Given the richness of the land, it is hard to believe that Indonesia is a poor country (something caused chiefly by corrupt governments). Indonesia has the tropical paradise vegetation including palm trees, tropical fruits, and exotic flowers. Did you know that there are 48 different types of bananas, and Indonesia grows all of them? The only type I knew was Chiquita ;-) They had other types of exotic fruits that we’ve never heard of before. The durian fruit was nicknamed "stink fruit" because the skin produced a strong stinky smell. There were even notices in the hotels that durian was not allowed.

The Indonesians use a creature they call a buffalo to plow fields.  This buffalo doesn't look anything like the American buffalo excpet that it has 4 legs and 2 horns.

JW spent some time chasing down butterflies, waiting for them to land so he could get a picture.  There are some enormous and beautiful butterflies in Indonesia.   There's one that we didn't see called the elephant butterfly which we were told is about 1 ft wide.

Butterflies are not the only things that grow big in Indonesia. There's also very large spiders (eeekkhhh).  The spider shown was walking on the latex trees in a plantation and Jan-Willem actually let it touch him.  Again, Amy was thrilled that her camera has a zoom!

We saw a variety of different structures in Indonesia including Batak houses, temples, and palaces.

There's alot of information about the Batak people in the Lonely Planet travel book.  What you see in the pictures is that the roofs of their houses are bow-shaped, like a canoe.  The Batak bury their dead in a family grave which is often much richer than their own house.One thing you can't see in the pictures is that the Batak are excellent singers. We heard them singing in a bar, and it actually sounded good, especially considering that they may not have been entirely sober.

We visited 2 temples:  the Borobudor and the Prambanan (both are near Yogyakarta).  The Borobudor was built in the 800's and was lost (covered with vines and sand) for several centuries.  Amazing that something so big could be hidden for so long.  The Prambanan was completely destroyed in an earthquake.  It has been partially reassembled by fitting together the stones which were made like puzzle pieces.   Now that's a mighty big puzzel to put together.

This section is for people interested in technical stuff (you romantics can skip this part). The factories are very simple and most tasks are done by hand.  They also have very poor working conditions and little/no regard for employee safety.  On top of all that, the employees earn minumun wage (10,000 rupiahs/day, which is roughly $1/day).

The cacao plant was the simplest by far.  They 'fermentate' the cacao beans for several days at increasingly higher tempertures (35, 45, 55 degC).  The fermentation tanks are just sitting outside with a roof and drain area.  When I asked how they control the temperature, the answer was "with a thermometer".  I had to ask 2 more times before I finally got a real answwer.  They control the temperature using the advanced method of putting more/less blankets on top of the tanks. After fermentation, the beans are poured onto a large open bed to dry by sunlight.  I had a hand at spreading the beans out.  The dried beans are taken to a room where women separate the smaller/poorer beans from the good ones.  They have a check point where they examine a small amount of beans from each bag to make sure the quality is good (less than 5% bad beans), then the bags are sealed and shipped to a chocolate factory.

The coffee plant actually used a couple pieces of machinery.  The picked coffee beans are first sent to a vat where the outer skin of the bean is removed with water.  The beans are dried with a dryer and sent to a another device that removes the inner skin of the bean.  Next the beans are sent though a sieve and collected in 3 bags based on size.  Lastly is the inspection.  Rows and rows of women pick out the low quality beans by hand.  You see Jan-Willem sitting with the women working.  The beans are not roasted here - they are sent to a coffee distributor who roasts, grinds and packages the coffee.

In the rubber plant they actually use a bit of chemistry.  The latex sap from the trees is mixed with ammonia in the fields to keep it from hardening.   The latex is poured into a vat containing acid.  The people stir like mad by hand then as fast as possible put metal plates into the vat.  This is done to prevent the rubber from forming one humonguous blob.  After the rubber has coagulated, the vat is rinsed with water.  The slices of rubber are sent down the line through rollers to thin it into sheets.  The sheets are collected and hung in a smokehouse to dry.   The resulting product is brown from the smoke.  JW commented that using smoke is probably not a good idea because it imbeds particles into the rubber which will reduce the elongation property.

We also saw a Batik plant, where they make the Batikcloth.  I was shocked at the working conditions here.  People were even sitting on the floor to work and the air stunk of wax.  The process for making Batik is simple but tedious.   Material is covered with wax (on both sides) then dipped into a dye.  The wax is removed in boiling water, then different sections of the material are covered with wax and dipped into another dye.  The process may repeat many times depending on the number of colors.  Sometimes the wax is applied using a stamp, but some designs are made entirely by hand.

The silver plant was probably the least interesting to us. Basically silver is just melted in a pot with some copper to make stainless silver.  The silver is poured into slabs, cut into strips, then pulled thorugh a device to make a specific size wire.  From the slabs, strips, and wire, all the crafts are made, again, by hand.  At the silver plant the employees didn't have to sit on the floor, rather they were given the luxury of extremely uncomfortable tables and chairs.