The Travel Essay

Java is unusual. It is green; it is full of trees, fields and villages. The cities have an old world charm. There is a slow pace at which life unfolds. This book of photographs tries to capture these timeless features.

Java is unusual. It is green; it is full of trees, fields and villages. The cities have an old world charm. There is a slow pace at which life unfolds.

The train from Gambir station left on time. It was packed. There were mothers with children, grandparents, students and a sprinkling of tourists. The backyards of Jakarta looked unfamiliar as the train passed along the raised tracks. There were chicken coops, fruit trees and the occasional vegetable vendor, selling her produce along the tracks. In […]

I came to know of Manado when I was a schoolboy. It was from the name of a famous Indonesian actress, Maria Manado. She was a beauty in her time, having appeared in numerous Malay movies. So it was that we came to associate Manado with paradise: a place where there were beautiful women.

The flight from Singapore left at an early hour. It was full. Almost all the passengers were Chinese Indonesians returning from their shopping and medical trips. The journey was short: within an hour we were already landing in Palembang.

I came to know of Manado when I was a schoolboy. It was from the name of a famous Indonesian actress, Maria Manado. She was a beauty in her time, having appeared in numerous Malay movies. In the early 1960s she married one of the Malaysian sultans and came to live in Cameron Highlands where, […]

The flight from Singapore left at an early hour. It was full. Almost all the passengers were Chinese Indonesians returning from their shopping and medical trips. The journey was short: within an hour we were already landing in Palembang. I could see the wide expanse of the brown river beneath and the large tracts of […]