Grumpy and Grumpier:
Marie needs a vacation from her holiday (part 1)
LABUANBAJO, FLORES, INDONESIA
FEBRUARY 25
I left my fellow dragon spotters, and was relieved to be away from the cheapness of the Czech couple. I was coming down with a serious cold, and packed Day-Quil and instant soup into my day pack before boarding the ferry for the seven hour trip back to Sumbawa. I didn't want to practice English, so I tried to put on my "New York face," designed for grouchiness and inaccessibility.
It almost worked. A well-meaning Sumbawan stalked me, conspicuously hovering in the spot next to me for an extended smoke, or sometimes just gazing into the water. I'd catch a glimpse out of my peripheral vision-- the Sumbawan was eagerly trying to catch my eye. Rude cow that I was, I blatantly ignored this, and deliberately avoided eye contact.
Unfortunately, my "New York face" couldn't stop the loud Hong Kong action video that started up as soon as the ferry left the port. Still, it occupied the locals and gave me fewer prospective new pals to fend off.
My plan was to find a comfortable hotel with good food to ride out my cold in. Preferably in a tourist town with good food, a reliable water supply, and internet facilities. I was headed to Sengiggi, Lombok, because it was cheaper than Bali but still featured a number of high-class resorts.
As soon as the action film ended, Indonesia pop music videos came screeching across the ferry deck.
"Good god," I thought. "How can they stand this crap?" The fast-paced organ music and high-pitched female voice, against what seemed to be "pop drumbeat #1" on a Casio VL-Tone, was not the interesting cultural experience it might be if I were in a decent mood. I looked at my travel alarm clock-- my watch having given up the ghost in Dili-- only four more hours of screeching to go. I also chose this moment to decide that 1)all Indonesian men were chronic chain-smokers and it was irritating as hell and 2)Indonesians obviously have never been told that one should not throw plastic rubbish into the sea.
For four hours, while watching garbage fly into the ocean, I gasped for air among clouds of secondhand smoke. Finally, I remember that this experience was what I was out in the world for and decided to get over my grumpiness.
•
Hours later, I realized that it had taken me 52 days to sink into a really foul mood. Not bad, I thought. My usual tolerance is about 20 days.
I had bought a through-bus ticket for the 18-hour trip from Bima to Mataram, and had a short break in Bima before the bus left. I wandered out of the bus station and into the "Warung Maren," where I ordered the usual rice and spicy veggies. The six teenaged girls who ran the warung watched me eat. They clucked and giggled, pointing and apparently discussing me at great length. They liked my earrings-- three in one ear, one in the other. They seemed to be pleased with my face too-- motioning to my nose and forehead, and then to their own faces. Either they were saying that I looked like them, that I didn't look like them, or that I had a lot of sunburn. I smiled and nodded pleasantly, agreeing with whatever they were trying to tell me.
A German fellow was ranting about how the warung should have a sign advertising cold beer, and the girls were very confused. Why was this man talking so loudly? Was he crazy? I left rather than try to explain, and the girls blew kisses at me as I walked away.
At the bus station, I got a new all-female fan club. Women crowded around to stare and smile, and touch my hair. I was relieved when the bus driver let me on the bus, where the women could blow kisses to me throught the window but couldn't paw me.
What was going on? There were six other tourists on the bus, two of them female. Was it my broad facial bone-structure, similar to an Indonesians, but adorned with blonde hair? I had no idea. I kept my smile frozen to my face until we pulled out of the parking lot.
Sleeping on a bus is never comfortable, but I managed it, more or less, until a wake-up call of screeching pop videos came on at 6:30 in the morning.
LOMBOK
FEBRUARY 26
From Mataram, I caught a local bemo to Ampenan. I followed the example of the locals and paid 1,000 rupiah, and was rewarded by the driver insisting on twice that fare. I ignored him, and in return, he left me standing on a corner six blocks from the Sengiggi bemos.
I hoofed it up the street and was stuffed into another bemo with the usual-- 14 Indonesians, my pack, bowls of fish, and various bits of luggage. The new bemo driver was impeccable honest. He dropped me in the center of Sengiggi and was scrupulous about giving me the proper change.
The hotel I chose, the Graha Beach, had a swimming pool, A/C, CNN, hot water, and a clever outside bathroom that was built into a tall dirt wall. My reason for choosing the Graha was as valid as any-- they had showed me cabin 212, my area code in New York. I showered and raced to the laundromat-- after hot days in serious Muslim country, my single shoulder-covering t-shirt was ripe.
Sengiggi had seen better days. Or maybe it hadn't. It was quiet, filled with posh, empty resorts. It's a high-class ghost town, where underemployed touts desperately bid for the few tourist dollars. I had been hoping for something quiet, but not THAT quiet.
I headed to the internet cafe to do some scanning. This turned out to be difficult, as there were three scanners in town and two were broken. The third place corrupted my floppy disks, but the attendant did explain to me that many Indonesians (himself included) thought that Australia wanted East Timor for its oil.
He could have been right. I didn't know. But I did know that government-sanctioned violence was no way to earn the trust and respect of the Timorese. No wonder East Timor had voted for independence.
My e-mail was filled with my Mom's new hobby-- browsing the US State Departments Consular Warning site and forwarding the relevant bits. "Avoid Kalimantan! Avoid non-essential travel to huge chunks of Indonesia!" Thanks, Mom.
The scanning was hopeless, although the conversation was interesting. I returned to the Graha Beach, to sit by the sea and eat my dinner. Touts accosted me constantly, trying to sell me trinkets when all I wanted was a salad.
FEBRUARY 27
My new scanning plan was to go to Mataram, the capitol city of Lombok. Surely I could find a scanner there.
Three of the four internet shops in town motioned helplessly-- sorry, Missus, no scanner. The fourth had a software problem. Could I come back tomorrow?
Depressed, I walked to the Mataram Mall for a doughnut and bottled Frappucino. I passed over the cheese doughnut section-- Mark in Dili had told me about cheese doughnuts, and they looked as disgusting as I'd imagined them to be. The half cheese/half chocolate ones looked even worse. Mark had claimed these were tasty-- fortunately, my lactose-intolerance excused me from discovering for myself.
Schoolgirls scampered by on their afternoon break. They dressed in blue and white uniforms, and all carried variations of bike messenger bags. Their shoes were all current, fashionable sneakers, and a few of them had Pikachu the Pokemon on their books or bags.
"Hellomissus," said the girls as they walked past me. I was pleased. It was better than the "hellomister" I had gotten on Sumbawa.
Elsewhere in Indonesia, on Borneo, over 400 immigrants had been massacred by locals. Timorese had massacred Timorese in 1999, and Muslims and Christians had been fighting just last year on Lombok. But the young people I'd met and seen gave me some faith in Indonesia's future-- they were well-educated, savvy, and alert. Perhaps Indonesia's future was brighter than its past.
Or perhaps not. All evidence seemed to support a mass epidemic of emphysema and lung cancer in the near Indonesian future.
All men over 13 seemed to chain smoke, constantly. They'd light up on buses, in restaurants, in supermarkets, and internet cafes. One of the Irish guys I'd met on Flores had explained to me that only imported cigarettes carried warnings. An Indonesian had showed him a packet of local cigarettes-- it was warning-free. Thus, "Marlboro Lights" caused sickness. Locally-produced "Kennedy" cigarettes, bearing a near-presidential insignia but no warning, did not.
I was too tired to bother with bemos back to Sengiggi, and took a taxi straight to the Sheraton. Four uniformed attendants apologized to me for their business center being scanner-less. I left, kicking dirt and looking sad. A few touts tried to sell me watches. I simply said no, having no energy for banter.
A policeman, noting my demanor, was concerned.
"Are they bothering you?" he asked, motioning to the touts.
"No," I said. "I'm just looking for a scanner."
"There's one right over here," he said, motioned to a closed computer center. He rapped on the window, and forced the proprietor to open for me. The center was closed for maintenance and most of the PC's were in pieces.
"I will try to help," said the owner. I sheepishly scanned a few photos and then fled, embarrassed that a policeman had forced a store open just for me.
I went back to the hotel. Lombok was too slow. I would move back to Bali in the morning.
KUTA, BALI
FEBRUARY 28
A young Indonesian boy struck up a conversation with me on the ferry from Lombok to Bali.
"I have an American friend," he said. "He is from New York, like you. But," he added proudly, "he has black skin."
"I have New York friends with black skin too," I told the kid. He looked astonished. What bad Hollywood movies had he been watching, I wondered.
The ride back went smoothly, but there was something strange afoot in Bali.
Everyone was dressed in traditional costume, and all of the cars, motorbikes and buses carried tiny offerings on their windshields and antennae. It looked like a holiday.
Balinese holiday offering
Bali seems to have at least one holiday a week. The upside is that the Balinese look glamorous in traditional costume. The downside is that everything shuts down and nothing gets done. This worried me because I wanted to buy shorts and talk to travel agents about buses to Java.
It was a holiday and I had to admit that I should have stayed on Lombok. At least there, the facilities were limited. In Kuta, it was irritating because the facilities were there, they just weren't open. To make matters worse, it was the first day of a two day festival.
I checked into a $2.50/night dive with en suite mandi. A mandi is a big well of cold water that comes with a scooper. You scoop water over your head to shower, and you scoop water onto the floor when it's dirty. You scoop water into the toilet in lieu of flushing.
$2.50 a night in Kuta
The chief attraction of the guesthouse was not the refreshing mandi-- it was the location, right across an alley from Poppies I, a fantastic top-end hotel featuring pool, breakfast, and iMacs.
My guesthouse was charming in its own decrepit way. There was a leafy garden in the courtyard, and long-term residents chatted with the help at length. I had two new friends in giant en suite waterbugs. Still, I planned to move on in the morning, to Ubud, home of infuriating touts and cheeky monkeys.
MARCH 1
Noon came and went, and I was still involved in complex negotiations about shipping myself from Jakarta to Singapore. I made good use of Poppies' iMacs, and it was late afternoon when I went to pay for my Photoshop time. The receptionist, my pal from too many hours of attending me in the computer room, pointed out that Poppies II, the older cottages, were on sale for $17.50 a night.
$17.50! That was fifteen dollars more than the Waterbug Inn. Still, it was getting late. I'd check out Poppies II and move on to Ubud in the morning.
It was amazing what difference the fifteen dollars made. I had my own bungalow, complete with a/c, ceiling fan, bamboo roof, ornate Balinese woodend doors, western bathroom with hot water, sitting area and a large verandah that looked out onto a tranquil pond filled with fish.
$17.50 a night in Kuta
I could spend days here, I thought. And then, why not? I had been intent on reaching Ubud for R&R, but I had a great place, good food, and a lovely pool at Poppies. I'd spent several days in Ubud last year (see "Southeast Asia on a Hamstring")and while it was charming, my Kuta bungalow was doubly so.
There was nothing to see in Kuta. Just the beach, humidity, shopping centers, touts, the Hard Rock Cafe, the surfing Ronald at McDonald's, Prada, and hundreds of well-dressed young Japanese tourists. But all of Bali was afflicted with rampant commercialism. At least in Kuta I had a tiny slice of paradise to relax in. And I was anonymous-- just another tourist on Jalan Legian. No one was going to corner me to practice English.
Surfing Ronald, Kuta
NEXT: Grumpy and Grumpier, part 2
