Nothing’s Familiar

Selamat sore! Everybody,

I have to say, my first day in Indonesia sucked ass. I set-sail from Singapore at around 8.30am, it only took 1 hour to reach Indonesia’s border so relativaly short When I arrived in Indonesia, I didn’t have a penny to my name, not in any currency. I’m not to sure why I didn’t think I might need money to get a taxi from the border and I certainly didn’t think I would have to pay for a Visa, but I did, 25 US dollars to be precise. To make matters more interesting there wasn’t an ATM at the border crossing and they couldn’t accept credit cards of any type. So, in short I was fucked. No money to pay for a boat back to Singapore and no money to enter Indonesia. After a short while begging a interesting arrangement happened shortly after, I was to give my passport to a security guard, leave my rucksack at the border and jump in a taxi to take me 20 minutes to the nearest ATM machine. Everything above is usually a big no-no in the travelling world, but I had no option. Passport left, rucksack left, I jumped into an unmarked taxi and got driven off in the wilderness.
At the ATM I suddenly realised I didn’t have a clue about the currency, I clicked ‘fast cash’ and stared blankley at the obscene figures infront of me. I had the option of withdrawing the minimum of 50,000, so I withdrew 250,000 to be safe. I popped back to the Taxi and asked him how much it would be, 100,000 was the price. I wasn’t in the position to be bargaining seeing as all my life was left back at the border – so I returned to the ATM and withdrew a cool million.
Back at the border, getting the Visa now I had money was easy, so I walked to buy a ticket to take me to Sumatra – I couldn’t do this alone, oh no, I got about 10 people begging to take me there, eventully I shook them all off but, one man remained.
He honestly told me there are no boats till tommorrow morning and dishonestly told me all the hostels in the Lonely Planet had closed down and then charged me 100,000 to take me to another hotel, which cost 140,000 for 1 night. I still didn’t have a clue how much all this funny money was worth.

At the hostel I found out. I cried a little bit, got grumpy and then shadow boxed infront of the mirror, in my boxershorts, for no apparent reason.

I had just spend nearly 15 pounds (my daily budget) on Taxi’s, 15 pounds on a visa and more money on horrible food and that wasn’t inlcluding the additional 15 pounds to get to my next destination.

I tried to walk around Batam but got so annoyed with people harrasing to take me places, taxis slowing down and beeping at me, people begging for money that I surrendered and took refuge in a Mc-escape-culture-shock-Donalds. Paying a set priced pleased me, then I locked myself in my room and tried desperatly to learn the local language, before surrending and studying Thai for 3 hours before falling asleep.
The following day, I woke up at 6.30am to get a taxi (the same driver) to take me to the harbour, I was aware he was going to charge me the 100,000 again so I thought fuck it, after paying that, from then on I will bargain like del-boy and take no further bending over! So, when I arrived at the harbour he said 150,000 ‘because it’s morning’. I laughed. Gave him 100,000 declined his offer of providing him with a tip, smilled and walked away, seceretly depserate to find another traveller to make this headache situation amusing.
Luckily on the boat after 2 hours of watching Chinese New Year pop-videos I spotted a foreigner and inatiated converstaion. I travelled with Grant for 18 hours on buses and boats to get here, Bukkittingi.
Today was a complete turn around, myself and Grant were asked to go to a local school and chat with the students, but the teacher never arrived to meet us so we decided to rent motorbikes and visit a few things instead. We explored the Japanese war tunnels, which were nice, fed some monkeys, then drove off up hills, past volcanoes, into villages, over canyons and waved at every Indonesian we passed. It was amazing, the most refreshing and exciting thing I have done for a long time, we found small villages where people were playing, eating and actually pleased to see us, they didn’t want to sell us anything, get us to go anywhere, they just wanted to say “Hello” or ‘Hi” to us in English.

On the way back We stopped off and had a coffee in the most amazing cafe, chatted to a Muslim family, ate fresh cookies, then drove back and stared at rice fields, rice terraces and watched a farmer try and control 5 upset buffallos.

Splendid.

Tommorrow we will do the same, but rent the motorbikes all day instead and stop to chat to more locals on the way, then the following day continue heading north.

Sampai Jumper (Goodbye!)

This is going to be a slightly different post than most of the previous. As most of you know, I have 2 friends from back in England (Dan and Stu) who now live in Thailand and an amazing Thai girl, now my girlfriend (Reene), who I have known for around 2 years and has taught me to speak Thai.

I original planned on going to Thailand in April but Ben, another mate from England, wanted to come meet me and do a spot of scuba diving. So, I paid the 30 pounds and flew from Singapore to Bangkok.

For the past few weeks I haven’t really been doing the independent walking around getting lost, chatting to travellers of equal fragrance and saving money quiet as much as I should have been. I have however shared a bed with a man and a woman for 4 days, slept on a floor another day and visited bizarre ‘off the beaten path’ things.

The first week in Thailand my girlfriend took me pretty much all over Bangkok, I visited the crazy JJ Market again, this time only slightly hung-over and dehydrated. I purchased a t-shirt for about 3 pounds and pair of sunglasses (my 7th pair) for 4 pounds and I’m trying not to be upset that the t-shirt is falling to bits and the sunglasses have lenses which prefer falling off the frames and laying on the floor than protecting my eyes from those pesky UV rays. (I am now on my 8th pair of sunglasses).

Reene and her family also celebrated a Muslim day ” Eid al-Adha” whilst I was there, so I was invited to meet the whole family (it’s huge believe me) and consume ample amounts of really nice Muslim/Thai food. I was pretty nervous at meeting the family, due to the language barrier, but did OK, I think. I only got “Hello” and “Thank you” mixed up, which compared to what I said around a restaurant dinner table a few days later is nothing in comparison. I also learnt how to greet Muslims (Salam) and was told by Reene’s family that I am very handsome, not bad for a days work I’m sure you’ll agree.

The next few days consisted of going to the cinemas, or deep-freeze freezers as they should be called. Visiting more markets and shops, meeting up with Australian Jodie, a girl I walked the Inca Trail with, strolling down Koh San Road – the backpackers haunt and going to go-go bars to watch naked women wobble about the stage dressed in ‘clothes’ which would make Pamela Anderson blush.

Another one of my ‘off the beaten path’ experiences was attending a Thai University graduation ceremony. Reene had graduated last year, but they save the graduation ceremonies until the following year (go figure). I wasn’t allowed to sit in the 7 hour ceremony, which was a disappointment, so arranged to meet Reene and her family at around 3pm for the photos. When I arrived at the university I had a small problem. There were about 10,000 students all wearing the same clothes, with pretty much the same hair style, and being Asian, they all shared the same hair colour as well. So, after 5 minutes of standing around like a complete circus act (not many travellers there) and waving at people who I discovered weren’t actually waving at me, I met Reene and her family, took lots of photos, greeted more family then left to go for a meal.

We drove in Reene’s Dad’s lovely air-conditioned car until we reached the restaurant of the Muslim variety, I was introduced to more of her family and then Reene left me at her parents table, with other elders who all wanted to test there English out on me. They (I forget names) asked me where I was from, so I said “Manchester” (saying Manchester as supposed to Rainow kind of guarantees a larger conversation) and we talked about the inevitable Rooney and other players I have never heard of. The 2 men to my left then said “you should say you are from Ruu-man-daa”, so I practiced and was comfortable I could remember to say that, so – they chatted in Thai to other table members and I had the same question to me repeated “Where are you from”, “Ruu-man-daa” I replied confidently.

I later found out that Ruu-man-daa meant Vagina in Thai.

Bi bi also means vagina in Thai. This is what I was calling Reene’s mum all night, luckily she understood I was being used as a comical scapegoat and didn’t take too much offence, I also called Reene’s dad something of an equal insult, but I forget what that was.

“Cunt, can you pass the fish please?”

I did get my own back by translating various words into English for them, but it was only me who found it funny that they were happily drinking ‘testicle soup’.

When Ben arrived we paid 400 baht to get the train to Chumphon and then a boat to Koh Tao, the whole journey took about 14 hours and cost a mere 6 pounds. Bargain. A minor draw back was that I ate some dodgy train food and the following day when we arrived in paradise I spent 90% of the day sat on the toilet, or crouching over the toilet – both positions involved removing food poisoning. I did however lose a little weight, which was nice. I also get the hint that Ben disliked travelling in such long drawn out forms of public transport, he paid for the return flight home!

So, apart from telling you about chilling on Islands and playing in the sea – that’s pretty much all I have done over the last few weeks.

I’m back in Thailand in April, so I’ll travel the whole country then, I might get something stolen too if I’m lucky.

I am in Singapore again now, and I will get a boat over to Indonesia (Sumatra) tomorrow where I will travel South through Indonesia for around a month. I’m looking forward to entering a country where I have to learn the language from scratch and don’t know anyone or anything about the country!

Speak soon,

Rob

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