Saturday December 6, 2008 - Larantuka

I didn’t really get up to a lot today. After last night I really needed to clear the cobwebs out of the old cranium so I took a long leisurely walk from my hotel out of town along the beach. I found a pleasant shady spot and just relaxed for an hour or so and then made my way back. Nothing too exciting but just what the doctor ordered really. I felt much better on my return and after another bucket shower. The power is out all day today. Some sort of maintenance again so any attempt at Internet was ruled out. I soon found myself back at Julius’s place, which by the way is called Virgo. We drank terrible coffee and chatted for a while before I finally caught all my writing up to date. By the time I was finished getting my thoughts down Julius was hard at it in his open air Kitchen whipping up a feast of fish, vegies, rice and noodles. He was still out of beer but I told him that was probably a good thing and just stuck with water. We ate and talked some more until siesta rolled on up and I made my way back to Kartika finally getting some decent phone credit on the way. Have I told you the town shuts down for siesta each afternoon? Well it does. I personally love the idea of Siesta and decided rather than spend it in my room without power and therefore without air-conditioning I would wonder just a short distance down the road to a large open park beside the water I had passed that morning on my walk.

I had the park to myself for a good long while. I just watched life in Larantuka being conducted and sucked it all in. On the beach in front of me was a fisherman and his family removing the shell from a large sea turtle he had caught. To the left at the docks were a bunch of porters or dockworkers playing soccer on the pier. To my right were several women bathing at the public well. I eventually lay on my back and stared at the overcast sky until it occurred to me to try calling a few peeps I haven’t spoken to for a bit. I’d received a call from Mum and Dad yesterday so wasn’t too worried about catching them again just yet but I spoke to a very sleepy sounding Tez, tried Melissa and eventually got onto my mate Twenty. It was a cool way to spend the arvo and I felt a lot less homesick by the end. Towards the end of Siesta some local dude took a seat just several meters from me and started playing the cheesiest pop music on his phone. It kind of ruined the moment for me and I beat a hasty retreat when The Veronicas started up. Cheeezus!!

When I got back to Kartika the power was finally on again so I cranked up the air-con and fully intended to do some washing. I never quite got around to it though. A little lie down in front of the air-con turned into a proper hour long poppy nap. Shit I love my sleep of late. When I woke I decided it was time for a beer and another visit to Virgo. I spent the rest of the night there. Abu found me a phrase book at the market so I sat there trying to learn Bahasa from a book designed to teach English to local Indonesian people. I’m slowly getting somewhere but wonder why these books always have such impractical phrases in them. Who is ever going to need “Are the children still dirty behind their ears?” or “A new broom sweeps clean” It’s a bloody mystery to me. Abu promised to take me for a ride on his motorbike tomorrow, which I look forward to a lot. After another feed of delicious fish and chips washed down with a few Bin Tang I said goodnight to all in terrible Bahasa and made my way home with the laughter from the café audible for at least a minute after I left.

Sunday December 6, 2008 - Larantuka

I think I forgot to mention yesterday that Julius’s wife gave me a haircut. Damn my hair grows so fast I was nearly starting to have to brush it. I couldn’t have that and when I noticed that she had clippers in her Beauty Salon section of Virgo ‘One Stop Shop’ I jumped at the chance. Man it was so funny. I doubt she has ever had any formal training at this so I copped a bit of punishment from her while she was still nervous at the start. Clippers were catching my ear or pointy combs were stabbing my skin. We laughed a lot although, once again, it was one of those no actual communication possible situations. Anyway at the end of it all, once she had swapped down clipper sizes and gone over my head several times she brought out the brush to remove stray hairs. I shivered with fear when I grabbed the first glimpse of it because it was a wire freaking brush!! Dosing me liberally with talc she set about removing all cut hairs along with the top few layers of my skin. OUCH!!! So now I’ve got that out of the way, lets move onto today.

I woke this hari Minggu… sorry Sunday to a loud, horrible version of Indonesian pop music being played just outside my window. Come on!! It’s flipping Sunday people and it’s only pukul lima kurang sebelas menit… that’s 11 to 5 in the fucking morning if ya ain’t catching my drift. Yes I guess it is amazing how much of a language you can learn when you have to and definitely yes it’s way to bloody early in the morning to be hearing the Indo version of Kylie freaking Minogue. I yelled at the perpetrator “Shut the fuck up man!” but I guess my Australian accent and their lack of Inglis (English) was working against me because the music not only kept playing but also switched to something resembling Indonesian country music. If I had of had access to a gun I would of burst out of my room and opened fire I swear, instead I rolled over and stuffed my non-pillow ear with the spare, cursing the prick under my breath. Cheezus!!

I tried to sleep in and enjoy the working air-conditioning until Abu was due but that asshole sat just on the other side of my louvers for the next few hours until my friend arrived. I must have managed to doze off for stages but it felt like I was awake for the whole morning. Still Abu managed to wake me with a knock at the door around 7am. Man… do these people ever sleep in? Maybe it’s the Siesta thing that enables them to get up so early and yet stay up so late every single day of the year. I’m very thankful I live in Australia normally where it’s not so uncommon to cop an earful of abuse if you make that much noise, that early on a Sunday. I can’t wait to be home at the moment if for no other reason than to have a bludge and sleep in.

It didn’t take that long to wake properly in the end… at least once Abu was there. I quickly got ready and threw down some water for breaky and we were off on this much touted motorbike trip around Larantuka. Abu had a spare helmet for me but from the moment I put it on I knew that it made me look like some giant again. It was small. Sure it fit but it was only just making it over my head and I could tell by everyone’s looks it must have been like a pimple on a pumpkin. We set off to explore the beaches to the east of this little fishing village. I cruised along on the back of Abu’s scooter with a cigarette in one hand and my bag in the other. It was a lot of fun. Even though I speak so little Bahasa Indonesia and Abu speaks even less English we both wore big smiles on our faces as we left Larantuka and made our way into the countryside. We wove through rural settlements and along tiny beach roads, making several stops along the way for me to get photos. Eventually Abu indicated with a broad sweep of his hand that we would take the ring road round to the western side of Larantuka and make our way home.

We had just passed some of the worst, potholed tracks of our trip when I noticed the rear tire on Abu’s scooter was flat. Abu noticed it too, how could you not on this bumpy little road. We dismounted the bike to scratch our heads at our predicament. We had passed a small village some minutes ago but it was back up the top of a steady incline we had just descended. I put the bike up on the centre stand and inspected the tire and sure enough in no time I discovered we had picked up a long, ancient looking nail. It had probably sat on that road for years waiting for us, as if it was that nails destiny to puncture Abu’s tire. Back home in Brisbane I had a few stages where I would pick up nails on my bike tires every 2nd bloody day. I hate the little blighters! I pulled the nail and swore my ass off while Abu joined me so that we had a bi-lingual swear fest going on in rural Eastern Flores hahaha. With no other option, this road was rarely travelled; we turned the bike around and started the long push back up those steep hills. I was absolutely rooted by the time we made the tire guy’s little roadside workshop and so was Abu. We flopped our assess down on a small concrete ledge, panting and waited for the tire guy to finish his half completed work on some other dudes bike.

While we waited another small crowd gathered and we soon had many onlookers hanging around staring at the big, skinny white kid who had just walked into town, wheezing, sweating and trying to not look out of place. A nice man who had given us directions on our way back to the village soon showed up to see if we had made it. He works for one of those ‘Care For Kids’ sponsorship programs here in Larantuka translating the letters between the English speaking sponsors and their kids. As Abu helped sort out our tire issues this fella organised some chairs in the shade for us to rest on and then proceeded to bombard me with questions. Are you married? - No. Why are you not married? - I haven’t met the right person. How old are you? - 36. Aaahhyayayeee and you are not married? - No. You must be married and have children - No, I’m not. This went on and on until in the end I said yes I am married and indeed had two girls hahaha. He didn’t even blink at me contradicting myself. He then nagged me to show him pictures until; with no other option I showed him Tez, De and Sammie. He visibly was much more comfortable with that idea and not for the first time it struck me how different my life is to these people. He just could not fathom what I did for a living, let alone skydiving, although we found common ground for conversation when we talked about boats. The tire guy had to install about 7 patches on the inner tube and it took quite some time so the interrogation seemed to go on forever, but as soon as he was finished Abu was keen to get a move on.

Back on the bike we no longer dawdled so much. I think Abu was as unsure of the quality of those repairs as I was and besides he had to be getting to his family at some stage on this his only day off. We wandered off through roads that were gradually improving until I recognised we had come out on the main Larantuka - Maumere road somewhere west of Larantuka itself. I guess that’s why they call it a ring road Monsta! We had nearly made it back to my hotel, probably only 10 minutes from Kartika and the tire went flat again. Shit a bloody great dirty brick! Sorry about the crass imagery but at least you know that’s about how painful this tire business was getting. It took another hour of sitting around and smoking for the tire to be repaired. Our new ‘mechanic’ at least had the sense to just replace the inner tube, but it was replaced with a 2nd hand unit that needed two puncture repairs anyway before it could be fitted. In the end I may not have got to see all that much of the scenery around Larantuka. What I had seen was gorgeous but the most amazing part of Abu’s makeshift tour was the insight into the live of these very friendly, warm, industrious, family orientated people. You can’t buy those sorts of experiences from any tour guide.

The bikes rear tire actually held together well after the second repair and we soon found ourselves back at Virgo despite a quick stop off at my room to grab some things. Julius was hard at work behind the wok again but still managed to whip up once of the best Nazi Goring’s I have ever eaten. Abu downed his in Olympic record time and raced off to visit with his family on one of the nearby islands. We said a quick, gruff, manly goodbye, but I wanted to give him a big hug. He told me through Julius that he only had spent so much time hanging around because he could tell I have an Indonesian heart, kind, friendly and modest. Awwwwwwwww!! Hahaha. I didn’t know what to say so stammered out a quick Terima Kasih and shook his hand warmly again. Julius has that great Australian manner about him that I love. He watched our carrying on, smiling the biggest proud of grins, turned to me and said, “Fuck mate. You two a couple of poofters or something?” I gave him a one-fingered salute while we laughed, after about another half hour of chatting I gathered my stuff and headed off to have another go at the Internet here.

This time Tav’s suggested spot was not open and I was forced to try the Telkom building across the road despite hearing nothing but terrible reviews about it. It absolutely rocked!! I got everything up online I could and just in time too because tomorrow I leave for Sunset Cottages which has no power for the majority of the day let alone Internet. I can’t believe how addicted to being connected I have become. Maybe I have been for a while and because at home it is so easy I have never really thought about it. But I now know I am a complete and total junkie. God knows what I am going to do when eventually I come across a country where I cannot get online. I’m already breaking out in cold sweats from withdrawal and that’s just thinking about it. Anyway I really enjoyed my cyber surf this Sunday arvo and got a hell of a lot done so with a very self-satisfied smile on my face I eventually left the Telkom building and hitched a ride back to Virgo to hang out with Julius and crew again.

Back at the ‘One Stop Shop’ Julius and I cracked a couple of Bin Tang and kicked back to talk heaps about not much at all and before I knew it night had fallen and Julius’s mates started rocking up. One guy I had not met before was a young Polisi from the Larantuka station; we sat discussing the differences and similarities of life in our countries for hours. He was another very cool dude; about the millionth one I have met on my trip so far. Neatly presented and politely spoken, he did a lot of tut-tutting (which seems a very popular form of expression here) at things he found unusual or unbelievable. He didn’t speak a great deal of Inglis but between us we really covered a lot of conversational ground with our mutant attempts at each other’s language. I’ve come to realise it is a lot easier to get the gist of what someone is saying than it is to actually speak the language. That enables you to talk more freely, still using smaller words in broken sentences but you don’t have to make it so dumbed down and restricted like I have been doing.

Some very old friends of Julius’s he knew when he lived in Larantuka, made a surprise visit around dinnertime and he left me with a small group of young blokes while he spent time with them. I tried to get some writing done but very soon had the guys in a rapidly expanding group of onlookers standing behind me reading out loud everything I was writing. It sounded like I had a small English class going on behind me. “I… t, it had prob-ab-ly sat… on… that road for years wa-wa-waiting for us, as… if… it was that nails des.. des-tin-eye to p-un-ch-ture Abu’s” at the mention of Abu’s name much Bahasa was spoken as people no doubt caught up to date with Abu and my adventure this morning. Man I couldn’t handle it in the end. It was just to off-putting having this ever growing group reading every word as I typed. In the end I decided that the old adage ‘if you can’t beat em… join em’ was my best option. I saved my blog entry and decided to do another slide show of photos from home. That kept everyone entertained for a good 40-50 minutes (see Melissa… it’s not such a daggy thing to do… so there!!) but it was when someone noticed I had videos saved on my hard-drive that things got really interesting. We watched the last half hour of Hellboy II and even with the language difficulties the crowd that was still getting larger by the minute, oohhhed and aahhhed their way through the action. It was awesome fun!

Just as the movie was about to end a group of Muslim boys from a nearby village saw us all on the front porch of Virgo and ran over to see what all the fuss was about. Julius immediately exploded. I couldn’t work out what was happening. He grabbed the oldest largest kid and threw him out onto the street by his ear. The group as a whole got very aggressive and for the next ten minutes there was a verbal battle going on at the street. I spent the whole time worrying that I was the cause of the all this trouble. We had a younger group visit us earlier, all Muslim kids as well and they had been well behaved and welcome at the shop, I even had taken photos and played around with them. There is a big Muslim holiday on Monday and they have had large street parades tonight complete with a speaker-covered van belting out loud calls to prayer. I had sat there as they passed drinking my Bin Tang and playing movies for the gang and now was very worried I had brought about this drama. Julius was very quick to let me know it was not my fault though. Apparently he has had running battles with this one village that is not so far from Larantuka. When he first settled here they had tried to stand over him for favours. As Julius told me “The bastards thought they had it all over me mate. But I told them they could shove their heads up their asses!” Hahahaha Go big J!

After the movie finished I made my excuses and wandered off home for the cool of the air-conditioning. I was still a bit nervous sitting around flaunting all my technology despite Julius’s reassurances. Besides I was getting tired again and had the unknown of my bus ride to Maumere tomorrow to deal with. I lasted about 15 minutes after my bath and was soon fast asleep in my bed.

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