By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
Recently I suggested that I hope I never have to go back to Bali. I simply never want to sit through another hour of Balinese gridlock. The traffic is impossible, insufferable, intolerable. When you get to your destination you basically do not want to leave. A quick t...
My recent Bali retreat mainly circled around travel writers and their Bali-related books, including Bill Dalton’s classic Indonesia Handbook and my own South-East Asia on a Shoestring, but other authors also featured. ◄ The Painted Alphabet – A mythical story of Ba...
I thought I’d added Bali to my ‘not going there again’ list, along with Israel and Saudi Arabia. I’m putting Bali on that list because the traffic is so absurdly intolerable and despite tourist money flooding in for decades the Indonesians have done nothing about it. ...
Why have I never been to the Indonesian island of Sumba? The islands of Nusa Tenggara run in a chain to the east of Bali – Lombok, then Sumbawa, the Komodo Islands, Flores and finally Timor. In the middle Sumba is centred just to the south of Sumbawa-Komodo-Flores. Ov...
◄ Poppies Gang – a ‘gang’ is a narrow pathway or alleyway – and this popular gang at Kuta Beach in Bali, Indonesia, runs by Poppies Restaurant and Poppies Hotel. Despite Kuta’s massive growth Poppies Gang looks just the same as it did in the ‘70s, right down to the tr...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013