The last few days we have been checking into Indonesia. It took the better part of 2 days, with multiple visits to each of Immigration, Customs, Quarantine, and the Port Captain. Its a good thing we bought a rubber stamp with our boat name and registration number on it, as you have to stamp and sign multiple copies of everything. The love paperwork and stamps here. I have no idea what we signed unfortunately. Even our translator's english was difficult--but he did a great job of helping us through it all. And now we are free to do a bit of exploring for a couple of months, then we'll have to start more paperwork if we want to extend our visas.

Its been very interesting so far. As a the world's most populous muslim country, we here the call to prayer being broadcast over loudspeakers all the time. Notably, however, there is a catholic church and a protestant church both within view of Morning Glory. And there are a handful of hindu's in the vicinity as well. Apparently in the late 90's there was a lot of bloodshed in this region of indonesia (Maluku or the Moluccas) between the various religious groups. But that seems to be more or less settled.

There are not many visitors to this part of Indonesia (unlike Bali for example). We get mobbed by people wherever we go--all interested in seeing these crazy boat people. And the boat gets constantly buzzed by little boats coming to have a look. Often there are four or five dugout canoes filled with little kids that sometimes just come and hang out. They don't speak english, and we don't speak Bahasa Indonesian, so not much gets accomplished. Sometimes they just tie up and sit behind the boat for hours at a time. Sometimes they try to just climb aboard and have a look. Often there are one or two in the group without clothes, or without pants. One little boy was wearing a t-shirt like a skirt-with his waist through the neck of the t-shirt. The picture is of one small group of boys that visited. When there is only a couple, sometimes we let them come up--we don't do it when there is a mob.

Soon we will leave and head to the spice islands, or maybe raja ampat with a stop in irian jaya. We will be staying in these remote areas of indonesia for a while before heading to places like Komodo and Bali...

We have nearly no internet access but, I can sometimes get some things through via our cell phone connection--so hopefully I've gotten the picture through....