Adam Skolnick

Travel & Leisure Southeast Asia Magazine – April 2010 Diego Arrarte hangs up his cell and accelerates his moderately dented late-model Toyota pick-up past hip-high stone fencing, and thatched lontar-palm shacks as we speed down the white earth roads of Nembrala Town – the tourist epicenter of little-known Rote island. Seems his guest, a hilarious, [...]

It’s sunset on the rooftop at the hip new Anantara Seminyak. Beautiful, moneyed Javanese and Bali’s euro-glam collection of expats cozy up on daybeds, sip martinis and nibble on grilled prawns. I feel at home. A DJ blends electro-funk from a sleek Mac, the martinis keep flowing and so does the food. The conversation veers [...]

Evocative sounds filtered through the open-air yoga pavilion as I completed a sun salutation at Bali’s Como Shambhala Estate at Begawan Giri: the sunset song of tropical birds, the rolling thunder of the Ayung River, the faintest chant originating from a Hindu temple…

It looks like Heaven needs a good rain. Its outskirts could not be dryer. There are a few struggling tobacco plots in the parched brown hills. One abuts a compound of lean-to thatched bamboo shacks with satelite TV.

Here are some other things you didn’t know about Heaven. You get here via a narrow dirt track, which feels more like a trench. Some of the drops are so deep, I actually grunt as the car [yes you can drive to Heaven] lurches forward. Skateboarders will be pleased to hear that Heaven is equipped with an expertly molded, concrete half-pipe. Oh, and I should also mention that Heaven is actually right here on planet earth. In Lombok, Indonesia.

I’m in the middle of Flores, an undeveloped island in Southeastern Indonesia, and I’m surrounded by 50 angry villagers, half of whom are drunk on rice liquor and carrying machetes. This was not in the brochure.

I should have known the road trip was doomed when my guide pulled up lame within the first hour. It was something he ate combined with the relentless twisting and turning Flores Trans-Island Superhighway – a one-lane path of mostly crumbling asphalt that stretches from Labuanbajo to Maumere and traverses volcanoes, skirts the coast and arcs over raging rivers. It can fit two vehicles side by side, but barely. Jacabus, my guide, seemed fine until Ricos, the driver, pulled over suddenly and Jacabus started hurling uncontrollably.

On a somewhat stylish visit to Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, Adam Skolnick comes face to face with dragons and lives to tell the tale. Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia Magazine – January 2010. On a sweltering morning Condo Subagyo, 46, and I hack through thick brush to reach a red clay trail. We follow it as it [...]