Under the Volcanos by David Clement Davies

How often you can overlook the wood for the trees. I only heard two days after I left Lombok that tourists had been evacuated and locals had invaded the Sheraton hotel at Sengiggi beach and set fire to the bar. No Europeans were hurt, but Indonesians were killed. Friends had been unable to get out of Mataram airport for two days because planes were refusing to land. Typical of me to miss a story.

We were staying on the tiny island of Gili Air, a wade and a twenty minute boat ride from Lombok, rocked to the gentle rhythm of little horse carts and swaying palms. But even on Gili Air we were aware of potential trouble in paradise. There were very few tourists, largely because the Australians had shown their disgust with East Timor by staying away.

The local bars competed for custom by nailing posters to the coconut trees advertising their New Year's Eve parties. A desultory Millennium was made even more depressing by the news we got that night. The Indonesian Archipelego was under a state of alert after the violence that erupted on Malaku and later spread to Java. The army had gone in and three hundred people had died.

Lombok is an infant Bali, less developed than its tourist obsessed neighbour. It is changing fast, but driving around the island, past villagers winnowing rice in the fields or planting in the lime green paddies, it was stunningly beautiful. Lombok's people are Sarak but mostly Muslim and not so out of step with their Indonesian rulers. The children out of school for a month during Ramadan were the only sign of any religious conservatism coming from Jakarta. It was later that I heard rumour of Lombok's local militia, Ampen, of tensions with the Indonesian army and of a rule of so-called local law that has resulted in the private executions.

We only got a sense of any threat though when we reached Senaru. The lodge at the foot of Mount Rinjani was lovely; flowering gardens and covered platforms, looking out under a flaring sunset and a distant waterfall tumbling noiselessly from the jungle. It wasn't politics or religion that lay behind the danger in the trees. It was bandits. Three months earlier an American and an Australian had been attacked and robbed in two separate incidents climbing Rinjani. They had been wounded with machetes trying to resist the thieves. Tours had stopped, and warnings not to climb the crater were posted all over the Internet.

Naturally I hadn't read them. The hotel guides, as hungry as bandits for my Rupea, assured me that not only was it safe, but that the clouds would definitely clear long enough to see the crater. My heart, already exploding during the six and a half hour climb, beat considerably faster when four Indonesians suddenly came striding through the giant forest, machete's swaying at their sarongs. At last though I got to the top and in the fizzing cold the view back across Lombok was a ravishing vista of rucked hills tumbling towards the blue. But as for the volcano, I had to make do with a sense of achievement at the climb, because the wall of impenetrable cloud was thicker than a forest.

You need to cross on the spanking new yellow hydrofoil to Bali for a truly volcanic sight. The fourth crater on Batur erupted in 1994 and throughout the day it still belches out smoke, like the Soup Dragon in the Clangers. But it is only at night that you can see its true beauty. Across the valley by the lake, Batur junior roared and a great spout of glowing red lava burst against the blackness and showered brilliant, dancing embers into the heavens. Bali is said to sit on the back of a turtle and be guarded by a sleeping dragon.

Neither in Ubud, rather smart now but still charming, nor in the horrid resort of Kuta beach, complete with Hard-Rock cafe, did we feel any threat at all to tourists. Bali of course is dominated by Hindus and the Balinese were feeling the threat that Timor and Muslim violence elsewhere, in response to Christian attacks, were posing to their hotels. But coming back through Denpasar we saw evidence that the sleeping dragon of Balinese independence is beginning to stir. There was a jam of almost colliding cars where traffic lights had been torn down last year by students rioting in favour of Mrs Wahid, the pro Hindu President. They blocked off the roads with logs and set fire to shops and stalls.

Bali and Lombok are important symbols for Indonesia. Lombok - Muslim, conservative and more pro Jakarta, but hungry to attract development. Bali - wealthier and potentially more militant but frightened both of the fallout from international condemnation of Indonesia and the harm revolt could do to the life blood of tourism. On the boat back a local psychic was welcoming in the New Year in his column in 'The Balinese Travel News'. For Bali it was the year of the Dragon.

"A time of change", he wrote presciently "in the year of the Dragon the Universe will seem to shatter, birds will sing a lot and the tourism business will face serious challenges."

Well, yes. As serious perhaps as the problems grumbling right across the Indonesian archipelago. Bali and Lombok are the least likely islands to face real violence, but those volcanos suddenly looked even more symbolic.