As any Caucasian who has spent time in Indonesia will tell you, it's a flattering place to be. Your ego can go from modest to gargantuan in the space of a couple of months if you are not careful. Good days, bad days, fat days, bad hair days, sweaty days, exhausted and ill days - you name it - nothing can stem the flow of compliments about your physical appearance. Whiteness (in women at least) is valued above all else in the world of beauty (it's near impossible to buy a face cream or body lotion that doesn't claim some whitening property). Add to the whiteness hidung mancung or long nose, and I am a supermodel. After a while the compliments wash over you (pretty soon after I realised the young guys outside my door would just as soon fall in love with the next white woman that came along), but sometimes it still amuses me on occasion, and I can't deny that being female has marked benefits when in need. Take, for example, me this past Sunday morning at 2.50am. I wake up having slept through the alarm - my flight to Papua is a 3.45. Another person may have given up immediately, but being someone who is ALWAYS late (even late to arrive in the world if what my mother says is true) I won't give it up as a lost cause until the plane has actually taken off, despite the fact the drive to the airport takes 40 mins when there's no traffic (and of course there is none at this time in the morning). I am in the taxi by 3.05 and the driver says he can make it in 30mins. I told him he would have to do better than that and did he ever - 13mins flat. He then gets this porter from somewhere (normally at that time in the morning they are not to be found) who deals with all my bags while I hare away to the desk. The man at the check-in smiles sweetly and reopens the flight, while his female colleague scowls over in his direction and rolls her eyes... the security guards don't look at the screen as my bags - nail scissors and pen knife inc - sail through the scanner - they only ask where I am from, and when I tell them Scotland, they say for Indonesians, Scottish women are sooooo beautiful. I had to laugh - it was 3.35, face unwashed, hair a nest and teeth unbrushed.

Arriving in Biak (Papua) after a 5 hour flight I managed to get on the small flight to Nabire - luckily for me they had put on an extra flight because there was a lot of cargo that day. So there is me, the pilot, the copilot, one Merpati Airlines Ground Staff and many cardboard boxes, several hundred metres up. By this time I look vile (i am even too embarassed to post the photo) and probably smell. But no, the pilot motions me to sit next to him and starts to wax lyrical about the beauty of yours truly, while trying to wheedle my mobile phone number out of me (apparently in return I would never have a problem getting a seat on a Merpati flight ever again - considering Merpati is an airline to be avoided whereever possible due to its abysmal reputation, i figured I could do without the VIP status). But it's a good thing this attention - when he lit up a cigarette and I protested he put it out immediately - "Anything for you," he said. Thank you, Mr Pilot.

The flight over to Nabire was beautiful. Tens of tiny tropical islands scattered in a blue sea. The photo doesn't do it justice.

Sign in Nabire airport forbidding the chewing of betelnut (it makes a terrible mess as chewers spit the red juice everywhere while they are chewing).

HIV and AIDS awareness in Papua is years ahead of Flores. In fact I have a feeling that places like Flores will end up with a worse epidemic the way things are going, despite the fact Papua is touted as being an HIV hotspot. At least people here have a growing awareness about HIV and AIDS and how to prevent it. Attitudes to sex and sexuality are much more open - there is a willingness to admit that young people, for example, have sex

and that people are not always faithful in marriage - something that the Florinese still struggle to acknowledge openly. Papua has many of the things that fueled the early stages of the HIV epidemic in Southern Africa - large mining sites with thousands of men away from home for months a time, with an accompanying thriving sex industry; geographically disparate communities connected by busy long-distance transport routes (but here these routes are plyed by boats, not trucks); and conspiracy theories about condoms and AIDS being brought

to Papua by the government to kill off Papuans,similar to popular beliefs in South Africa about AIDS being a new tool by a racist government to control the black population, and condoms its method of administration. I will be here for 3 weeks to help with the HIV survey we are carrying out to inform our new program here. I look forward to seeing the results of the survey.

The local government confirmed what everyone had been thinking all along about the local monument in the middle of the main roundabout and put its phallic shape to good use - it has worn a giant yellow condom since World AIDS Day 2005. I tried not to notice the NEEDLE sticking through the end, rendering the giant condom useless...

Last night I had a visitor in my hotel room and decided to try out the macro setting on my camera. It's not bad - this wee guy was only the size of a 10p coin.