16.10.10:
The next boat that would sensibly get me to the island of Timor is leaving the southern port town of Aimere on Friday morning. It’ll take me all of Thursday to get there, but hey-ho LET’S GO. I also found out that the Wednesday ferry from Larantuka may well be a myth. I had found this all out by about 8am after a bunch of phone calls and frantic arm-waving.
My work here done, I went to the Lounge Bar for breakfast and ended up staying there all day, abusing the Wi-Fi, updating my website, researching the South Pacific and working on this damn promo video for series 2 of ‘Graham’s World’. With over 100 hours of video to sift through, we could be here for some time… I kind of wish that the first season was good enough to sell the second one, I think that the problem is that this year things have gone spectacularly wrong, but not in a particularly sensational way – ie. me getting chucked in a jail cell in Africa. You’ll notice (if you’ve seen the show), my utterly successful jaunt around Europe (45 countries in three weeks) was reduced to a one-minute montage.
You see, since Michael Palin shat his pants on the dhow to India, it’s all been about the hardship hasn’t it? You sick little puppies.
Anyway, if you live in the UK you could really help my cause by writing to the Head of Program Acquisition at the BBC (try victoria.jaye@bbc.co.uk ) and asking her when “Graham’s World aka Lonely Planet’s The Odyssey” will be shown on British TV – the imdb link is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1669770/. Say you saw an episode on holiday in the Middle East, India, SE Asia or South America on Nat Geo Adventure. And don’t the BBC own Lonely Planet anyway? Yeah, say that too.
Okay, stop nodding and GO DO IT.
Go on.
C’mon, I’m not going to write anything more until you do it.
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I’m serious.
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Okay, thanks!
Now yesterday (all my troubles seemed so far away) on the way to Flores from the island of Sumbawa I passed two islands: Rinca and Komodo. And you know what’s on Komodo don’t you? DRAGONS! Komodo Dragons, to be precise – the world’s largest monitor lizard (and the world’s largest venomous creature). I booked myself on a trip to go and see ’em tomorrow.
