ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Dalton was born in Waltham, Massachusetts. After a stint as a paramedic in the street battles of Santo Domingo and four years as a student of philosophy at the Univer-sity of Copenhagen on the GI Bill, Dalton embarked on a seven-year journey through 81 countries, work-ing as a letter sorter in Scandinavia, an apple-picker in Israel, a rum-run-ner in India, an English teacher in war-torn Cambodia, and a garden-er in Australia. Dalton founded Moon Publications in a youth hostel in Queensland, Australia, in 1973, and has worked writing and pub-lishing travel guides ever since. Though his travels have taken him around the world, he has a special interest in Southeast Asia. During the past 26 years, Dalton has explored over 100 of Indonesia's 17,000 is-lands, visiting the country at least 30 times and amassing a total of more than six years in the islands.