Foreword

Water links Singapore and Jakarta, which once was Batavia. Long ago, during the ice ages, they were part of the Asian continent and shared one vast shore called Sundaland. When the ice melted and water crept over it, the land below became the Sunda Shelf and the lands above became the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago. The big islands of Sumatra, Java and Borneo were born and so, too, the myriad smaller ones.

The warm waves that whisper on the shores of the thousand islands have a thousand tales.

This is one.