Exhaustion had finally overcome discomfort, and the rattling of the truck as it trundled through the dark not-so-gently rocked me to sleep. I was on the latter part of a five-hour long return journey to deliver supplies into the forest, including a live chicken stuffed into a box that tried desperately to escape its fate […]

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“I hope the forest stays forever,” Wahyu said, his trademark grin fading from his face in a rare serious moment. The dense foliage parted where we sat, allowing us to look out over steep hills coated in green. What we were seeing was living history; untouched primary forest that had eluded the human grasp for […]

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One of my most formidable opponents in Indonesia was the squat toilet. Unlike the porcelain thrones of my country, a squat toilet consists of a raised platform with an inlaid bowl that you squat over. I soon found squatting atop the bowl without falling over while finding the right angle for a clean delivery a […]

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On my second day in Indonesia, I sat down to a late lunch at a small restaurant. As I navigated my way through the foreign objects on my plate, carefully weaving around the chili sauce I had inadvertently asked for, I found it buried neatly beneath a layer of rice: a shriveled, dead fly. I […]

Read more "A Fly in My Rice"