The city spreads out below us, as we're travelling on a high train track.

Then the line dips down, and we're running just a fingertip away from shanties where people's difficult lives play out right along the train-tracks.

Piles of rubbish burn like funeral pyres, drying panties flap haphazardly in the breeze, and everywhere is rusted tin and torn blue tarpaulin. But really, the shanties and the rubbish are small fry.

Compared even to a city like Bangkok, the level of trackside poverty is low. These disturbing things are few and far between, and most structures are clean and servicable-looking.

This is an older entry, one I wrote whilst in Indonesia. The images of life beside the train-tracks came back to me so vividly when I re-read it that I decided to post it here despite its lack of currency. But in posting it, I felt nervous - after all, I know nothing of Indonesia, really ... these observations are the sort you make when a place is new and strange and impenetrable.

It's a nice moment when you start to know somewhere enough to realise that some things you initially thought about a place were wrong-headed, but others were strangely, fortuitously right ...