Morgen and I recently returned from a month-long trip to Indonesia and Hong Kong. It’ll take us a while to sort through all our photos and write about our experiences. But we’ll say this much: we’re alive and well. This despite the fact that before, during, and after our trip, Indonesia has made international headlines repeatedly with a variety of major problems that might be regarded as travel deterrents. Among the things that didn’t kill us:
- Floods: It’s rainy season in most of Indonesia now, as it was a few weeks ago when we were there. But it hardly rained at all during our trip. Now it’s coming down with a vengeance, and flooding in Jakarta has killed dozens and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
- Bird Flu: More than 60 people have now died from bird flu in Indonesia, and the capital city of Jakarta is taking measures to ensure that all domesticated chickens are either free of the disease or destroyed.
- Sectarian Violence: In Sulawesi, clashes between police and Islamic militants left 12 people dead on January 22, 2007; that’s just the latest in a long string of violent outbreaks there.
- Earthquakes: Indonesia is a very seismically active place. While we were there, a 7.3-magnitude quake hit Sulawesi on January 21, 2007. We were on another island and didn’t feel it. On May 27, 2006, an earthquake caused major damage and the loss of thousands of lives in Yogyakarta, which we visited on our trip.
- Train Wrecks: Although the one train trip we took wasn’t fantastic, at least it didn’t involve a derailment; the worst thing that happened was the air conditioning going kaput. But on January 15, 2007, five people were killed in a serious train accident in Java.
- Plane Crashes: Adam Air flight 574 crashed into the ocean on January 1, 2007 on its way from Java to Sulawesi. Search and rescue efforts were pretty much the only thing on Indonesian news stations during our trip.
- Ferry Sinkings: About 400 people died when a ferry, traveling between Kalimantan and Java, sank in a storm on December 29, 2006. We were on a couple of scary-looking ferries during our trip, but they stayed afloat.
- Hot Mud Flows: We were just a few kilometers away from the spot where enormous amounts of hot mud have been flowing out of the ground, wrecking entire villages, due to a gas drilling accident in May 2006.
- Landslides: More than a dozen people died in the village of Sijeruk on Java due to a landslide in January 2006. Landslides also occurred in several areas in December 2006, killing dozens more people.
- Volcanoes: We did see several active volcanoes, and climbed up to the rim of the crater on one of them, Mt. Bromo. However, the very stairs we ascended were the site of the tragic death of two tourists on June 8, 2004, when the volcano unexpectedly erupted. Also, in April 2006, Mt. Merapi began a series of eruptions that forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
- Bombs: Two sets of bombings in Bali, one in 2002 and another in 2005, have had a devastating effect on tourism there. Many restaurants and hotels we visited were nearly deserted, and the owners invariably attributed the lack of business to the terrorist activities. We did visit one of the sites of the 2005 bombings.
- Tsunamis: When the big tsunami hit Indonesia at the end of 2004, we were far away in Patagonia. More recently, on July 17, 2006, another devastating tsunami was triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Java.
- Malaria: The last time I was in Indonesia, in 1986, I got malaria. It didn’t kill me then, either, but it sure was unpleasant.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:50 am
Sounds like a wild time. Good to hear you’re still in one piece.