Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world after India, China, and the US. Over 13,000 islands make up the country. More than half of the 279 million population lives on Java. We toured a Semarang on Java, a city I had never heard of. But taking it in sequence, we started with some time visiting the Komodo Dragons at Rinca Island where about 1,500 of the Komodo’s live – about half of the 3,000 total.

We saw about a dozen of these fellows – mostly lounging around and moving slowly.

This little guy found his way up onto our boardwalk and had to be shooed away by one of our guides.

Their diet includes such prey as this water buffalo who didn’t seem to be aware of the hazards he is surrounded by. Maybe he is too big to be taken down, although one weapon the Komodo’s have is a bacteria laden bite that will drop the prey after a few days and feed a pack of Komodo followers.

Here’s where these guys hang out.

Here’s some of the 13,000 islands seen on our short cruise over to Bali.

We arrived through this pass and docked at the Port of Benoa, which is next to the capitol city of Denpasar on Bali. Here’s a few incoming shots.

Our local neighborhood for two days of touring.

They gussied up the cruise dock area to give visitors like us a feel for Bali culture.

And a short walk from our ship was a local terminal with lots of fishing boats and other assorted craft.

Albacore tuna I think – frozen hard as a rock.

Our first shore excursion was dinner and a show at the Bali Bird Park where we got to handle some of the exotic birds such as Macaws, Cockatoos and other big colorful characters. After dinner we were entertained with a show that told a story from ancient Hindu tradition. Bali is actually about 85% Hindu religion although Indonesia as a whole is about 87% Muslim. The show had about 50 men who chanted, sang, and more or less danced in place for the whole 40 minute production. Otherwise there were costumed characters that told the story that was very involved with beautiful women and men that seemed to fight over the women etc.

The next day we visited a market, museum, and temple in Denpasar (Bali). Here’s our guide giving us the lowdown on all of these peppers etc

A neat museum piece.

And stone carvings are everywhere in Bali with many vendors along the roads with lots of stone pieces to put in your yard or wherever. Here are some from the temple we visited in Denpasar.

The black and white checkered skirts and other similar black and white wrappings symbolize yin/yang in the Hindu tradition.

We had a BBQ dinner and dance party on the Pool deck one evening.

Our last day in Indonesia has us in the city of Semarang on the island of Java. Our tour of town started with the Old Town sector where a 14th century church was to be seen. Our tour guide said the Indonesians had been “occupied” by the Dutch for 350 years and finally got their independence in 1945 or so after a brief spell of being “occupied” by the Japanese. The church was neglected for many years before the Indonesians realized that tourism was a good industry to encourage so they cleaned things up. The Old Town neighborhood is a bit run down still.

Next stop is “Rainbow Village” which is an old low income neighborhood on a hillside that had been run down but somewhat recently got renovated rather than torn down.

Final attraction was a Chinese complex that was started by the great Chinese mariner and explorer Zheng He who came through here around 1420 in the course of exploring much of the Indian Ocean in a huge Ming Dynasty effort.

And here’s the big guy himself.

And a fond farewell from the local boys of Indonesia.

We’re now on our way to Ho Chi Minh City where we have three full days of activities including a pedal tour around the city and an evening puppet show and dinner. More later. Cheers,

Charlie and Marty