Monthly Archives: April 2011
Travels with a Ten Year Old
Today is Take Your Child To Work Day, so a bunch of lovely folk who travel with a wildly varying selection of spawn — from teens to infants — are putting our collective heads together to talk about the pros and cons of travelling with children of different ages. Now, I’ve traveled with Z since [...]
F*ck It. I’m A Tourist.
Tourist or traveller? It’s a question as old as the first ever travel books. But I don’t like the word “traveller”. It smells of one-upmanship, of smugness. There’s that sense that, just by hitting the banana pancake trail instead of the all-inclusive resorts, the camp site instead of the villa, the traveller is somehow better [...]
1: Café Des Artistes Some of the best steaks in Indonesia and, arguably, South-East Asia, plus a pretty inside-outside garden setting make Des Artistes a great place for a (relative) splurge. Oenophiles will appreciate the extensive wine list, while decent local fizz is available at very sensible prices. The salads, seafood and smoked salmon are [...]
A Tough Question
In Magic Lounge, the drinking den where we sprawl on orange sofas and use their satellite internet after a day on the beaches of Kuta, Lombok, A approaches me tentatively. He has something to tell me. Or maybe ask me. “Excuse me, ibu,” he says. “I have just had a baby!” “Oh! Congratulations,” I say. [...]
We Learn to Surf…
We have come to Kuta, in the south of Lombok, to learn to surf. And the beach, Selong Belanak, 20km or so west of Kuta, is beautiful. A vast sweep of bay with white and gold sands, curling surf breaks out at sea, green headlands, pyramid islands and fishing boats rocking on the waves. Learning [...]
First Leg. Second Thoughts?
Struggling to get off the ferry, I begin to wonder whether my wizard wheeze, to ride a motorbike through Indonesia to Papua with my ten-year-old son on the back, was really quite the blinding idea it seemed when he and I discussed it. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been on an Indonesian or [...]
We have been intending to get to Papua for roughly seven years, ever since Z and I first started talking about travelling together, around the time he turned three. He was that stage in many young boys’ lives where wardrobe is, at best, based entirely around cartoon characters and, at worst, as here, confined to [...]
I Get A Driving License!
“When is it acceptable to leave the scene of an accident?” the question asks. “A) When you have been involved in a fatal accident and your life is in danger from the victim’s friends you run away fast but report to the police immediately B) You must stay at the scene and give first aid [...]
Sunday in Seminyak
We are almost at the end of our time in Bali — and, boy, will we miss it. So what better way to spend our last Sunday than on the beach in Seminyak, beginning to learn to surf? It’s a crazy place, Seminyak. Inland is grubby, scuzzy, dirty, almost indistinguishable from the concrete package tour [...]
Happy Birthday! It's Briby Time!
As I set out to collect my spawn from the airport, on my birthday, I am feeling quietly smug about not having paid a single bribe, in three months in Bali. My friends from Z’s school, the ones I met after they attempted to reverse their car over my bike, in the slow motion essential [...]
