Bali’s Uluwatu Temple: The Kecak “Monkey Dance” Bali’s Uluwatu temple is beautiful, its clifftop location overlooking the Indian Ocean perfect for sunsets and engagement shoots and taunting indigenous macaques until they get fed up and rip your camera right out of your hand. While the temple and the beaches of […]
Indonesia
Hari Raya Nyepi: Bali’s Day of Silence
Hari Raya Nyepi: Bali’s Day of Silence Imagine Nyepi in Bali. Picture South-East Asia. Motorbikes vie against big smoking diesel busses for space. The scream of mechanics’ tools and the barking of road-running dogs are overpowered only when you weave far into the depths of a market and the lowing […]
Jungle Hiking in the Mentawi Islands
Before we left modernity, our guide Ed said that we should bring lots of little gifts to hand out while we were in the jungle. In Mentawi, this mostly means two things: smokes and candy. Fully stocked and excited to go, Batiste and Joanna (a French couple I met in […]
Palau Nias Beaches
Being an Indonesian island, Pulau Nias has lots of good beach and ocean options. I spent most of my days on Nias just driving a motorbike from beach to beach. I’d swim and read for a little bit, get antsy, and drive on to the next beach I found to […]
Civet Cat Coffee in Indonesia
Kopi Luwak Coffee Luwak starts as any other Arabica bean, planted to a field and nurtured to perfect ripeness. In the villages near Bukittingi, this path takes a sudden detour from the usual. At night, when its nocturnal eyes hunt best, the civet cat emerges from its lair to prey […]
CouchSurfing: Makassar
I had originally intended to just pass through Makassar on the way out of the country but, as so organically happens sometimes, a friend of a friend that we met changed my mind. J’ona, the swedish girl who Greg and I traveled with through Togean and Tana Toraja, had Surfed […]