Welcome back - it’s certainly been a while! My last post of The Moyo Diaries over on Medium was on April 9th, 2020, as the first wave of the pandemic was still exploding around the world and my wife Holly and I had decided to ‘sit it out’ on a remote island in Indonesia. Starting off on Moyo Island at the end of a trip we led through the Indonesian archipelago in March 2020, we had made the move to Lombok — the island just to the east of Bali — in early April of that year. We were still uncertain at that point how long we would be here, though it was becoming ever more clear that Covid-19 was settling in for the long haul. What a wild 33 months it has been since those early pandemic days.
We had no clue what adventures lay ahead of us, and I will recount some of them in this blog — but only when it’s relevant or interesting. We couldn’t have even contemplated such a move without the above-and-beyond help we have received from our Indonesian friends, particularly our adopted family of Frankie, Ellen and their three daughters. Frankie had been the acting GM at the Amanwana resort on Moyo Island, and he and Ellen were the ones who convinced us to return to Lombok with them when it was clear that the pandemic wasn’t going to blow over in a few weeks and the resort decided to shut down for the duration.
We have also received amazingly welcoming treatment from the Indonesian immigration authorities, who extended our tourist visas several times over the subsequent few months — normally impossible in non-Covid times — as we prepared the legal paperwork to incorporate our travel company in Indonesia. Once this was complete we were able to obtain longer-term investor visas. By the end of May it was clear that the response to the pandemic in the United States wasn’t headed in the right direction at all, and we decided to make Indonesia our home.
It’s been an adjustment to be sure, but perhaps not as much as you might think. Holly and I have both traveled and lived internationally for extended, multiyear periods, and had spent quite a lot of time in Southeast Asia and fallen in love with it even before our Indonesian trip began in 2020. We had both harbored vague thoughts of ‘one day’ moving to the region, at some unspecified point in the future, but certainly hadn’t done anything concrete about it. The pandemic provided an opportunity to completely rethink what our lives looked like — something we likely share with many others out there — and having landed in paradise we took advantage of our good fortune. Lombok it was.
It turned out to be the best decision we’ve ever made, as we say to each other at least weekly even now. Of course part of it is the sheer beauty of a tropical island sitting astride the shimmering Indian and Pacific Oceans near the heart of the Coral Triangle, but that’s actually just a small part of it. The friends we’ve made here, the genuine friendliness of the Indonesian people, and the sense of community are the primary reasons we’ve decided to make our home on Lombok. Indonesia consistently ranks at the top of global lists of ‘most charitable countries’, and you can see why when you live here. We have truly joined a welcoming, diverse community, and our close friends hail from nearly a dozen European countries, as well as Balinese, Sasak (the indigenous inhabitants of Lombok), Javanese, and people from many of the other islands of Indonesia. While Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim majority country, it is constitutionally a multicultural society that accords equal rights to everyone regardless of religion. Official holidays include Muslim observances like the end of Ramadan, Idul Fitri (Eid al-Fitr), as well as Balinese Hindu, Christian and Buddhist celebrations. It’s fascinating and truly refreshing.
Much of the content on The Moyo Diaries was focused - understandably - on the emerging Covid pandemic, and while that will be a part of some of my posts here it won’t be nearly as dominant. The pandemic now seems to have done the majority of its initial, acute damage over the past three years, although it’s clear that the longer-term damage to public health will continue to become apparent for years to come. At this point, though, China — the last ‘Covid Zero’ holdout among the world’s nations — has emerged from its three-year isolation, and most people have now accepted the disease as an ongoing, hopefully manageable issue. Not ‘over’, of course, but something to be monitored and managed as a normal part of life moving forward, with the help of vaccines, masks, testing and judicious social distancing.
So what will I write about here? The remit in the blog description is ‘science, history, travel, food - the good stuff…’. I’ll certainly write about the science that has always fascinated me, in particular the study of human history and prehistory. But I also want it to be an opportunity to share some — hopefully — interesting insights into our lives here, as well as our travels (we have some fascinating trips planned over the next few years). Finally, food will comprise a significant part of the content — the things we grow in our garden, prepare in our kitchen, and consume at home or with friends. Exploring and eating fresh, healthy, delicious food is a big part of our lives — as those of you who follow me on Twitter or Instagram already know. These topics reflect a more holistic adjustment of priorities that Holly and I have made as part of our lives here.
My goal is to post at least once a week, sometimes more, but never anything overwhelming like a daily slug of heavy content. It will be free, though I can foresee circumstances where it might be worth making at least some of the content paid — still TBD.
So with that said, I look forward to sharing my upcoming explorations with you. Thanks for reading, and if you like this please feel free to share with your friends. Away we go…
Glad to see you writing on here. 😊 Hope you'll land in Singapore sooner rather than later!
So glad you landed "on your feet".
Keep posting.