Emailing me in Indonesia

We'll see how things go in Indonesia this time around, but often my university email (tboellst@uci.edu) is hard to access. So I have two other email accounts you can use to try and reach me. The #1 choice is tboellst@gmail.com, and you can also try tboellst@yahoo.com. Once I'm settled in early February I'll post an update. In any case, if you email me and don't receive a reply, try emailing one or both of the other accounts.

Got my visa!

I finally got my visa today up at the Indonesian Consulate in LA, so that's a big relief. Eddot Soepraba helped me through the process and was a big help, and I got to meet the new Consul today, Agusti Anwar, and we had a nice chat. He just got here a month ago and will be here for 3 1/2 years or so, which is the standard length of time for these diplomatic postings. I'm basically finished with all the busy work needed before my trip!

Indonesia news

To the right you'll see that I've added four websites with good news about Indonesia, if you want to keep up with the latest. The bottom two are local Makassar news media, but unfortunately they're only in Indonesian--it might be interesting for you to check them out anyway!

Tom's Indonesia blog

I've created this blog to document my 2007 trip to Indonesia (January 30 to April 13). The idea is that friends and family can see what I'm doing via this blog rather than me sending out separate emails to everyone. I'll make a few postings in the weeks before my trip, and then hopefully I will be able to access it easily in Indonesia (Internet service will probably be okay for this, but you never know for sure until you're there!).


Indonesia, the 4th most populous nation, sits astride the equator. For this trip I'll be making a brief (3-day) stop in Jakarta when I first arrive, and then will be in the city of Makassar (formerly known as Ujung Pandang), on the island of Sulawesi (also known as Celebes), a big island right east of Borneo (right under the second "n" in "Indonesia" in the map above). Makassar is at the tip of the southwest "leg" of this oddly-shaped island, a city of over a million people with a fascinating history.