I approached the Virgin Blue desk at Perth's international airport like someone with a basket full of a bakers dozen trying to sneak through the 12 items or less queue at the supermarket. I had just one bag - a new, purchased for the occasion in Sydney, with some sense of the process to come it seems - a just large enough to get through as hand luggage, but in reality not even half full - rucksack ready for the three week escapade in Indonesia. As ever I find the check in desk is a counter of instant guilt, no one ever packs my bags, nor do I carry items that either explode, induce chemical highs or have been given to me to travel with in good faith and yet I still smile politely like I am carrying a nuclear device. The down side of travelling with hand luggage only I was to discover, well down side is wrong, the interesting aspect perhaps, is that I had over my shoulder a completely liquid and pointy free package (think about it, no toothpaste, shampoo, shower gel, nor scissors or trimmer for my beard). On arriving back I looked decidedly like Robinson Crusoe .

The flight out was a fine example of my biggest consternation with Indonesia, Bali and the major town Kuta in particular. With flights costing as little as $250 dollars from major Australian cities, the island is treated with much the same disrespect and colonial arrogance as the Balearics are by the British and Germans. The problem here unfortunately is confounded by an Australian insensitivity to foreign cultures (the country had a whites only policy until the early 1970's remember, South Africa was not the only country to run an apartheid system) and the increasingly fundamentalist Muslim culture that is growing in the province. There is a very touching monument on the main high street in Kuta, on the site of the night club that was destroyed in the 2002 bombings, however the significance of the clash of cultural habits that brought this horrific action into being continues to be lost on the majority of singlet wearing beer drinking fellow country men and their half naked appendages as they parade around the town.

I was in the country, of course, to see my sister. It is an unfortunate comment, but in the nine months away I continue to miss the person that I am closest to in the world now and have to admit that after checking in - flying over on the evenings 'party plane', sleeping fitfully in an anonymous hotel bed before being woken by a delightful chap requesting my laundry for the day at an ungodly hour, then meeting up with Estelle, the family travel mascot and my associate from Tasmania - a difficult task at the best of times as she is disaster incarnate - then my niece and her husband, Mr Niece - my only concern was waiting for a text from Lesley to say that she, Jason and his eight diver strong Scuba tour group had arrived, were checked in and where were we?

When the text eventually appeared and we saw each other, we ran, hugged and cried - then I remembered that Michelle, her daughter, who in the two years since Lesley had last seen her had progressed into womanhood further by getting married and was in fact technically out here on honeymoon, was behind us, I had hogged the limelight and shamefully I receded to a discrete distance after also embracing the mighty torso that carries Jason.

My sister doesn't dive, but part owns a scuba diving tour company, we share a family trait of having buoyancy like concrete, so I was largely there for company whilst Jason took the tour off on their various bubble blowing excursions. From my point of view - this being a three week trip where my usual pressing daily requirements of petrol, direction, eating and finding somewhere to sleep were all taken care of - I, willing, after eighteen months of self directed life just intended to sheep behind Lesley for the entire duration. This being me of course, and being the keen observer of the Ying Yang that I am, found a manner suitable to celebrate this great weight being lifted off my shoulders. The first evening I lost my bank card. I would like to suggest that it was surreptitiously removed by a gang of super ninja pickpockets in the club I ended up in during the early hours of the following morning, but as what little of my money remained in the threadbare wallet I insist on nursing I concluded that I absent mindedly left it in the cash machine earlier in the evening.

With 200,000 rupes to my name, just enough for a sandwich I became truly reliant on the good nature and superior credit card balance of Lesley and Jason.

From Kuta, we split, Jason and the water nymphs disappeared off to a boat, a Liverabord, in self explanatory diver parlance for a week and we, the happy family band made our way by some exceedingly scary land and water based transport, first to the major transport hub of Padang Bai and then on to Lombock for the Gili Islands.

Almost immediately as we left Kuta there was a major difference in the traveling community, our fellow backpackers were almost uniformly thin and mostly French, German and English. No Australians, that is with the exception of Mr Niece, Troy, who despite being one of the most accident prone people I have ever met, acquitted himself admirably on the trip for a man who had never flown in a plane before, much less left New South Wales (that would be; one stubbed toe, a misjudged collision with a overhead bulkhead on a boat, a pair of sunglasses that lasted forty minutes before being broken and a lost wedding ring, but spoke Balinese like a local, the local being my niece who lived in both Kuta and the islands and played tough in the invariable financial negotiation that is implicitly in every transaction there). He also called my sister "Mum' and got away with it, rather brave I thought.

I had heard stories about the Gili Islands, in particular Gili Air for many years; Jason has particular history here and has maintained relationships with some of the locals over the decade or more that he has ventured to this part of the world. Coming to this place then with a view of it already in mind quickly presented an interesting dilemma of sorts. Lesley (as Jason had yet to join us, marooned as he was far out to sea with only other bubble blowers for company) showed me the places from in their stories, in their descriptions beautiful, jeweled places resplendent with the chandeliers of past memories, but in reality less so, not because Gili Air is a shit hole, far from it, this is a sand island 6 kilometres in circumference, with no cars, it is, or more accurately, was, a paradise. Herein lay the problem, they told me of these places as they were and yet I saw them as they now are, the island just existing in the glow of what it once was before inevitably, sadly, the influx of western money, both in capital investment and general greed for tourist money takes away the natural beauty and replaces it with the concrete and the dollar.

On one of the later days, whilst we relaxed on one of the many beach side pagodas, Lesley intersected a stout, sweating and sunburnt torrid man talking loudly behind us. "Enjoy it while you can in five years it all will be gone" he announced to her in the most arrogant of tones. we found out later that he was, well I though English, but she said Australian, but he was a penis either way, the owner of one of the bars on the adjacent "party island" Gili Trawangan, not content with fucking up that place he had set his eyes on molesting this one with a new Bar. The island, like many from Iceland down, but not I note my current country/continent, has but one throughfare around its circumference, in this case easily walked in an hour or so (not so for Iceland) and the South side of Gili Air has all the development on it, three dive shops, the same number again in villa resorts, a hotel way past its prime and in between beach side cafes and bars. There is no need, but greed to include another one.

I thought that I could also see this impending change in some of the locals, it is a muslim island, the local settlement is in the centre and rarely do you see anyone other than the younger boys, themselves mostly into their twenties before disappearing back in to the centre of the village to get married and take up more responsible, less frivolous jobs, employed in the tourist fronting businesses. Their attitude towards the ease in which they consider it possible to separate you from your currency at times bordered on the expectant, almost a resentment at our lifestyle perhaps, the money or maybe the women. Fraternisation with western women is a regular, but unspoken past time for these lads, as Lesley divulged the gossip of trips past, they are frankly in many respect, gigolos, coercing eager ladies by means I did not care to discover to cover their costs for trips to the mainland and other financially led items, in two in specific cases, a sound system for a bar and curiously, an out board motor.

There are a lot of western women married to local men on these islands, they are very similar, stout forceful ladies who enviably end up fronting a businesses, whilst taking no stick from their local employees. These are also ladies who in the western world would be unfairly treated and demeaned for their body shape. Size here, still an indication of success and wealth. Jason is universally remembered and referred to as "Mr Jason, big body"

The Big body and the wet suited wonderers reappeared into the second week, just after Mr and Mrs Niece flew home and Estelle made tracks to meet a friend in Kuta and I relinquished my related room mate; from a twin to a double for her and for me, time to share with my holiday boyfriend, Paul. This was a trip of firsts, I had never shared a room with anyone other than my wife, Lesley was no trouble as we quickly set out the ground rules and she is my sister after all. Sharing with another man, one who I had not met before this trip was a bit more testing, but we quickly worked out a schedule, he came in late, I got up early and we hardly had to spend anytime in the room together, almost like we were married. The other, Lesley and I laughed over, "if only Tash could see me now" I am unsure whether it was her or me, but recognised that a few years ago I would not have consented to staying in the reed built stilt huts that are mostly the only accommodation that you can get in the island, but as I commented, the sentiment produced the laughter, for me now in the way that I live, this is luxury, I have a bed! and a toilet too! - not the bush or the back of my car (you really need to get this comment in the right order).

The rest of the trip was accented by a variety of physical injuries to all the party, ranging from one of the divers taking a pool side pagoda to the bounce, producing an urgent need for a doctor and a credit card sized scalping. The pagoda collapsed in a slight breeze, illustrating, as Lesley observed, the manner of the country, nothing is maintained, it is simply erected, built or planted and then used until it breaks, falls apart or dies. Inevitably we all lost a bit of weight too by the traditional method in this part of the world, Bali Belly.

When the time as up, three weeks passed far too quickly it was with great tears that I left my UK bound travelers at the airport, having made friends with the group and of course directed myself back to an undefined life.