Posts from ‘My next project’
I took my wife to Indonesia.
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
Jakarta?
No, she came on her own accord.
I’m in Jakarta at the moment and sweating in my underpants. It has been a great adventure so far travelling using the original 1974 Lonely Planet ‘Southeast Asia on a shoestring’ but, boy, am I over being constantly sticky. Many of the guesthouses and hotels listed in the original book are still there and many of them still have the same 1974 electric fan in the corner that flaps weakly towards the 1974 bed with the 1974 sheets. I suppose… (read more)
Brian Bait.
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
It has taken a world-record 32 minutes just to open this page before I could even start typing my blog, so I still can’t load any pics yet (I will load in a pile of pics when I get to Indonesia in two days time).
When I said in my previous blog that I felt safe in East Timor… well, I was wrong. After spending a day swimming in the warm, clear waters of Baucau I spotted a sign warning that there were crocodiles in the water. I asked one of the locals and he said, ‘No, there are no crocodiles. Oh, except for one big one, but we are trying to catch it.’ The day before there had been… (read more)
No tourists means your own personal beach.
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
I’ve been in East Timor for 4 days now and I haven’t been kidnapped once. In fact, it’s all very quiet and the locals couldn’t be more friendlier. It’s certainly quiet on the tourist front. I haven’t met a single one yet. That’s okay by me, though. I get not one, but three stunning beaches to myself. I’m staying in a little bungalow on the beach in Baucau and I’m eating fresh grilled fish and swimming in clear warm waters. Well, that’s about everything I’m doing really… (read more)
Can anyone spare a dime?
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…
I only had a tiny bit of running around to do today for my trip. I picked up some toothpaste, a new lens cap for my camera and a wad of US dollars. I was quite surprised to discover only a week ago that the official currency of East Timor is the US dollar. I imagine (and hope) that one day, when East Timor’s economy is stronger, they will get their own currency. And maybe they could make a bold independent statement by giving it a wacky name! There are some good wacky ones around the world. In Zambia people walk around with ngwees in their wallet. In Gambia they have bututs, in Guatemala it’s quetzals, while the Malawians hand over kwachas…
We advice you not to go to East Timor.
Friday, September 19th, 2008
In less than a week I’ll be in East Timor as part of the trip for my new book. And for the first time in all of my travels I’ve registered my itinerary with the Australian government. I probably should have done this before when I’ve gone to places like Haiti, Togo, Kyrgyzstan and Tasmania, but with the potential dangers and unrest in East Timor I thought I should do something responsible and sensible for the first time in my life. On the Australian government Smart Traveller website they warn:
· We advise you to reconsider your need to travel to East Timor at this time because of the fragile security situation and the risk of violent civil unrest…
My new book about soil dispersion in West Burma.
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
I’ve recently purchased some books from Amazon.com as part of the research for my new book. To keep with the theme of travelling with the original 1975 Lonely Planet ‘Southeast Asia on a Shoestring’ I got these books (for historical, political, economical and environmental information) because they were all published between 1973 and 1975. The only problem about buying books on Amazon without a description, though, is that there is always a chance you’ll get a dud. Three of the books I purchased are great and I’ll get lots of interesting facts from them, but I might have a bit of trouble using anything from ’South East Asia’ by EHG Dobby. The entire book is about soil dispersion… (read more)
A crash course in Indonesian airlines.
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
I’m in the middle of researching my new book (see previous blog) and I’ve just started booking flights to and around Indonesia for the first leg of my big trip. According to the Lonely Planet’s 1975 ‘Southeast Asia on a shoestring’: ‘For a third world country Indonesia has an amazing number of airlines and flying can still be a real experience in this dull Jumbo age’. Of the six recommended airlines in the Indonesian chapter only three are still flying. I’m guessing that the three that aren’t (Sempati, Zamrud and Bouraq) probably ran out of planes. Indonesia ranks as one of the worst countries for air safety records (last year they were second behind the Democratic Republic of Congo for fatal crashes). In 2007 an aircraft ‘incident’ was recorded in Indonesia every nine to 10 days. Even their national carrier Garuda likes to fall out of the sky… (read more)
Brian on a shoestring.
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
I’m currently in the middle of planning my next big trip for my next big book. Well, when I say planning I really haven’t got much idea what’s going to happen or if I can even find a hotel. I’m travelling through South East Asia and I’ll be using the original 1975 Lonely Planet ‘South East Asia on a shoestring’ as my only guidebook. The current edition of SAE on a shoestring has 988 pages. The first edition had all of 148 pages. The first stop on my trip will be East Timor – back then it was Portuguese Timor which was ‘a beautiful unspoilt country with a rare opportunity to see an old fashioned colony’. In Indonesia I will attempt to follow a 5-day motorcycle ‘jaunt’ around Bali, which Tony and Maureen Wheeler did back in 1974 (looking something like this… (read more)