At home and abroad

That would be Indonesia, land of thousands upon thousands of islands — 14,000? 17,000? I’m not sure anyone knows. Also home to more humans than only three other countries (India, China, and the USA.)

Situated on the Ring of Fire that rims the southwestern Pacific Ocean, Indonesia also is arguably the planet’s most geologically unstable country. Earthquakes, killer tsunamis, exploding volcanoes (Krakatoa!) — it’s all routine. That’s not why I had no strong desire to go there for a long time. It was more just ignorance. I had no clue what was there.

Now that Indonesia has worked its way up to the top of Steve’s and my Want to Visit list, we’ve been reading a lot and getting more excited the more we’ve learned. Varying wildly from one island to the next, I’ve come to wonder if Indonesia won’t feel a bit like Poseidous, the watery planet Steve and his co-author Roy Wysack created in their (fictional) guidebook for exoplanetary settlers (the Handbook for Space Pioneers).

Over the next three weeks, we’ll barely scratch the surface of the place, sleeping on only four of all those islands (Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Flores). We’ll make our way among them on airplanes, trains, boats, cars, and motorscooters. With luck, the land and sea will behave themselves throughout the course of our visit. But whatever happens, I’ll do my best to share some of what we experience.