Indonesia, December 1993

More from this beautiful place, chiefly southwest Java and Lombok Islands. The former is the size of Ireland but contains roughly 100 million people. Somehow, despite this, it also has room for nature to flourish.
(Actually, I once calculated what the population of St. Petersburg, Russia would be if its average density everywhere was that of one of its crowded rush-hour buses. Answer: approximately 2 BILLION. So I suppose that there must be room on Java for a mere 100 million people.)

And now for something completely different from Ushguli, at last.

In December 1993 I was able to visit my parents in Indonesia, where my father was the site manager for a power station which was being built. Three weeks of tropics, sun, sand, exotic vegetation and friendly people - this was before Indonesia's later troubled times. Here are a few scans from slides of the trip, with more to follow.

Indonesia is:
- the largest Muslim nation in the world, with close to 200 million people (including Hindus, Christians, animists and others)
- an archipelago of some 13000 islands (most of them not inhabited)
- a land of hundreds of languages, with its official language, Bahasa Indonesia, thought to be one of the easiest languages in the world to learn.