FIRST MAN ON THE MOON
“… COMING TO A SLIDING STOP RIGHT IN FRONT OF A PARKED CAR.”
Forty-eight is a peculiar age to die. Too old to say you haven’t had a good crack at life but there’s so much more to do … Strange what comes to mind as death approaches in the form of a truck heading straight at me as I attempt to overtake another truck. They are two of thousands of trucks I need to dodge on this busy, potholed web of country roads that collectively pass for a national highway in North Sumatra, the largest of Indonesia’s 17,508 islands. I’m heading to the Aceh Special District, a semi-autonomous province on the far western tip of Indonesia with a long history of insurgency, deadly tsunamis and, for the past 15 years, Sharia law under which adulterers and gay men are publicly flogged.
I hear what you’re saying: not the ideal place for a family vacation. But for me, Aceh has always held a special allure of a remote, exotic land where impenetrable mountains teem with wildlife, a place at the end of the road few foreigners ever see.
Doing it on public buses is possible
