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.