Borneo Highway Express
(Cheers, ‘Blablablabla’ for this link to travels in Indonesia—forewarned is forearmed 😉 )
The nightbus to Miri would not leave until nine—I don’t know why I booked such a late departure, especially as the buses to the coach terminal only run until seven. I had nothing left to do, so I showered, said my good-byes and was at the main bus stop at the Padang Merdeka (Freedom Plaza) before 6.
A 3A bus rolled by just as I got there, not deigning to stop. It didn’t even turn in like it was supposed to, just went right past on the main lane. And it wasn’t full. Perhaps the driver had a bad day, driving off in a huff and leaving his passengers in the lurch. Bus drivers are like that sometimes. No matter, there were no fewer than seven different buses going in that direction.
I sat forlornly at the bus stop for almost an hour while the people who had been waiting with me peeled off in one and twos, boarding minivans, none which were going my way. At a quarter to seven, I shoulderd the backpack and trudged through the stifling heat all the way to the local bus depot, sweating out my fresh, soapy smell and the mozzie repellent. There in the gloomy shadow stood a dark 3A bus. To my surprise, there were people inside. I got on and stewed in my own juices. After a few minutes, the driver appeared, geared up the engine and we roared past the bus stop at exactly seven o’clock—turning in as supposed to, but there were no more passengers to be picked up.
I had an uninspiring dinner in the bus terminal’s Halal food court and was at the coach twenty minutes prior to departure, which was just as well when it came to storing the backpack in the jam-packed locker. The bus carried roofing material and supplies to last a village for at least three months—I was just waiting for the chickens. Eventually, we had to unpack the storage lockers. The driver pointed at the backpack: “Take inside!”
No way. I was not prepared to sit with my knees up that backpack for sixteen hours, all the way to Miri. Especially not for 80RM. But as I said, it was good that I was there. I manhandled the thing into a tiny space on top of some boxes, giving it a good pummeling in the process, and loh—it fitted.
On the way out of town we stopped repeatedly to pick up the requisite villagers, leaving me wondering whether I could have flagged down the thing had it passed the local bus stop. But no matter, we were on the road and the seats were wide and comfortable. After the early start that morning, I was more than ready for some sleep. However, the trip turned out to be somewhat hexed.
I don’t know what got me thinking about fleas, perhaps it was just something I dreamed, but I woke up from my slumbers with an infernal itching on both feet. In all likelyhood, this was a reaction to the high concentration of citronella I had applied—the oil stinging my skin—but I could not get the picture of fleas out of my head. Consequently I started to itch on my neck and shoulders. Stop it, I chided myself and it did gradually get better. But when I next opened my eyes, I saw a tiny cockroach scuttling under the seat next to my feet.
It turned out that the bus had its own endemic population of cockroaches, no bigger than about half the size of a little finger. They were in fact just big enough to squeeze beneath a lose seat fitting, making me wonder whether they had specifically evolved for that purpose. They were not scary but they made my skin cribble all over again.
We drove through the night on the single road that links Kuching with Miri and on, to Banda Seri Begawan in the Sultanate of Brunei Darusalaam, Kota Kinabalu and Tawau and all the way around Malaysian Borneo. In that respect, it is like Scotland where a single mudslide can cut off half the country. With the aircon on full, I found myself missing the highlands, half-expecting pine trees to grow outside the frosted windows. But the great little roads as they are known are never that busy, not even during the holiday season. We were driving along in one big, unending convoy of express buses, lorries, cars and scooters. The rest stop looked like a coach convention.
I sparked up a cigarette only to realise with a start that I was standing next to a pile of fuel cans. I hastily retreated to find my place swiftly taken by other smokers.
“Bahan Api!” (fuel) I cried, gesturing, but they just shrugged. They probably didn’t understand me and most likely do this every day—and the rest station hadn’t blown up yet.
I had only just managed to doze off again when we stopped at yet another palm tree. This time it was my neighbour who got off. I shifted to the window seat and a woman quickly shot up the aisle to claim the free space only to be shouted at by the conductor to piss off back behind where she belonged (I’m not translating verbally, but his manner left little room for misunderstanding). Nice guy. He then plonked himself down in the seat next to me, reclined it and proceeded to snore loudly.
That didn’t bother me, but I started awake when I felt his hand against my thigh. It could be purely innocent. A lot of the locals don’t have the same concept of personal space as I do—perhaps he was Iban. But if he was a Muslim Malay man, this was a strict no-no. He might just be asleep, or it might be a cheeky come-on. I decided to take no chances. With both seats reclined we were practically lying in a double bed. It made me feel faintly nauseous.
I snapped up the seat and fell back into an uneasy doze, eventually reclining it again part-way. The next time the guy touched me, I prodded him with an elbow and told him in no uncertain terms to lay off. This may have been rude, but I didn’t care. He wasn’t a nice guy anyway. After a few prods, we settled into an uneasy truce. He kept away and I squeezed up against the window, missing my previous neighbour who had been polite and quiet.
At 3 am, the bus stuttered to a hold.
“Traffic lights”, the conductor muttered.
Traffic lights? Here?
Perhaps there had been an accident. After we had started and stopped three times, I disembarked, lit a cigarette and walked up past the queue of buses and lorries until I came to a river. The lights of a ferry were winking in the distance. Through the smoke wafting past my face I saw the ghostly shadow of an enormous bridge spanning the Rajang river on my left. Sparks flew from soldering irons under yellow sodium lamps high up where people were still at work. The bridge was almost completed. The scenery reminded me again of Scotland, only stickier. The warm air slapped me like a wet towel. I took off my jacket and turned around. In the soupy water below me, an elongated shape bobbed. It looked like the head of a whale.
Hitching up my trousers, I waded into the luke warm broth, smelling faintly of sewage, and prodded the shape: wood.
On the way back to the waiting bus, a ghost crab scuttled in front of my feet.
I sat fretting about the open scratches on my feet and the TCP cream, now safely stored in the backpack deep inside the hold. In the seat behind, a child whispered in that urgent whisper that you can’t help but listen to intently even if it is in a language you don’t understand. I wished it would scream instead and regretted it when a baby nearby did. The child started prodding the bag of my seat. But then we were moving again and everything calmed down.
The remainder of the journey was surly. We pulled into Bintulu in the grey light at 7:15 in the morning, the driver grumbling because he was late. There were no food stalls in the station. A lone hawker was just setting up her wares, but the sign on the platform announced our departure at 7:30 and I dared not move away from the bus. We eventually left at 7:45, after another re-packing excercise. A surly female conductor ordered the fattest woman in the bus to sit next to me but thankfully she refused. Her place was taken by a bloke whose facial expression did not change and who did not say a word during the entire trip. Maybe it was the way I smelled. The female conductor asked for ticket stubs and of course I had lost mine. For a while I feared she might throw me off the bus, but she just shrugged.
At 11 o’clock, a policeman with a machine gun boarded the bus. He pointed the weapon at us as he walked through the aisle, barking: “Passports!” Luckily I had been awake and remembered what country we were in. I watched him march a man to a checkpoint on the side of the road but did not get up to look outside—best not to draw attention to myself. The cop got back on board and hauled out a black man. Certain that I was next in line, I put on my shoes and told myself to stay calm. But the cop did not return and we rolled on.
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Denni