Indonesia, December 1993

Fruit on the beach!
Water lily!
Palm bark closeup!
Sand texture!

Gotta love this country.

Indonesia, December 1993

Top: What on earth could THIS be?! Looks like some sort of strange landscape, except the focus (depth of field) is so shallow, it must be a closeup of something. Right - it's a detail of a palm tree, showing the texture of the bark.

Next down: Water lily, no points for this one.

Next down: Bamboo closeup - again, fairly obvious.

Bottom: Just the beach with a wave about to expire, looking at the different textures of water and sand.

By the way, greetings to the 2 newest countries' viewers to stop by the blog, China and Kazakstan!

Indonesia, December 1993

It really was a feast for the eyes.

Top to bottom:
Parrot plant
Aloe plant
Palm climber
Seascape (never mind the vignetting)

The active volcano whose name I couldn't remember earlier was Mt. Bromo, as I rediscovered from a recent issue of National Geographic. The reason why the locals were experiencing the coldest temperatures of their lives in its vicinity (i.e. 20 C instead of 25 or 30+) was simply because of walking up higher than they'd ever been before.

Indonesia, December 1993

The top three from an active volcano on south-east Java which my family and I saw (I don't remember what it was called). We were revelling in the slightly cooler air (being almost exactly on the equator), while some of the locals were buying balaclavas to put on for the coldest weather they'd ever experienced! It's all relative.

Bottom - a hibiscus and local Javanese landscape.

Indonesia, December 1993

More from the beautiful archipelago. Top to bottom:

- Visiting from Lombok to an even smaller island
- Plant closeup
- People
- Bamboo

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.