I inadvertently seem to be following the ancient spice routes which would have seen ships from Europe calling at the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, then onto Cochin in India, Malacca (Malaysia) and then onto Makassar (also known at times as Ujung Pandang) which is a short hop across to the Spice Islands.

It is nothing like as scenic as Cochin or Malacca though, and certainly lacks the tourists. "Hello mister" is the greeting that is shouted out from just about every doorway, but other than that, no one seems to speak any English, so my Malay phrasebook is going to get some serious use. I feel like I've actually achieved celebrity status here as they don't see too many foreigners these days.

Alex and I were the only two Westerners who stepped off the plane. Alex is a Welshman living in Jakarta. We both have similar ideas of what we want to see on the island of Sulawesi, so we have stuck together so far. The company has been very welcome; since the torrential rains that have greeted us so far look set to continue for a while, and make this place feel very grim indeed. Not much to see in this large sprawling port, but the food is good - particularly the fish.

Since there isn't much to report from here other than scenes of locals wading through lakes that have a road somewhere beneath, then I may as well introduce the country. With around 240 million people, Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, behind China, India and USA. More than half of the population lives on the island of Java, and since the religion is Islam, there is a greater concentration of Muslims here than anywhere else. Look at an atlas and you will see that it is a huge country, containing around 18,000 islands that straggle the equator. Around 6000 are inhabited, and some make it into the top ten largest islands in the world.

I chose Sulawesi as a starting point because it has some good hiking in the central region, and a few other interesting sights. It also looked like it might be the best place to avoid the monsoon rains which are not due to end in most places until the end of March, but so far it looks like I might have arrived a bit too early!