On the road in Sumatra.

I always hated to do the cold shower. Often I have given up swimming in the sea for the water temperature. Now I can’t remember when was my last hot shower. A month ago? I know I'll enjoy the next one every last drop.

These days I'm having fun shopping, and I learned to negotiate the price. With rice and fruit diet and Thierry's exercises I’m doing a physicist of the Madonna. My skin is acquiring a golden tan. My goatee is definitely white. It will be the wisdom that has come?

How I wished, I plunged deep into Indonesian life, food, culture, habits. Sometimes I found that poverty, although decent, put me in difficulty. One thing is to see, something else is to stay, eat, sleep, use the services. I felt my mind wavering, screaming to escape, but I stayed. And when it was time I went.

All this is very good.

I found a lot of beauty to hurt me in the smiles of these people, the faces of children, desire to return what was received, and failure to do so. There's also the trap that here, in Sumatra, where tourism is not so widespread and the English not so practiced, a Westerner is a star, especially if he has a nose importantly, blue glasses and dresses like a light bulb. I had to portray myself in dozens of pictures with hundreds of different people, and after a while you end up feeling like a star, superior. An old woman, Luna, he wanted to be my guide up above the volcano. I was a bit worried that I will burst under the eyes but has fared very well, for his age ...

After much effort I found a scooter to rent. I paid a lot and it’s in poor condition but I finally moved slow and free toward the lake Toba, I think one of the largest volcanic lakes in the world. Alone because traveling alone you are never really alone.

In a few hours I will be in Kuala Lumpur, almost completely without plans for the future. Or with a thousand different plans, which is the same thing. Living the present is important, I heard it clearly in these days, less concern to follow my plans and more contact with what I'm experiencing. What shall we eat, what to drink, where we will sleep? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything else you will be given. I still don’t know what exactly this phrase means but resonates within me.

I follow the smell of the present, the dust of the road, the sun in my eyes.