I happened to be of those lucky folks who have travel-happy parents who took me all over Europe when I was a kid, infesting me with the travel bug and leaving me to explore more exotic parts of the World once I've grown up.
I've tried to do the latter sort of systematically, covering the globe starting with those regions closest to Europe, then proceeding further.
So far I've been to 113 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania - with America being the continent left for last simply because it stands at a distance from all the others.
My overall favourite continent is Asia, with its tremendous diversity of landscapes, cultures and ancient history.

I first visited Indonesia in 1996 as part of a wider tour of Southeast Asia.
As I have never been fond of whirlwind tours restricted to ticking off touristy highlights only, it was obvious that this was no country I could see on a single trip. I kept returning, visiting the East Indonesian regions of Maluku and Papua for the first time in 1999. With my main interest being nature, wildlife and ethnic cultures, I found this one of the most fascinating parts of the World as a whole, and have been making repeat visits ever since. In fact, I've managed to spend time in Maluku every year since 1999, and most years visited Papua as well. During the same period I have also managed to tour the rest of Indonesia extensively, spending some 10 years in total travelling, studying and working in the country, attended university in East Java, authored a Lonely Planet title, and lead some special interest tours and expeditions in remote parts of Papua and Maluku as well.

Nowadays I'm still trying hard to split my time between Indonesia, especially my favourite eastern regions of it, exploring the rest of the World, and of course spending some time with my family back in Budapest. Not an easy task - we have only one life and our planet is too big! ;-)

                                                       Need some personal advice?

If you have any specific questions regarding travelling in the country, feel free to email me, but please do a bit of reserach such as reading through my site or preferably even a guidebook before doing so, as truly generic questions like "What is to see in Bali?" are unlikely to get a detailed reply from me anyway! ;-) Don't ask me weather-related questions either - I can't see into the future to tell you what the weather will be like during your holiday, and whatever I can tell about general seasonal patterns is already on my three "Climate & Planning" pages for Indonesia, Maluku and Papua!
Also, bear in mind that I am often staying or travelling in remote places with no internet access so may take weeks to get back to you.

If you are from Hungary, please ask travel-related questions in public on the Index forum rather than by email, so that other Hungarians can learn from your questions, too. I check that regularly and will reply there!

If you want to email me, please make it obvious in the title that your mail is not a piece of spam by not using titles like "Hi! :-)" and send it to my Gmail address:

eastindonesia.info(at)gmail.com

Happy Travels!