most conspicous centre of consumerism in the entire world. Every name from Ashley to Zeigna in shop after shop after shop. I had to have a look but after a couple of hours of coming across gaunt eyed western men trailing in the wake of flat shoed, determined looking, spouses I had to head f...

Arrived in the biggest shopping Mall in the world...........and me without an extra place in my bag to another thing.........and no, i am not to be persuaded by the inducements of the retailers who tell me that they can ship it for me. Just going to window shop I think as there isn't much else to do here except eat....now that's a good idea. Had a small adventure in Malacca where I took a ferry to a small island (4th in two weeks) and this time it didn't rain...