Indonesian Chronicles - Day 4, 16/8/2018 - Impressions, Facts & Stories

We went to our first Indonesian beach today. Waves like mini tsunamis, crashing on a dark sand beach. Nobody in the water. Too dangerous. The beach is full of young couples watching the sunset and having their photo taken on a back drop of huge waves. A few kids running around, far away from the water. Strange beach with forbidden access to water. Like a dramatic theatre decorum. There is a small pool in our guest house. More like a large bath tube. T points to the irony of being on an island, unable to swim.

We read books and walk along rice fields and on the slope of smoking volcanos. Everywhere we go is teeming with people, women and girls wearing colourful veils, men with batik shirts. Fact full L. explains that Java is 2 times smaller than the UK, with 2 times more people[1]. So, yes, we should be expecting to be meeting more people, in every corner of Java.

[1] Indonesia is a sovereign archipelago in Southeast Asia and the fourth most populous country on earthafter China, India, and the United States. Indonesia is made up of more than 17,000 islands with over 1.9 million square miles of land, which makes it the 15th largest country. Indonesia has a population estimated at 266.79 million in 2018, up from the 2015 estimate of 257 million. About 56.7% of Indonesia's population lives on Java, the most populous island.