Grumpy and Grumpier:
Marie needs a vacation from her holiday (part 2)
MARCH 2-3
In the morning, I opened my wooden double-doors onto the pond. A hot thermos of Balinese coffee awaited me, along with a bunch of bananas. Yes, I'd made the right decision in staying in Kuta. I was going to do nothing.
MARCH 4
True to my word, I did nothing of note in Kuta. My bus to Yogyakarta left at 3 on Sunday, and it was a typical Bali luxury bus-- videos, air-conditioning, comfortable seats, onboard toilet. And lots of tourists. I settled in for another night spend sleeping next to a stranger.
YOGYAKARTA, JAVA
MARCH 5
My bus got in late to Yogyakarta and after checking in to the Metro Guest House and having a shower, I headed to the train station to try to buy a ticket to Jakarta.
A tremendous line awaited me, and the reward of waiting in it was that I was told (I think) to come back in the morning. This concerned me, as I know the luxury trains sell out, and while Ekonomi was fascinating the one time I took it last year, I wasn't sure I was up for the full-on assault that came with it-- and I surely wouldn't get to Jakarta in time to purchase my Pelni ticket if I took the slow train.
I went back to the hotel. It was raining, late, and I wanted to buy shadow puppets.
Shadow puppets are made of either wood or leather, and are intricately carved and painted. I'd been imagining hanging them from my ceiling, with spotlights behind them to throw shadows on the wall.
Of course, that was when I still had an apartment. But I still wanted the shadow puppets, in case I ever had a home again.
"Where can I buy wayang?" I asked the front desk clerk.
He wasn't sure, but there were three guys in reception and they all discussed it at length. Everyone agreed that it was too late to go to the store to buy one, but maybe I could go to a manufacturer's house and barge in on his dinner.
One of the guys, who was probably a tout, put me on the back of his motorbike. The rain had stopped for a few minutes. He gave me a spare helmet and drove me around in the dark, from one wayang factory to another.
The first place was busy putting on a puppet show and didn't want to talk to me. The second place was behind a factory I'd been to last year, but since the factory was closed, we marched straight to the front door of the owner. The tout banged on the door, and forced the owner to open up and let me in.
I felt weird about all of this, but the wayang maker seemed happy for the business. I bought three puppets, and while we were negotiating he took great care to remind me that it would take him one month to make what I make in a day in the U.S.
It started to rain again, but the tout brought out a big poncho and put my puppets underneath. I, of course, got hopelessly wet.
JAKARTA
MARCH 6
The 8:40 a.m. "executif" train to Jakarta was sold out. The 10:00 a.m. was sold out. No seats were available until 8 p.m.
"Is there any chance of a cancellation?" I asked the reservation agent, desperately. "I came last night and they said to return this morning."
"No chance," he said sorrowly but firmly.
"Not possible?" Surely if I just kept rephrasing the question, some solution would arise.
"No."
Sometimes my tried-and-true methods are hopelessly useless. No matter how I asked, there were still no seats.
I wanted to cry. I'd tried hard to get a seat, and had arrived two hours early at the station.
I'd just have to take a bus. I caught a motorcycle taxi to the bus terminal. He shoved my pack on the motorbike in front of him, hugging it with both arms encircling it en route to the handlebars. We drove about ten minutes through heavy diesel fumes , my shadow puppets stuffed between us.
"Jakarta bus 4 p.m.," beamed a bus agent. "Arrive Jakarta 4 a.m."
That was useless. How could I find a boat to Singapore at four in the morning?
Now I really wanted to cry. Why the hell hadn't I just worked planes into my schedule? What was I thinking? I could hop on a plane and be in Singapore in two hours. Instead, I went back to the train station. I'd catch the later train and be in Jakarta in the morning. I'd try to book a Pelni ship from Yogyakarta, but I had tried to do this from both Mataram and Kuta and had been told that I could only do it from the Jakarta Pelni office. "Pelni has a bad computer system," I'd been told by countless travel agents.
Another moto took me back to the train station. I stood glumly in front of the reservation agent.
"I want to go to Jakarta tonight," I said.
Something on the digital schedule caught my eye. A change had occurred. There was suddenly one single seat on the 8:40 train. It was 8:30.
"Look, one seat!" I said excitedly.
"Run to lane 6 to buy your ticket," said the agent. "Hurry!"
I ran, pack and all. Ten minutes later, I was reclining in "executif" comfort, attended by purple-uniformed Javanese men.
We were in Jakarta about seven hours later. I overpaid a taxi driver to take me to the backpacker's district of Jalan Jaksa. I was tired of overpaying for everything, and remembered the Europeans kvetching on Flores.
"We're tired of being ripped off," they'd complained.
Ripped off? I had thought they were being silly. How could they get so upset over a few dollars? Now, a week later, I understood perfectly. It wasn't a matter of money, it was a matter of pride. Every taxi driver who agreed to one price and then doubled it "for return trip," and every bus agent who inflated fares was assuming that the rich tourist had no sense. No one, myself included, liked to be taken advantage of. The Indonesians, on the other hand, thought we should pay more because we had more money. Sometimes I'd find myself arguing over fifty cents-- it wasn't about the money-- I was just tired of being pushed around.
My con-artist taxi dropped me off in front of Hotel Karya. I'd stayed there last year and spent a memorable night at a nearby brothel. I'd been with a friend, and we had thought it was a bar. We had been there for about an hour before we realized what it was.
Ticket agents for speedboat tickets.
I spotted a travel agency across from the Hotel Karya, and popped in there to check on the Pelni ship ticket to Pulau Batam. It was a 26-hour ride from Jakarta, to be followed by a 45-minute ferry trip to Singapore.
"Do you sell Pelni tickets?" I asked the travel agent. "I need to go to Batam."
"Yes," he said. "It is sold out until the 15th."
"But I need to go tomorrow! Is there Ekonomi class? 2nd Class? Third Class?"
There was no class available. BUT, if I took a gamble and went to the dock in the morning, I might be able to buy a ticket from a scalper. Ekonomi class was notoriously uncomfortable, but maybe I could bribe one of the crew members to let me rent his cabin for the night.
"It is a very common way for the crew to make extra money," explained the agent.
I have no fear of airplanes and by now was having a hard time justifying my decision to avoid them.
"Is it possible there are cancellations?" I asked.
"It is possible, but we will not know. Pelni has a very old computer system."
"What if I don't get on tomorrow?"
"You take a bus to Sumatra, catch a speedboat to Batam from Pakenbaru."
The bus would take 34 hours. Rather than wait until tomorrow, risk not getting on the ship, and then have to start the 33 hour bus ride, I just bought a bus ticket on the spot.
"When is the next bus to Pakenbaru?" I asked.
"Five p.m. A.L.S. luxury bus, executive class. #8 window seat."
All I would miss was a night in filthy, rat-infested Jarkarta. I bought a ticket, gave a wistful look at the Hotel Karya, and went straight to the bus terminal.
PAKENBARU
MARCH 7
The bus ride was like any other bus ride, and I slept through most of it. I found a lowlife hotel and checked into a dirty little room for a brief overnight stay. The fan was plugged into an extension cord that stretched along the wall to plug into another extension cord. The mirror was broken, the walls were dirty, and there was no sink. I'd learned to spit toothpaste down the drain in the floor last year, and adapted with ease.
Squat toilet in cheap hotel in Pakanbaru
Pakenbaru was a pit. I was the only foreigner for miles, apparently, and when I walked to the KFC for my late-night super-spicy dinner, everyone stared unabashedly. Some men whistled, and lots of people hissed. I couldn't wait to get out of Indonesia.
PAKENBARU TO SINGAPORE
MARCH 8
To get to Singapore, I'd have to catch one of the 8 a.m. buses to the port. It was a four-hour drive, and there were several different bus agents to buy from. I picked the nearest one and bought my ticket from a middle-aged man with a giant purple hole in his two front teeth.
Two buses showed up-- rickety old buses-- but neither was mine. The bus was over an hour late, and the other buses were long gone. I sat down with a couple going home to Malaysia. He was Sumatran and she was Malaysian. She was as much a foreigner as I was. While her husband went to check on the bus, she asked me if I liked Indonesian food.
"Not really," I confided. "How about you?"
"Me neither," she said conspiratorally. "Malaysian food is much better."
I completely agreed. I couldn't wait to get some Malaysian food.
When her husband returned, he explained the Indonesian government under Soeharto.
"We have slogan-- CCN," he said. "It means Corruption, Cronyism, and Nepotism." He laughed. "Back then, I couldn't even say that. Now, we are much freer."
Our bus was broken. There something wrong with the back wheel. A minibus was sent in its place, and our driver was instructed to get us to the port on time. He raced down the tiny roads, paved most of the way due to the presence of money in the form of oil and Caltex.
The last hour was on a muddy dirt road. We overtook and passed the second bus, and then passed the first bus which was stuck in the mud. We made it to the pier in record time, only to have to wait for the speedboat. I went to the dock's toilet, which turned out to be a wooden booth with a hole in the floor, located about ten feet above the water. The Malaysian woman and I had a laugh over it, but couldn't avoiding utilizing it.
The pier was dirty and again I was the only westerner in sight. When the speedboat showed up, it turned out to be filled with cockroaches and men wanting to practice their English. I was literally itching to get out of Indonesia. All the cockroaches had me convinced that things were crawling on me constantly. The mom next to me held her little girl's head over the wastebasket as the girl vomited, seasick from the waves.
Speedboat to Batam
We arrived in Batam, Indonesia, forty minutes late. The couple I'd been traveling with pointed me in the right direction and I walked through a hole in the fence to the International ferry terminal.
All the money changers had closed at five. And I had no Singapore dollars to buy my ferry ticket. I desperately wanted out of Indonesia and started to panic, but a nice old man traded me a ferry ticket for a crisp U.S. ten dollar bill. I boarded the gorgeous, immaculate Singapore ferry, the "Penguin 16." We took off promptly at six, and the distant city skyline glowed invitingly. No one sat next to me to practice English, no one offered me instant soup, and there was not a bug in site.
Penguin 16 ticket to Singapore
The ferry docked at Singapore's World Trade Centre. Say what you will about Singapore and its politics-- I was barely past passport control before I was sloppily wolfing down a tuna sandwich on a baguette. I couldn't wait for a Coffee Bean 'Iced Blended,' or predictable hot water. Metered taxis and brushing my teeth with tap water sounded like heaven.
NEXT: More evidence that planes rule! More baguettes and Iced Blendeds! Plus, a chance encounter with a special guest star from the original Marie-mail travelogue, "Overland from Kathmandu to Damascus"
