Archives For My Pick

Happy Times

For a very long time the bandanese people had it extremely good. There was no raja or king or whatever to tell them what to do. Only Orang Kaya, village elders, but they were…, well, old! So Life was great! They were in the unique position, that their little group of islands was the only place in the world, where nutmeg and mace grew naturally. They traded with Arabs, Chinese and Malay, made a good living off it and, because growing nutmeg does not actually involve much physical work, spend their time fishing or hanging out in the shade on the beach with friends.

First Encounter Of A Smelly Kind

Now, the Bandanese had known for quite some time that a lot of their produce ended up on the other side of the world with people with unintelligible names in strange countries and were therefore delighted when they finally got a chance to meet some of them in 1512. Those guys, Portuguese as it turned out, filled up their ships with spices and then left Banda mostly to themselves for the rest of the century, concentrating mainly on the northern clove islands of Maluku. Not that the Bandanese were really heartbroken over that fact, since those newcomers always insisted on wearing heavy long clothes at all times, while having an aversion to regular baths at the same time.

Second Encounter Of A Smelly Kind

In 1599 everybody in the Banda archipelago knew that something fishy was going to happen or appear, when Gunung Api, the little but volatile 666m high volcano, started rumbling again after a long time of inactivity. And sure enough, not long after another group of pale sweaty guys turned up, this time from the Netherlands. The Dutch then did not waste any time establishing trading posts, buying as much over prized spices as their ships could hold and then set sail for Europe leaving behind a few sailors to look after their interests. Now when the Portuguese found out that the Dutch had arrived they were less than happy and for the next few years those nations tried their best to kick each other in the crotch.

Liked the teaser? Read more…

Lamalera, Lama meaning feeling or blade and Lera meaning sun, is situated on the southern side of the mountainous island of Lembata, which is part of the Solor Archipelago. It can only be reached by taking a bus, which is a converted truck, from Lewoleba. The drive takes about three and a half hours, mainly due to the bad roads, but is nevertheless quite scenic and adventurous. The roads can be extremely steep and narrow and there are usually many people sitting on the roof of the bus because of the restricted space inside.

Sam, an american backpacker I traveled with at the time, and I arrived in the little whaling village around four in the afternoon on a Saturday in late August 07. We soon found out, that the fishermen do not go out to sea past 4 pm and neither do they work on a Sunday, when the whole community is going to church and rests. So instead of joining the whaling boats the next day as we had hoped, we walked for about half an hour to a nearby beach and a big bat cave and spent a relaxed day out there.

Liked the teaser? Read more…

One of the most important traits one can have as a traveller is endurance. After all we spend a considerable amount of our travelling life waiting. We wait for a bus, that was supposed to have picked us up three hours ago; we wait at airports to catch our flight out; we wait in a queue at some embassy to apply for a visa and then again to pick it up; we wait at restaurants for our food to arrive; we wait for our next trip to start; we wait at border crossings for a border guard to stamp our passport; we wait and pray for daylight to arrive, cause we, once again, chose the cheapest guesthouse, which is full of bugs and mosquitos and lacks a basic mosquito net; we wait at customs while our backpack is being inspected; we wait…The list goes on and on.

Liked the teaser? Read more…

I love to watch people. I do it at home, sitting in a cafe for example, and I do it while travelling. I found Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand, to be one of the best places to indulge in my hobby. You just sit down in a restaurant with a chilled beer and watch the world pass by. There’s Israelis with dreadlocks and wearing bandanas, English burnt by too much time in the sun and too little sunscreen, Swedes, tanned a dark brown in their boardshorts and cultivating that surfers look, German tourists trying to blend in to the whole traveller scene and in between them all left over hippies on a short visit from the last full moon party in Goa. Nowadays, you can actually interchange all those nationalities. The country-clichés are slowly disolving I think, but there are still different types of travellers:

Liked the teaser? Read more…

I usually start the planning for a trip ages before I actually go away. I work as much as I can and save as much money up as I can, so the planning part is the only thing that keeps me sane. I work a bit over 300 hours in 2 jobs and this probably for over 6 months. But I know all this work will have an end eventually and my goal (going travelling) is keeping me motivated.
So I have a lot of time on my hands in which I can think about what to take with me, where to go first, what to do, who to meet up with, and so on.

Here’s some points you might want to consider, especially if you’re a firsttimer:

Liked the teaser? Read more…

I should have known it was a bad omen when I arrived at the bus terminal in Da Nang, Vietnam, about 10 minutes after the bus was supposed to leave and there were about 2 people, 20 sacks of rice, 20 pairs of chicken, all on the road bundled together in twos, and a couple pigs just standing around waiting for something to happen. First I thought that the bus had left already and I tried asking the vietnamese guy if I was too late for the 7 o’clock bus.

Liked the teaser? Read more…