Kopi Luwak

Dear family and friends,

I don’t think there is anything that we associate more closely to Indonesia than coffee. We even call our coffee java, for crying out loud. Quite beyond the beans we get from Java, most of us now look for coffee from other parts of Indonesia, including Sulawesi, Sumatra, and Bali, even Papua. I know coffee originated in Africa, and it is hard to beat Central or South American beans, but where would we be without Indonesian coffee? Today, names such as Sumatra Mandheling, Sulawesi Kalossi, Java Jampit, drip off the tongue of true coffee cognoscenti as easily as most might say “Nabob regular grind”.

 

What's Sumatra With You?

What's Sumatra With You? 

"The Wild One" at Lake Maninjau

Dear family and friends,

And so I carry on, from New Zealand, it was on to Malaysia, first Kuala Lumpur, and then Melaka (Malacca). There is little to be said about Kuala Lumpur other than it is just a great big, hot and polluted city. Melaka on the south west coast of Malaysia is much smaller and a lot easier to take. I spent about three days in each city, and as always, the noise, clamour, traffic, heat, and smells of Asian cities are a shock to my senses. Durians are being sold and eaten everywhere, and the pungent, slightly sweet, rotting smell of this popular fruit competes so well with the smell of open sewers. It’s great to back in SE Asia!