Before I blab on about Singapore and how extremely delightful it is to be here, I'll return to Indonesia and pick up on where I left you last.

LEAVING FLORES.........One can hang out on Flores forever - The Portuguese, when they arrived many moons ago, referred to it as the 'island of flowers' - paradise is closer to the truth. Every corner you turn, your eyes feast on different landscape settings of varying shades and colours. One minute you are in barren country and the next, you're in lush tropical forests with monkeys squealing their hellos and little children shouting their "Hello Mister"s. You are really in the back of beyond here. However, while the Portuguese stayed on, they didn't have to deal with a worsening exchange rate (One US$ in Bali was 3,600rp, while in Flores it was 2,600rp) and rising flight fares.

We made a sudden out of the blue decision to fly to Kupang and then East to East Timor. The exchange rate would no doubt be better and we always fancied the idea of being in the midst of it all (????). We hung out with the locals and resident aussies who tried hard to dissuade us from embarking on such a "treacherous journey"!! "It's a warzone, mate", "The hotel rooms are bugged", "You'll be followed everywhere you go". Instead of freaking us out, it made us more determined to check the place out!! On the way, we broke our journey in Soe, four hours north of Kupand and stayed with an eccentric old gentleman in his Hotel Anda. He had a great fascination with ships and had gone so far as to construct a copy of an English warship in his backyard. We slept in his ferry room with our very own en-suite bathroom built under a tree! (a bucket of water and a hole in the floor). I awoke the next morning to a cockroach fondling my hair. Horrors of horrors! I'm still not convinced that it hasn't laid eggs in my ears. Blame my childhood diet of Star Wars and sci-fi films. After a day of market trudging and photo angling, we took the overnight bus to Dili. We were just a tad nervous about crossing the border and were expecting major hassles from border police. Nothing!! We were almost disappointed from their lack of interest. All we got was "PROFESSION???" Even if you were a journalist, you'd hardly say you were!!

Okay, so East Timor is under a military operation. I cannot claim to know too much about its politics but life seems to be quite normal there, as normal as a military system can be....a few soldiers sauntering around with weapons - nothing more. East Timor...under Portuguese rule for centuries until the Portuguese pulled out and East Timor was on its own two feet...free from colonial paws. Not for very long!! The Indonesian govt. decided that it should be integrated into the country and proceeded (with American approval I may add) to invade the country. The invasion was by all accounts horrific and although the East Timorese independent movement resisted strongly, by the late 1980s the Indonesian govt. had things firmly under their control there.

The one observation I did make was that nobody wanted to talk about politics. When we brought up the subject...people muttered that they didn't want to talk politics and changed topics. All our chats seemed to focus on their desire for tourism and the need for more people to visit East Timor. We were the only tourists in Bau Cau, north of Dili. They kept referring to the Portuguese era when life was better.

Poverty is a fact of life for most and it makes me uncomfortable to know that we all live such materialistic lives in the West and continually moan about our needs and wants. We have everything but we're still not happy. These people are so friendly and smiley that you almost believe that they're very happy living in their bamboo huts and washing in their rivers and streams. REALITY?? They're not. Okay, (SHUT UP,ITA)!! Anyway, East Timor is a place that will interest me for the rest of my life. Say no more.........

We returned back to Kupang intact and took a ferry from there all the way back to Bali on a Pelni ship. Two days of lazing about on a ship deck was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries.

NIGHTMARE IN YOGYAKARTA

From Bali, we took an overnight bus to Yogyakarta on the island of Java and it was on this bus that I got my 4 year old walkman and my cheapie imitation baby G watch stolen. I discovered my loss before I arrived in Yogya but I couldn't be bothered to get fussed about it all. They were old things and just a reminder to replace them sometime. Lynne consoled me in the taxi and reminded me that I was lucky that my Pentax camera was still in my possession. I agreed and we went along our merry way to the Bladok hotel in downtown Yogya. We checked in and Lynne was taking out her stuff in her backpack when she let a scream hang in the air. Her beautiful Minolta camera was no longer in its bag. And she was consoling me about my losses? The poor thing. She was in bits. She had spent a fortune in Hong Kong buying it and now it was GONE. We were at this stage in total shock. We racked our brains trying to figure out how anyone could have stolen it. Her bag was right under her feet all night. The only person in front of her was the bus attendent and the driver.....REALISATION............It was an inside job...the damn bus driver and his cronies. After that experience, we spent our days in Yogyakarta completely paranoid and couldn't wait to get the hell out of the place. It's the cultural capital of Java and is raved about in all the travel mags and guides but all we witnessed were people trying to rip us off and relieve us off our valuables.

CATCH THIS FOR A STORY!! We got the public bus to Borobadour..a huge Buddhist temple about an hour away from the city. We hopped on along with an English couple. Three guys also got on and we all joked about them saying that they were definitely going to try and rob something. What a pathetic attempt. One of them pretended to get sick on top of the English guy but it fell on its arse when the English chap told him to piss off. They moved on to the girlfriend who was on the next seat and attempted to shake hands with her. While one was shaking her hand, the other had HIS hand in her money belt!!!!

The woman copped on very quickly and grabbed his hand. Her boyfriend caught a grip of him. They had him...but with all the confusion, the hoodlums were out of the bus and away. We all sighed with relief and had a good laugh about their pathetic efforts. It wasn't all that funny a half an hour later when the woman realised that her purse was gone with all her credit cards.

We were very happy to leave Yogyakarta and for the next five days, we rested our weary bones in Panganderan, a fishing village to the west of Yogya. What a place!! We stayed in a place called Delta Gecko. We had our own bamboo hut and would still be there if it wasn't for a flight booked and paid already. It was deadly!! Cheap dinners, great conversations and good tours to the local green canyon and national park. I didn't get much sleep my last night there what with BBQing and partying on the beach into the late hours. I ended up cruising around on the back of a motorbike...CUT!!......no more details on that!!.

SINGAPORE

I'm in Singapore on a Sunday afternoon and we're in the middle of a thunderstorm. Ella Fitzgerald is singing in the background and I'm going to be $20 less if I don't get out of here NOW!!! I bought my flights yesterday...home for Xmas via Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and London. I don't know how I feel about it. Malaysia-bound tomorrow and then up to Thailand. I think Burma could well be on the cards!! All these places and only 5-6 weeks to go.

More about Singapore later! GOTTA GO!!!!!

Take care,
Ita