This is the family tree of the 9th Sultan of Yogjakarta (in Java). He had 64 children with 13 wives. Boys are indicated with fruit, girls as leaves. Times have changed and men now (including modern-day sultans) can only have three wives (if they can afford them).


This is the traditional dress of women in Java. Rebecca is wearing a batik sarong.


Ari and Max (in the right corner) got a chance to play soccer with some of the local children in the ruins of an old palace.


The Silver family standing on one of the "Seven Wonders of the World" -- the Temple at Borobudur. This is a Buddhist temple built in 850 AD. Pictures do not do it justice.


Here you get a better sense of the magnitude of the temple. There are hundreds of Buddha statues on 10 different levels.


This is a thousand year old Hindu temple nearby called Pramaban. A sense of the size can be obtained by looking at us on the entry steps.


Here, we're planting "baby rice" in the rice paddies outside of Yogyakarta in Java, Indonesia. Max could not believe that I wanted him to step into the muddy muck up to his knees.


The men are harvesting the rice by twacking the long grass-like rice plants against the wood, and the rice grains fly everywhere. We each took turns doing the same. It was fun!


The kids made bricks in a "brick factory" which was actually the backyard of one of the local villagers in another small village in Java.


You would not believe how much Max has changed. He joined the local women in Bukitinggi, Sumatra, Indonesia for one of their folk dances, and they kept their arms around him for the final curtain call when they took their bows.


Bull fights in Sumatra are quite unlike anything that occurs elsewhere. The bulls are pitted against each other in a field while the villagers gather around. You can see one bull in this picture at right-center. The second bull is barely visible to the left in the crowd. The losing bull takes off as people flee in all directions. These bulls are not cattle, they're water buffalo.


This is a picture of people from the Minangkabau tribe in Sumatra who have fascinated anthropologists because property and names are passed down maternally. While the guidebooks all claim that women rule the families, Lee's investigations suggested otherwise.


Lee took this picture of a water buffalo and seconds later, it put down its head and started to charge both Lee and Becca. Lee ran so fast, his hat flew off his head. Luckily, both Lee and Becca made it into the dense jungle where the charging buffalo could not follow!


This is the view from the balcony of our hotel in Bukitinggi, Sumatra. This incredible rainbow formed the last afternoon of our stay in Indonesia. The houses in this part of Sumatra have roofs shaped like the horns of water buffalo which play prominently in their culture.


On June 28, 2000, we left Indonesia and flew to Singapore. Here is our entire route through the country.