Of Spice and Profit
Nearly half a millennium before the world, slowly getting connected by grainy black and white TV images, was entranced by...
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Bandung – A Variety of Rich Culinary Experiences
Every weekend thousands of people from Jakarta travel to Bandung to visit the many factory outlets and dine out at...
A Self-Help Model for Aid that Really Works: The East Bali Poverty Project (EBPP)
When writing about aid projects words like ‘uplifting’, ‘inspirational’ or ‘downright bloody fantastic’ rarely, if ever, enter the vocabulary of...
Going Nowhere Fast – Can Jakarta Learn from Bangkok?
Bangkok’s new international airport may look like the result of a kindergarten class having too much free time with the...
Rafi the Dreamer
Rafi Abdurrahman Ridwan is a nine-year old hearing impaired boy from Jakarta with a vivid imagination and big dreams for...
Bye Bye Bunnies, Enter the Dragons
As the Year of the Rabbit nears an end, hundreds of expatriates in Jakarta’s Chinatown are preparing to return home...
Floods of Excuses
Floods by Pablo Neruda The poor live on low ground waiting for the river to rise one night and sweep...
Resolutions – At Least Make it Interesting
When it comes to New Year’s Eve parties, there are only two corners of the room: The corner where some...
Run, Scott, Run !
1,250 kilometres in 25 days, from Bali to Jakarta, running through the sweltering 32 degree Equatorial heat and 75% humidity,...
Have the Guts to Eat from the Street
There are two kinds of people in Jakarta: the ones that eat street food and the ones that don’t. ...
The Bargain Tree Hunter
If you plan on walking into a department store this week and dropping Rp 3.2 million on a six-foot tall...
Deck the Malls
Criticising Jakarta’s shopping malls for their ostentatious Christmas displays is too easy. We can feel sickened by the crass commercialisation...
Uneasy Money
Gambling, like prostitution and corruption, is an age-old vice that is part of Indonesia’s culture. Despite being criminalized in the...
Darryl Patton: Godfather of the Expat Bars
Darryl Patton, 1941-2011 Englishman Darryl Patton was the innovator behind many of the early expatriate bars in Jakarta, pioneering much...
Treading in Jogjakarta’s Ancient History
Jogjakarta and its Hill of Stones Anyone with but the flimsiest knowledge of Indonesia will know the pivotal role Jogjakarta...
Jakarta Air Pollution: Not all Doom, Gloom & Catastrophe!
In 1994 there were an estimated 1.38 million vehicles (cars, motorcycles, lorries and buses) in Jakarta. 27 years later in...
Health Remedies
As the dry season turns wet and the rains come knocking on our doors (and, in my case at least,...
How Indonesia’s Spices Unrolled the Map of the World
As Indonesia prepares to celebrate 66 years of independence it is an appropriate moment to turn the clock back 560...
Tanamur: Long Gone but Not Forgotten
“Every dog has its day” goes the old saying. Yes, that’s certainly true for Tanamur – a good number of...
Dancing in the Street
Busking is an activity that can be witnessed in any number of the world’s cities. London, for example, is particularly...
Managing Jakarta’s Traffic
Jakarta Traffic should be added to the certainties of life like death and taxes. It’s the number one thing all...