So new dramas on Indonesian TV are always amusing to watch because they all have ridiculous over the top story lines which usually involve evil twins and usually someone trying to kill someone else and locking them up in the basement and torturing them. Some are more entertaining than others – I really liked Kasih & Amara and Issabella. Indosiar seem to be at an alltime low at the moment beause the other really really bad show on at the moment is ‘UFO’. I can’t quite express in words just how ‘special’ this programme is, so just look below for the pinacle of prime time Indonesian tv:

Anyway, last night we quite by chance managed to catch the first episode of the latest indosiar drama – Terdampar (roughly translates as ‘beached’). Not only is this a blatant rip off of Lost, but the special effects are really quite special indeed. Most indonesian tv seems to be made on a very low budget but they’re insistent on using CGI effects that would look ok on a kids tv programme from the 80s but doesn’t really hold up against todays standards. popular CGI effects are people turning into dragons (which look like they’re straight off Knightmare) and people with magical powers throwing balls of light at each other.

So in Terdampar we have all the usual characters (right down to the pregnant woman, great attention to detail Indosiar!) who are involved in a plane crash and end up on a mysterious island when they hear monstorous noises and are chased through the jungle by something invisible that knocks down the trees around them and grabs the people at the back, dragging them off at great speed. Sound familiar? Anyway the original Lost formula must be a bit too subtle for the producers at Indosiar because they decided to make the invisible smoke monster into a rather more visible smoke man who jumps around the tops of trees. And an underground bunker? why bother with that when you can have a nice big mansion in the middle of the jungle complete with a skeleton in the bathtub surrounded by bright red fresh blood. This mysterious house is covered in thick halloween-style fake cobwebs but they manage to find a newspaper that looks brand new with the date of (shock horror!) 1970.  I know you’re all devastated you’re missing out on the chance to watch this amazing example of TV at its best but I’ll try to keep you updated with the storylines.

So enough of TV. Made and I decided to go for a little walk down to one of the rivers just outside Ubud yesterday. All the rivers in Bali are cut into deep gorges and it was quite a trek down on a fairly overgrown path. I stepped over a rather suspiciously large track in the dirt and asked Made what he thought it was. He said it was probably from a big snake which made me freak out the rest of the way down even after he said he was joking (There are big snakes in Bali, notably pythons but it’s fairly rare to see them in the daytime. Once we got to the bottom we sat by the river and watched a couple of rafting trips go by. I was sitting on a rock just behind Made and I must have seen something move out of the corner of my eye because I looked down and there was a snake coming out of the river bank and coming up behind him on the rock with it’s head only a few inches away from him. I shouted “There’s a snake behind you, I’m not joking!” and he lept up so quickly that he dislocated his shoulder for a second. The snake freaked out and retreated into the river. Internet investigations lead me to believe it was a cobra as all the other native snakes look nothing like the one I saw. This is only the third snake I’ve seen in Bali and the first one to have come anywhere near us. They’re fairly common in the rice fields at night but I don’t make a habit of wandering round rice fields at night and we’re in the middle of the village so it’s unlikely that one would make it’s way into the house. This may change after we build a house on the land in the middle of a rice field that we’re in the process of buying…