Z’s chart – priceless. 🙂

Well: the bike is in good nick. We are extremely snotty and flu-ridden. But we’ve made it to Timor. So one more island to go… Except we have to go all the way across this one and back again for the visa…

He actually got it fixed in the end. It wasn’t his mechanics skills that were the issue — it’s a licensed Honda dealer — it was whether he could find the relevant part. But he did, which was a huge relief…

I see your point. On the other hand, I sort of want to see this mission through. But we shall see. We can, of course, always bail. At almost any point (but now, when Z’s visa is about to expire). It does feel jinxed, though. We’ve been struck down with the snots…

We loved Laos — we were there twice last year. But I think we’re plugging on, for the moment. I’m a little behind on the blog vs. real life thing, but we’ve made it through Flores, and East Timor coming up soon. I don’t want to bail just yet…

Aw, thank you Barbara…. I need to start thinking about how I turn this into a book…

We didn’t go to the cave, because a bunch of people told us it was a long walk just to see a stick where they found the hobbit. I think they might have an exhibition about it at the museum in Maumere… At $8000, I guess you just have to write the car off — crikey!

Thanks, Adam. I think things have started to work out again… In the end, it only took him a day and a half to fix it. The real killer about it is that the oil is checked as part of the 2000k service. So if I’d done it slightly earlier, I wouldn’t have had the break down.