14 December 1991, Saturday.

I got up this morning at 6:30am, a record time here, especially as I went to sleep at 1:30am. I had a cold mandi, very refreshing. Then this annoying guy came round to practice his English on me. He left, and me and Aji walked to Pabrik Es to meet the guy who was going to take us to Ciamis, on the way getting some cake roll thingy's for breakfast.
We arrived and then set off straight away, first catching a couple of different buses, then quite a long walk eventually arriving at his rubber plantation.
We walked around the huge plantation, that included thousands of coconut tree's, as well as peanut plants, rambutan tree's and of course thousands of rubber tree's. I sat down and drew a picture in my sketchbook, and used the coloured pencils I had bought in Bandung. We continued the tour which ended at the processing building.
Inside was just a big open room with a concrete floor that ran down to a gutter in one corner, there was about ten Indonesian guy's with mask's over there faces, rolling and sprinkling amonia over the raw rubber collected with little bucket's on every tree. It really stunk in there, and we didn't stay for long. It was brilliant to watch how they worked this natural resource. The amonia gives it strength and set the rubber properly apparently, then the rubber is pressed, then put in smoking shed's, which give's rubber it's colour, then it is ready, we looked at every stage of development, finishing at the grade 'A' product.
The staff there had laid out a lunch for us of big sweet banana's, some cakes, coconuts and some coffee. I sat in the blazing sun with my shirt off, eating and drinking, I even got a bit of a tan.
We then headed back, taking another long walk, then two buses back to Tasikmalaya, the guy paid for everything, and seemed more than happy to do so, I was very grateful, but really tired, and feel asleep on the bus back to Tasikmalaya. We arrived back at Tasikmalaya, I woke up to find it had turned really cloudy, I thanked the guy for the great day, and me and Aji started walking back to Aji's. Only a short way up the road, and it started to spit with rain, we carried on, and all of a sudden the heaven's opened, and it was like having a hose pipe squirted directly at us, we ran into the first porch we came too, the people in the house invited us in while it rained, they were very nice, we talked and had tea.
We left once the rain had stopped, and returned to Aji's very tired and hungry. Once we were back, I went downstairs to have a mandi, and while I did, the girl who fancies me from the rented bit, came and stood and watched and talked to me again, she is very sweet though.
Got dressed and had some food, then Asep came round and we all took a walk into town, and went to the Asia superstore, and I bought some Christmas cards to send home.
We stayed at Asia until about 9pm, then meandered home. Talked until Aji feel asleep and Asep went home.
I sat up alone, it is 11pm, and I'm going to write the Christmas cards tonight so that I can send them tomorrow, I'm having some of the whisky that I bought last week.
I've had a really good day today, it's been very long, but brilliant. Well until beasok(tomorrow).