The last week of SE Asia

Well, what a week. This last week has pretty much summed up everything that I love and hate about travelling. It has probably been my own fault for trying to squeeze too much in 9that's what she said). It has been one of the best and one of the worst. So lets get down to business.

On my last day in Jogjakarta Time, Iris and myself rented mopeds and resolved to get up at 4.30am to go and see the sunrise at Borobudur Temple, which is a considerable distance out of town. As I'm trying to write a book, I take my notepad everywhere with me, and to my horror when I woke up at 4.15am it was nowhere to be seen. I turned my room upside down, which took about 14 seconds, but nothing. The last place I had been was the internet shop, so I figured that it must be there. I was feeling pretty frantic and I was far from happy about heading off without knowing its fate, as there are 5 months worth of notes, ideas, thoughts etc in there. When we were pushing our mopeds down the narrow side streets the locals were just getting back from prayer (I get woken up at 4am every morning by chanting). I hung around to see if any of them were the internet shop guys, and I spotted an old lady and a youngish bloke open the door to the shop. I legged it up there and asked (begged) if they could see if it was in there, which they duly obliged. I was fucking gutted to hear that it wasn't. This put me in a foul mood from the outset, which was not a good mindset when tackling the ridiculous amount of traffic in this city on a moped, followed by a ruddy bloody temple.

Just put 'nice sarong'

Tim was pretty determined to make sunrise, and he was driving like a maniac. He had a ped in Thailand for 3 months so he's a tad more attuned to traffic than I am, and he was dodging in and out of traffic at 80km an hour. This was okay, but everytime I went over 60km p/h my helmet got pushed back off my head by the wind resistance, so I was constantly being chocked by my chinstrap, which was a pleasant sensation. Tim had Iris on the back of his moped, and to be honest, I was impressed by his blatant disregard for her safety. By the time we got there I was in a cracking little mood, and I could not wait to get involved in some temple goodness. My first treat was that I had to put on a sarong, even though my shorts actually came below the bloody thing. What was immediately evident was that the sunrise was literally nowhere near the temple, in fact, it couldn't have been further away. The temple held my interest for approximately 4 minutes, at which point I followed normal protocol and went off searching for any funny photo opportunities.

I'm not sure what this depicts, but it seems to suggest that wanking is not welcome

You can take my life, but you will never take my decks

I look a little bit like a giant

After an hour or so of loitering with no intent, Tim and Iris finished whatever it was they were doing, and I was pretty downtrodden and felt like just going home and calling it a day (it wasn't even 8am by this point). Then we got the usual crowd of people asking to have their photo taken with us, which, to be honest, actually cheered me up a bit.

The better part of the road

Tim was a good influence on me, and he told me to snap out of it, the notebook was gone and it was time to move on. We had the mopeds for the day, so he suggested we just go off on a random drive and see where we ended up. I'm so glad that he was there, because the rest of the day was simply amazing. We got to experience a side of Indonesia that is well off the tourist trail. Our first port of call was the massive mountain behind the temple, which we decided that we'd try and find a way up. After a couple of dead ends along paved roads, we found a small dirt track which seemed to be pointing upwards at a pretty steep gradient (circa 45 degrees). The dirt track soon descended into a path with huge rocks sticking out, and then it was just some rocks. I have no idea how the mopeds made it up there, we were going for about half an hour up a ridiculous slope. If I'd been on my own then I wouldn't have risked it, as it was reckless at best. When we got to the top the views were breathtaking. We could see the temple and everything for about 10 miles in every direction.

Iris spotted a mountain village so we headed that way. The villagers looked a little more than surprised to see three westerners on mopeds up there. To begin with it looked like they were just staring at us, but as soon as you smiled at them they burst out into huge smiles and waved at us, which set the tone for the day. They are such warm people, especially in the countryside. I'd say that after this day, The Indonesian people and their country shot straight to the top of my list of favorite places. Getting down the mountain was the next challenge, and it proved tougher than getting up. I can see why peter neil boxface likes motorcross so much, even on a moped it's pretty exhilarating.

View from the summit

At the bottom we set off down the back roads and found a petrol station. I say petrol station, it was a wooden structure with some milk bottles of petrol balanced on it. As soon as we pulled up about 20 children from the adjacent school piled out and and surrounded us. One of them took a shine to me and expressed his fondness by burping in my face. After we'd said our hello's we all started to count from 1 to 10 in english together, whilst their teacher filled up the mopeds!

Steady as she goes

After saying our goodbyes we came across a bridge over a stunning river, and we noticed that there were a big group of people working in the river bed, so we parked up and headed down to investigate. It appeared that they were harvesting the fertile silt for crops, but I can't certify that. They were as interested in us as we were in them, and half the village came out to greet us. Two of them gestured to follow them down the middle of the river (it was shallow) so we followed them, and it led to a much mightier river that it was feeding. The two local guys decided to jum in to take a dip, so we soon followed suit. When we headed back there was a fully naked old lady washing herself in the river (infront of all of the workers) and she didn't seem to bat an eyelid that three strangers were approaching (is it possible to un-see something?). When we got to the riverbank one of the guys started spreading water on the dry dirt to make it easier for us to get up, and then he washed all of our feet individually at the top. This was really touching, and we gave them a pack of burns to crack into, you give us a wash, we give you some cancer like. Every man in indonesia smokes, but not one of the women do, very, very unusual.

Everyone that we passed on the way back gave us a big smile and said hello. The drive back was awesome, we had no idea where we were and eventually came across a sign pointing back to the city. I think we did about 200km on the scootay, and by the time we got back I couldn't feel my inner thighs, ball sack or anus, and it was still only 3pm. So how could the day get any better? Well, first, I was pushing my moped past the internet place and the old guy who'd been on shift when I was there ran out waving my notebook at me, I could've kissed him, but instead I dished out another pack of burns and gave him the old 'pray bow', which is a sign of respect across SE Asia (strangely not many people have done it to me). To celebrate this I took Tim and Iris for some beers on me, and when I checked in on facebook a couple of hours later I noticed that Jack and Mike, the first people that I travelled with all of those months back, were also in the city. Jack was still on FB chat, and it turned out that he was sat on a computer about 50m away, this travelling malarkay really can be bizarre sometimes. So that night we all went out, and what ensued was pretty hazy at best, but it was a fitting way to go out on the drinking tip as I started.

The next day but e firmly crashing back down to earth (may the moaning resume). I woke up with a stinking hangover and stumbled outside to find anything that resembled fluid (I look forward to being able to drink tap water again, my levels of estrogen intake have been low of late). As soon as I stepped out of the door this hawker who had been on my case for the past couple of days was right on my case, and I think that he could sense from a distance my weakened state. Now let me get this straight, not that I need to, I hate hawks, hawkers, tony hawks and stephen hawking, you're all deceitful liars. I've just realised that this is only strictly applicable to hawkers, to be fair the rest are a mixed bag. The difference was in this particular case, is that I owed a debt of gratitude to this hawk-faced son of a bitch.

Joga is a ballache for hawkers, like any large city in SE Asia (with the exception of Chiang Mai, which incidentally pretty much everyone I've asked lists as their favorite city in SE Asia, including myself). I had walked the city a couple of days before, and even with my earphones in, the hawkers were blocking my path and launching into their spiel. Here their tactic is just shout manchester united in my face, which instantly gets us off on a bad footing. The first guy I spoke to, lets call him Thomas Hawkesmore, was the guy to whom I refer above. It began strongly, I told him that I was going to Karimanjawa in a few days, and he'd just come from there. He used his mobile to call the captain of the ferry and booked me on, and then he called the floating hotel and made a reservation for me there. I couldn't believe my luck, as Karimanjawa is well off the beanten track, it's not even mentioned in Tim's lonley planet guide. I only knew about it because a local guy in Bali showed me his photo's from his holiday there.

I was very grateful for this mans help, and he quickly seized upon this. He told me that he was an artist, and asked if I'd like to come and see his studio, which I thought could be pretty cool. Obviously I was obliged to go and have a look, so off we went. I hadn't bought any gifts for my family at this stage, and the art was amazing. It is made in a very intricate way using waxes, paints, spray paints, oil and water. He then told me that 20% of any sales goes to an orphanage for disabled children (he was really turning the screws by this point), and then he told me that he'd recently come out of prison for drugs (i'm not sure why he told me this). So 45 minutes later I'd racked up a 1,000,000 rupiah bill (circa 100 bunce), and I put down a 100k down payment for 3 paintings as gifts.

After leaving the shop another hawkfaced bastard approached me and told me that there was a free art display going on in the city today, and with my new found feeling of culture I went with him. Three minutes later we were back at the same shop that I'd just come from. Another few minutes later a guy approached me and came out with the same story, and then anotehr, and then another. For me this completely killed the criminal turned philanthropist bohemian vibe, and I resolved not to return to the shop to pay the remaining balance or pick up the paintings.This left me in a delicate position, as I kept seeing hawkesmore everywhere, and wary that he could just as easily cancel my resevations for Karimanjawa, I had to play my cards carefully and string him out.So I told him that I'd come back in an hour and got the hell out of my room.

My bus was supposed to leave at 11am and rocked up at 12.30pm. The journey was supposed to take 2.5hrs, it took 6. I was the only westerner on there, and this has been the case for everywhere over the past 4 days. I haven't seen a single westerner and this means I haven't had a conversation, as no one speaks english. I wasn't aware that Semerang had an airport, but when I looked up some info in Karimanjawa on the web, it said that by air you could arrive at Semerang, which was the destination of my bus. I had already booked a flight from Joga (where I was coming from), and I had the idea to change the flight so that I didn't have to deal with this 6hr hell ride again (I will not miss the driving in SE Asia, terrifying). So I got drive to drop me at the airport (at a cost) and headed to the LionAir desk. None of them could understand a word of English. I'm not sure if you've ever attempted to gesticulate that you'd like to exchange your flights from Joga to Semerang before, but it was not within my ever growing repertoire. I found someone who spoke basic english, and he translated. Computer said no. Fuck them, fuck them right in the ass.

So it was now about 7pm, it was dark, I had no idea where I was staying or even if there was accommodation there. I got in a taxi and had to try and gesticulate that I wanted to go to the port (I felt I needed to check that the ferry even existed, let alone if I was booked on to it), which was tricky. Drive looked at me like I was a madman as I was trying to imitate a boat with a backpack on. We got there eventually, and after a half hour drive we got there to find it was closed. Tidy. I asked drive to get me to somewhere with tourists, which he didn't understand. I then said hotel, and he gave me a knowing nod. He took me to a novotel, which was very, very pricey, but I was beyond caring by this point. The receptionist had a little glossy pamphlet for Karimanjawa, which gave ferry times, none of which said there was a ferry on Monday (it was currently sunday night). By this point I was ready to headbutt someone. There was a number on the back which I rang from a call box, and no one spoke english. After about 10 minutes of firing nonsense at each other, the guy put a woman on the phone. She told me that there was no ferry on the monday, and I explained (I say explained) that I already had a reservation, to which she suddenyl told me that there was a boat at 7am (2hrs earlier than what Hawkesmore had told me). It became clear that it was run by another company to hers, and as any good hawker will tell you, if it's not making you money then it does not exist. Cunts.

Drive was still lingering at this point (I was unaware that the cheeky cunt had left the meter running whilst he was just stood there watching me on the phone). I thought I may as well try and find a cheaper hotel, so off we went again, aimlessly driving around. Semerang is a big port city, not particularly welcoming looking at night (no idea what it looks like by day). I tried to gesture to drive 'backpacker area' by pointing at my backpack. He said 'yes', and then 'where to?'. This has been commonplace since going off the tourist trail, they seem to know 'yes' and 'mister', and their answer to any question is one of the two. I eventually spotted a guesthouse and checked the fuck in. The taxi  cost more than the 6hr journey from Joga and the 3hr fastboat to Karimanjawa put together. The next day I got up at 5.30am and headed down the docks via taxi (brian unwin alert). When we got there it was utterly deserted and as I reached in my pockets to find money for drive, I found the room key which I'd paid a tenner deposit on. By this point I was ready to just call it a day and get the hell away from that city. It can be very tough going on your own in these type of situations, there is nowhere to vent anger, which explains the length of this blog entry! Anyway, I spotted a family up the road and walked towards them. They were from jakarta and the bloke spoke a bit of english, they were more importantly also catching the boat and knew where it was leaving from (about 2 miles away), and they kindly took me with them. The boat was pretty sparse, other than a massive karaoke screen, i'm not sure what the obsession is over here, because I've never once seen anyone using them. They don't even play the real music videos, they have really naff 80's remakes with a couple and a horse (in a non sexual way).

My floating hotel

The boat took about 3hrs, but when I got there, wow. It was dawning on me that the effort might just be worth it. The place is 27 tiny islands, the largest being karimanjawa. I then had a short boat ride to my accommodation, which was recommended to me by Hawkesmore, and was a floating hotel. It was about 500 yards offshore, and was awesome.

My 'Bathroom'

My room was very basic, there was no room key or lock for any of the rooms, my bed was a mattres on the floor, and when i looked into the bathroom, which was sort of out back, there was no shower, no sink, just a squatter and a dustbin of water.The place is a national marine park, so toilet roll is strictly forbidden. Lests just say that I wouldn't be shaking me by the left hand any time soon. Adjoining my bathroom was my 'balcony', which led straight into my bath...

My bath

Sunset from balcony

The only other people staying there happened to be the nice family that had helped me get the ferry. This was fortunate for me, as none of the staff spoke english, so Tony became my go-between. I spent the rest of my day relaxing and trying to forget the previous 24hrs. The room cost a tenner a night and came with 3 really good meals a day, consisting of all freshly caught seafood, mint. There was no electricity or running water, but at around 7pm every night they turned on a generator and had light and water pumping for a few hours. The sunset from my balcony was also pretty special. So I got a much welcomed early night (9pm!). My major issue with the place is that, because it's a locals destination, I was about a foot to tall for head clearance of any doorway or beam, and I kept knocking my head constantly.

Not too bad

The next day Tony had kindly offered to take me along with his family on their snorkelling and boat trip to some of the other islands. We went to a few deserted islands and they made us a BBQ of fish, which was fucking lovely.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiit

In the afternoon we went snorkelling, which was a personal highlight. I'd asked tony to ask drive if there were any sharks around, and drive gave me a smug knowing nod. As we pulled up about 100 yards off shore I could already see the harks beneath. I was the only one who'd go in to begin with, mainly because I was the only one with a waterproof camera who wanted a stupid photo, which I got. The sharks weren't exactly scared of me, and a couple almost swam right into me, I fucking shat my pants. Tony was so impressed with my recklessness that he invited me along to join them on their trip the next day.

Spare change of shorts drive?

That night, just after dinner, one of the guys clearing up dropped a fork on the floor, and I was eager to help as they'd all been all smiles with me. I rushed over to help and hit my head so hard on the corner of a beam that it almost took me off my feet. I sort of laughed it off but I knew that I'd done some damage, so I stumbled into my room and collapsed straight onto my bed. I woke up about 5hrs later disorientated and in severe pain. I looked up at a weird noise coming from my roof, and there was a rat sat looking at me from one of the joists. I instantly fell back asleep and that was my last memory of the day. I woke up at 7am the next morning, and my alarm sounded like it was an air horn. There was blood all over my pillow and when I looked in the mirror it was caked all ovr my face. I'm fairly confident that I needed stitches, but this isn't exactly hosptial central, besides, the salt water could clean it up and if needs be, a shark could remove my head and I could pick up a new one in Singapore.

There was a knock on my door and it was tony asking if I was coming out, but al I wanted to do was sleep. Half an hour later there was another knock, and it was the woman who serves breakfast. She looked pretty shocked when I answered the door covered in blood, and her first question was 'when are you leaving?'. I told her that I'd be catching the ferry tomorrow, but she didn't understand. I thought it was the language barrier, so I grabbed tony before they headed out so that he could get her to reserve me a place on thursdays ferry. I was already pretty nervous about this, as according to the little guide the guy gave me in Semerang, the ferry took around 5hrs and dibn't set off until 10am, and I'd then have to somehow get to Jogjakarta (6hrs) so that I could get my flight to Singapore on Friday. The woman proceeded to tell Tony that the schedule was wrong, and that there wasn't another boat back to shore until friday, which for me would mean missing my flight and in all likelihood, miss my flight back to the UK. After a mild bout of panic I remembered how rough I felt and needed to sit down. She could sense I was in a pretty stinking way and made some phonecalls. She managed to find a fishing boat/ cargo boat that was going to Jepera that morning, which is about 3hs north of Semerang. But as tony so elegantly put it "losers can't be choosers", so half an hour later I had my pack on and they were taking me to the fishing boat.

Tidy boat like

When I got there I added nervousness, scepticism, and anguish to my feelings of pain and drowsiness. The boat looked like it was about 200 years old, and the crew and helpers were not easing me in the slightest. They were a jolly and buoyant bunch of seafarers, but I'm fairly sure that at least two of them were quite severely inbred (there is not exactly a large gene pool in Karimanjawa). Whilst they all made an effort to talk to me, which consisted of speaking indonesian and then laughing in my face, two men in particular were disturbing me. I'll call the tapped one 'Tappo, and the strange one 'potential bender'. Potential bender was sat uncomfortably close to me on the pier, and he kept touching me. I was sat there for about 2hrs whilst they loaded an impossible amount of barrels on to the boat. The whole time potential bender kept tapping me, pointing at tappo and making a hand gesture akin to when your dad would pretend to take your nose when you're a kid. Everytime he did this, tappo would erupt int madness and start screaming and then throwing whatever he could get his hands on into the sea. I was getting fairly uncomfortable at this ongoing ritual, but potential bender found it uncontrollably funny, and he'd slap me on the back about 15 times until I could muster a false smile. Tappo's screaming was going through my concussion at a level of knotts that the boat clearly wasn't capable of.

Tappo front and center (striped shirt), potential bender front right

I eventually got hailed over to the boat and as I was getting on, tappo made the international hand gesture for shagging (forefinger of right hand going though interconnected thumb and forefinger of left hand) and pointed to one of the crew members (to my relief tappo or potential bender weren't crew). SO at this point my feelings were that the ship was going to set sail, I'd get robbed, bummed, burnt and tossed overboard. I just stared tappo out as the boat was pulling off, I was in no mood for any more of his frankly erratic behaviour (they were both in their 40s, I can't explain how much they creeped me out).

So the boat was a real treat, I had no seat and was positioned right above the engine, where a steady flow of soot was being pumped into my face and I had 120 decibels of motor ploughing through my concussion. The waters were choppy and we were tilting, rocking and slumping. The prospect of 6hrs of this almost sent me overboard. The crew didn't utter a word to me the whole journey, which was a welcomed alternative to a bumming. So after 6hrs I was so happy to see shore that I almost forgot about the pain until it dawned upon me that I had no idea where to go from here, or how to get there. I was greeted off the boat by an old man with what can only be described as a back to front rickshaw, with a sort of penny-farthing bicycle. It looked impossibly uncomfortable to ride, especially for a man in his 60s. But I had no alternative and I didn't even know where he was taking me, so I hopped on. It was an awkward ride, I felt like the picture of western decadence as this old man struggled to cycle me and my backpack through the streets on this weird contraption. We went about 1km and passed a hotel so I shouted for him to stop and he let me off. Incidentally, he charged me almost as much as the 6hr boat cost, but I was quite glad to give it to him to be honest.

I had missed the last bus to Semerang (thank fuck I came back on wednesday and not thursday, the broken head has probably saved me about 500 bunce for a new flight). Needless to say the hotel people told me that all of the budget rooms were full, even though it was a big place and there wasn't a single other guest in sight, but I thought fuck it, if I get one of the better rooms then I may even have a hot water shower, as I was covered head to toe in soot. When I got to my room I found that it didn't have a hot water shower, in fact, it didn't have a shower at all. All it had was a toilet and a bum gun, you can picture what I was reduced to. Humiliating, but as my first 'shower' for 3 days, refreshing. I love you bum gun x.

Lovely stuff

So today I caught a local bus at 7am to Joga, which took 7hrs. There were quite a few mosquitos on the bus and I knew as the only light skinned person on there, I'd probably be somewhat of a target. Half of the people on there sounded like they had TB, the girl next to me sounded particularly sickly. So it wasn't a great journey, and when i got off I counted 34 bites around my feet, which was a fitting end to those two days.The mosquito's tend to follow the lines of your veins, and I guess because I had such a throbbing headace, they'd managed to locate one straight down my forehead, so I have three lovely bites right on my face. Tidy on a fuckin friday wannit though, eh, wannit though.

Anyway, as you can tell the last week has been one of very mixed emotions, but I think it is important to experience this, as it has been comparatively easy going across SE Asia up to this point. I think it is probably good prep for S.America, which is probably a lot more tough going. However, I'm plodding along with my spanish which will certainly help me along (Quiere hacer una bambino con migo? - do you want to make a baby with me?, should suffice). Tomorrow I fly to Singapore via Jakarta, and then back to the good old UK for a bit on Saturday. One word, two syllanbles, Bulldog. Over and out