Last of the hospital travel series, but in reality, no travel adventure or holiday has ever come close to our time spent in Indonesia.
It was like magic.
It has been over five weeks since I wrote anything new on the Black Narcissus, and three since we returned from Java.
This is not intentional. Rather than lassitude, a paucity of ideas, or some kind of general slump leading me to take a break from my usual flow of writing, it’s more a case of the reverse: so flushed, inundated with sensory overload, olfactory and otherwise, that despite the rush of ideas that I was having for this blog the whole time I was in Indonesia, with words rising up in me constantly, they were always instantaneously crushed, almost pleasingly so, by the sheer living vividness of the experience, my brain and senses wanting to just be and imbibe, smell and listen, rather than translate or transcribe each moment in…
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The Black Narcissus 
Was java better than luang prabang? I am an Indo Girl but can’t get past Bali..
Ha ha. I have read about all the rest though. “Nathaniels nutmeg” is a great history of the spice trade if you are interested in that sort of thing .
We have that at home actually.
I have never been to Bali ( unlike all Kiwis and Aussies it would seem), but for me personally Java was way more fascinating. Luang Prevang is a great, relaxing, dreamy tourist destination.
Java was just real life in Indonnesia: we travelled by train everywhere and just melted into it. And doing the van
illa course was utterly fascinating,
Nathaniels Nutmeg is a great history of the spice trade .. gets a bit muddled in the middle ..seems to go backwards and forwards in time for no apparent reason.. could have done with better editing.