Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 165 - Jakarta Jakarta could do with following those tips so helpfully displayed on a roadside sign. Indonesia's capital is a city of 11 million people. Of endless houses broken by mosques, then urban sprawl, then fields and trees. Or if you're flying into it then fields and trees > urban sprawl > houses > mosque> houses > mosque > hou... you get the idea. It is not Paris. It is not Labuan Bajo. Whatever the limitations of the latter it was, to quote, "a home away from home". The grit of Jakarta was a shock to my system but that was exceeded by the shock of being alone again. I was out of the peculiar terrarium of holiday romance and I hated it. A bar seemed the right place for me right now and the Jaya pub would do. It was basically empty with just me and a pair of friends to prop it up. They would occasionally exchange a few words but mostly sat in silence in that way that men do in bars and women don't. The place slowly fills up and a liv...

Day 159 - Labuan Bajo My hangover ensured an uneventful day in Labuan Bajo. Come the evening I'd arranged to meet the usual gang from the gangway and go for dinner down at the waterfront. There was an unexpected addition to the group, Jessie. She said hello, I made a joke about an oxygen tank and she laughed. I liked her immediately. She seemed to have a soft light about her that was a perfect shade of white in the same way I once saw a perfect shade of pink in Sydney. Huts selling fresh fish stood yards from the water's edge. You selected your preferred catch and took it to another hut where someone would grill it for you. We sat at long communal tables and, through some expert manoeuvring, I was opposite Jessie. Lest Thierry get any ideas I loudly reminded him of his success the previous night with Susie, the manager of the bar. Hey all's fair in love and war right? We talked about cats, we talked about babies, or was it cat babies? Doesn't matter, the sound of clic...

Day 156 - The Flores Sea You can take the ape out of the savanna but you can't take the savanna out of the ape. Our brains still have prey-like reflexes from when we were food for leopards and, as the enormous shape moved at speed in my peripheral vision, I couldn't help but flinch. The animal's mouth opened wider than my whole body and engulfed the bait put out so obligingly for it. This was the second morning of the Komodo tour and I'd almost missed it. It had swiftly become clear that on the tour we would be viewing every sunset...and every sunrise. It has only been 16 days since my last rant about sunrise so I won't re-tread that ground but suffice to say that after a night on a thin mattress sharing a deck with 19 other slightly-washed people I would not be getting up at 5AM. There was something different this morning though. A commotion. We'd already passed the stranded tour boat that had hit a rock a few days previously and we'd seen the video of p...