Indonesia Summary
May 18, 2015

The jungle countryside is idyllically beautiful and extremely green.

The people in Sumatra were friendly, chatty, hospitable and had excellent English.

Poverty there is depressing.

We drove through a lot of tiny towns on crater-filled dirt roads, mostly comprised of wooden shacks, but almost all of them had a brand new shiny mosque.

Common sense is to be employed regarding food and water. In my determination to avoid Bali Belly I started off eating only biscuits from the airport and sanitising my hands every half hour. I grew more relaxed as time went on, and didn't die.

I say 'more relaxed', but that's no reason to get ice in your drinks or use the tap water under any circumstance.

The staff in Lombok were subservient to the point that we felt very awkward.

Scam artists are everywhere.

Rainy season is no joke.

Wifi is terrible.

You may not get sick, but a combination of heat, humidity, weird food, questionable hygiene and malaria tablets will probably leave you a little peaky.

Of all the places we went, Indonesia was the easiest for the picky eater.

In Ubud, every standalone house we saw (as opposed to apartments) had a Hindu temple in the garden. They buy the statues from vendors to decorate their lawn. Our driver told us this is the norm.

Elephants are wonderful.

The Indonesian for 'thank you' is 'terima kasih'. We remembered it by thinking of an old Irish farmer name 'Terry McCasey'.

Everything is in English, which we really appreciated after China and Japan.

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