Just when you think you’re on a roll of good fortune and that you’ve managed at last to push boulders uphill to achieve the unlikely, the purveyor of portent dumps a cloud of gloom on your rainbow and delivers a dreaded Reality Check. And it’s a ghastly reminder that neglect of the little things, while [...]

On Lombok, which has a rich history of kingdoms led by expansionist Balinese from Karangasem, attention was fixed on Britain’s recent royal wedding. Our resort manager, a fine Swiss fellow who asserts he is not a royalist, declined our offer of drinks in favour of the royal telecast and admitted later that the spectacle brought [...]

The day began badly. A notice from a nearby housing development announced that non-estate residents should cease using a particular private road which links nicely to several public roads. Despite its blind hills and corners, the private road gives much less perilous access to most places than the public route which involves tricky negotiation of [...]

“I can pick the foreigners who live here,” said the visiting sister. “There’s a certain attitude to them.” She meant arrogance, impatience and disdain – characteristics that chip away at the rose-coloured glasses of new foreign residents and eat into their starry-eyed perceptions until another cynical expat is unearthed. True, it’s a daily challenge to [...]

My husband wants a new baby boy, she whispered, and when we saw her four months later she was precisely four months pregnant. Dad-to-be Nyoman was pleased with himself. As the only son of his parents, the task of caring for the family’s many Hindu temples falls exclusively to him. And while he never complains, [...]

It was one of those days that assigns itself a theme, assaults you with the rudest awakening to its subject matter and spends its life relentlessly battering you on its chosen theme. Cruelly, the day had invaded my nightmares and raided my fears to find its theme – creatures of the fanged, scaly, slimy, hairy, [...]

It’s difficult to discuss the widespread delusion of Indonesians that foreigners should pay them outrageously inflated prices for goods and services they may not want, or simply fork out funds to wrench them from the latest hole they’ve dug themselves into, because every bule has a vast fortune and an infinite willingness to gift it [...]

It was decided. We would spend two weeks in Europe in August. There’d be a reunion of the Playmate’s clan in coastal southern Scotland followed by a week exploring the previously unvisited central European city of Budapest in Hungary. In Scotland, siblings would gather from around the globe to scatter their parents’ ashes at a [...]

You must go to a resort for Nyepi – only two or three days,” urged our former housekeeper Komang, as the Balinese Hindu New Year approached during our first year of living on the Island of the Gods, place of extreme personal and regional disparity in its commitment to the rituals of Silent Day. “You [...]

In a developing democracy such as Indonesia, any move that is likely to reduce people’s access to popular art-forms such as (foreign) movies, from which viewers can gain insight into the culture of others and exposure to global issues and trends, is regressive. While unspecific rumblings from Jakarta that excise duty and taxes on the [...]

How long is it reasonable for a trader to keep your Rp274 million (US$30,900) when he cannot provide the product you paid for? ILAND readers will recall details early this month of the exhausting and therefore deliberately shortened process of purchasing a new car. As it turns out, we don’t have the car, the dealer [...]

It was the first time I’d driven alone to Ubud, and I hoped for an uneventful journey on roads free of obstacles and mindless maniacs who need lessons in the concept of road-sharing and traffic lanes, instruction on the meaning of traffic-light colours and a lecture on courtesy and safety on the road. Our old [...]