As a friend in Jepara had told me how good the postal service was in Indonesia, a legacy from the Dutch i think, i had sent my new credit cards onto their address so i had to return there to pick them up. I had always intended to spend my last weekend there i just had to bring it forward by a week as i needed to meet the boat sooner rather than later. I met up with the crowd again for a weekend of banter, Bintang and boat talk. One couple whom i had met whilst sailing, Paul and Maureen from South Africa, had decided to stay in Jepara for a while as they were going to get their boat refurbished as labour was cheap and as the guys were now building boats and water slides in fibreglass, there were people there with the right amount of knowledge. They had been living aboard their boat Calypso for 10 years during their circumnavigation, only the Indian crossing to go before heading back to South Africa. It must have felt strange for them being back in a house after all this time .

I said goodbye to the expats of Jepara again and vowed to return in the future during another visit of Indonesia. I got a lift to the airport in Semerang and flew to the island of Batam south of Singapore.

I returned to Jepara and had enough money to get a taxi to the ATM i had used before, PHEW – i was back in the money !!

I knew that the boat i had been sailing on before was coming back to Jepara as they had gone north over the top of Borneo and were heading back down through Sulawasi. They were going to arrive that week along with the South African couple on sailing vessel Calypso, to my surprise they were already there and we met on the friday night at the Jepara Marina Sailing club, not far off a year from the dinner we had all together when we left last time. It was good to be amongst my sailing friends again, they were all still enjoying their trip, Paul and Maureen had celebrated 10 years of living and travelling on their boat in the last few weeks, only another 1 or 2 years to go before returning to South Africa and completing their circumnavigation !! Lots of socialising, barbeques and beers were had that weekend, some at Petes house and some at Robs. The obligatory mucking about with boats on the sunday happened and all was right with the world.

One of my main reasons for returning to Indonesia was to do some more diving down at Labuan Bajo, Flores at Komodo National Park. It really is a stunning area and as it is a protected area sea life exists in abundance. I had to move on as i had already spent two weeks at my first stop in Indonesia so had to get some flights booked to Flores via Bali.