[East/Central Indonesia] Day 08 / 3rd June 2006 - And there were Two, on the Road...

I remember we tucked into bed at around 2230hrs on the 2nd of June...

What happened turned out to be one helluva night...

Despite sweeping off the soil grains from the bed, we still felt that the soil weren't completely removed - never mind, we thought we could live with it. Subsequently, we opened up the mosquito net, hoping that it would provide us with some form of protection.

In the end, I think we did ourselves in.

One hour later, and I realised that we had been shut in - either the net didnt work, or there were already mosquitoes around us when we set up the net. Naga managed a few winks, but the way he slept, I was feeling very worried. His breaths were short, deep and quick; not that they were disturbing my sleep, but they seemed like coming from someone asthmatic. I wanted to wake him up and tell him, but I didn't, for fear that he might not be able to fall back into sleep. Besides that, he would also roll left and right, and scratched himself; I was also scratching myself constantly, all-over. I had no choice but to resort to my Axe Brand Medicated Oil and Mopiko - after all, my latest incarnation, according to Naga and MD, was the Ointment Man, the man constantly applying stuff onto himself heh. But on this night, whatever amount of stuff I applied on my body only relieved my discomfort for that little while, never able to settle me down in a condition where I could drift into dreamland...

Naga's breathing pattern finally settled into a somewhat more regular, shallower pattern, but my level of discomfort still remained the same. I could tell that Naga was suffering too, even in his sleep. Every moment when I felt I was closing to shutting down, I felt a mosquito or two resting on my legs, and instinctively, I would reach out and start hitting the spot and then scratching. This was repeated countless, endless times throughout the night that I got so frustrated. Furthermore, the constant buzzing of the mosquitoes heard as they zoomed past my ears just upped my frustration levels a few more notches. The biggest regret - not bringing any repellent or mosquito coil.

For awhile, I so wanted to try something, but fear that it would a big taboo. I was lying and waiting, checking to see if everyone outside had gone to sleep. Realised that I had to go outside the room and check if everyone had turned in; the lights had been on for quite awhile and one couldn't tell is everyone outside ahd gone to sleep or not. One check - good, everyone's sleeping. Even then, I waited for awhile more, just to be sure.

Then I lighted a fag. Gotta generate some smoke to fog out the mozzies.

It worked.

But not permanently.

Back to scratching and rolling around on the bed.

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The mind began to wander off, in an attempt to be distracted from the then-conditions…S

omehow, the mind conjured up images of home, of the people back home…

My bed + my twin pillows. Ingterneck/MSN/Email. Family. Friends.

It must have been that phonecall. Plus aided from the then-conditions.

It was one of those nights where one couldn’t wait for day to break.

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Naga woke up to visit the toilet once, then went back to sleep.

Then, it was my turn. Why must it be now?

I turned around to check; Naga had went back to sleep. Felt like slapping myself, because I didn’t know where the toilet was, and it would be a potential disaster waiting to happen, groping and moving around.

I held back.

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I had resisted the urge to switch the phone on to check the time.

There’s this hypothesis of mine, or rather weird workings of my own mind – if I hope for time to pass, I better not know what time it is, else time would just crawl on slowly.

By then, it didn’t really matter to me. I just wanted to know how long I had been in that state of mental torture.

Pressed and held ON for a few secs.

Punched in password.

Waited.

It was 0430hrs.

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I did eventually fall asleep. The next time I woke up, the skies were beginning to brighten up, and I checked the wall clock outside the room – 0615hrs.

I slept for less than 2 hours, hardly the best preparation for us on the day where we would be embarking on our road trip.

And I’m pretty sure, that I have not lay on bed and yet not been able to fall asleep for this long – 6 solid hours of consciousness and itchiness.


The room where we spent a very bad night…

MD was up, and Naga, whom I guessed finally went into the REM phase, needed some “persuasion” to be woken up. The first conversation topic of the day, naturally, was on the (lack of) sleep the night before. Once again, MD was there to chide us on our level of preparedness; however, he was also ever-prepared, and ever-ready to help us. Out came a bottle of insect repellent, the roll-on type, which he vouched for its effectiveness. He was so kind to pass it to us for the remainder of our trip. Thinking back, it could be a bad move for him, considering he’s still in IJ as I’m typing this log out…

Breakfast was simple – sugar-coated crackers and some sweet cocoa beverage. MD had some breakfast outside when he went out with Edo for a walk, but he finished his drink and some crackers as though it was his first meal of the day.

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Naga and I had been intrigued by the pet vavi which was tied to the backyard ever since we arrived. While waiting for everyone to get ready for a visit to the town centre, we sat outside and analysed the black pig…It had a pretty long nose, and most of the time we caught sight of it, its head was bowed down, mouth in contact with the ground, eating away – it seemed to eat anything and everything, even its own “by-products.” Later on in the day, we would be throwing tuber and banana skins towards the vavi, only for it to finish them up efficiently. We were asked by our hosts to guess how old the vavi is; we guessed about close to a year old or so, for it did looked pretty big, about as long as my feet, and its tummy was almost touching the ground. Our hosts replied that it was actually a few months / less than half a year old, and we were quite astonished at how a pig can grow so big so fast. Naga then went near it, and it was apparently quite shy, for it tried to keep a distance from Naga while making the snorting noises.

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Once everyone was ready, we headed off to town, as usual on ojeks. My driver nearly led me to somewhere else! MD had to come back and lead my driver to our intended destination.

For a start, MD went to look for a cobbler to mend his sandals – the straps had came off whilst the volcano expedition, and he wanted to get them fixed as he promised to give them to Pagi as a gift. That didn’t take long as we watched the skilful hands of the cobbler and his apprentice at work, cutting slits on the sides of the sandals, slotting the straps back in and putting some neat stitchwork to secure the straps. All that for S$2 thereabouts.

Next, we went to this provision shop. I noticed something that MD had remarked previously; that most owners of these shops were Indo-Chinese. We bought some iodine solution for my wound – the locals call it “bendictin” – as well as some lozenges for Naga, who was starting to develop some cough symptoms.

We moved on and went to this shop that develops photos. Naga was looking to transfer his photos from his camera to CD-R. He had forgotten to bring his memory card and thus had to rely on the internal memory of the camera. It was almost full after the one week on Palu’e. Unfortunately, we had little luck, and it seemed like he had to be very selective in photo-taking for the rest of the trip…

More shopping, and we managed to find our adaptor – finally, we can charge our MP3 players and handphones! After that, we headed to the harbour, to bid goodbye to some of the folks who were going back to Palu’e. We saw this big cruise ship that was parked in the harbour…

Last bit of shopping involved MD and Naga trying to buy some more clothes; MD had given his clothes away, and Naga needed a set of clothings or two more, just in case. No luck though, as there weren’t really any suitable clothing stores around. We stopped for a drink at this makan place though; I didn’t stop myself from gulping down two cups of cold mandarin orange drinks. After that, it was back to Sentrum.

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MD and Pelé got themselves ready to leave for the airport. There was still enough time for them to check in their luggage first and then come back for the rest of their stuff. Most of us went along and accompanied them to the airport. On the way, Naga’s cap fell off and luckily, Si’a managed to stop and retrieve it for him.

It was kinda weird; after all, it was only one week ago that we had met up with MD at Harbourfront for this adventure. During the past week, the two of us had certainly learnt even more things from the man. Plus the countless times that he came to our rescue. One part of me felt guilty for imposing on him, one part of me felt grateful for his help and all. Things that we definitely do when we get back include finding a replacement bottle of insect repellent for him, and organising a last get-together before he leaves SG for a long time. And I need to get him handkies!


THE MAN – one of the reasons I won’t forget my 4 years in NUS


Pelé and Si’a – both very nice people who treated us with the utmost warmth and hospitality for the past few days.


Goodbye, for a long time…

As they walked through the fates, the realisation finally set in. I had to rely a lot on Naga from now on, in terms of communication. First thing we did was to get back to Sentrum for our stuff. Once back there, Edo was kind enough to go out to the bus terminal to check out the departure timings for us. Naga and I had planned to head for Ende after analysing the maps that MD had drawn for us the night before. Our plan was to reach Ende before nightfall, and maybe go and visit Kelimutu the day after. Kelimutu is this volcano with three craters, each with the water in the crater showing different colours – sounds pretty scenic. Turned out that the bus would be leaving at 1300hrs, bus fare would be Rp40,000 per head, and it would drop by Sentrum, meaning we still had about one hour to hang around. The duration of the trip was not very consistent though; Edo said we would reach in 2 hours, but other sources told us it was gonna be a 4-5 hour trip.

Meanwhile, Si’a had brought out lunch for us – more crackers and some green bean-pumpkin congee, as well as some coffee that Naga had brought from home. Even though we weren’t very hungry, we finished what we had been offered, for we figured it would be quite some time before we were going to eat anything.

Before long, it was time to bid farewell. The bus had been horning for us from the main road. We waved our goodbyes, and with a heavy heart, set off towards a journey unknown…

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The road trip did not kick off to a good start.

The bad thing about not taking the bus from the terminal was that we could not choose where we wanted to sit – we were left with the only two seats available. Actually they were more like half-seats – Naga ended up with half of his butt hanging in the air, while I was just a little bit luckier, but no less lucky, for though my bum has enough space, my shoulders hadn’t. For half the journey, I could not rest myself on the back of the seat, and had to resort sitting upright, with my bag on my lap.

It didn’t help that the journey was laden with countless curves and slopes. Ok, slopes weren’t too bad, but when the bus had to turn every now and then to negotiate the curves, it soon became unbearable. My medicated oil came in handy, though I had almost used up one bottle the night before combating my itch, I still had some spare reserves. What aggravated the agony was the loud throbbing music that rocked my ear drums to no end – the decibel level was past the level of tolerance, and one of the speakers just so happened to be right above my right ear. The European man beside me used paper to stuff his ears; with my mobility severely limited by the passengers on my left and right, I had no choice but to rest my right ear on my bag to shut out the music.

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It soon transpired that the trip was going to take much more than 2-3 hours.

There were a few stops that the bus made, but we failed to see any place that resembled any place that we could put up for the night. We persisted to wait till we would get out of the mountains and villages to somewhere that we could get accommodation and food.

It turned out that Ende is more than just a town; it’s a regency, probably comparable in terms of a GRC here, not in size, but in scale. Fortunately, some of the passengers had got off the bus, and we were able to settle in more comfortable positions for the rest of the trip.

We were still travelling at around 1700hrs; by then, my hunch was that we had passed the stop where Kelimutu would have been. According to the map, the place where we would be stopping is a sea-side town; however, we were still high up in the mountainous area. Hungry, weary and abit sick, I was wondering if we had missed out stop yet…

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Finally, we came to a place that seemed to indicate that it’s a bus terminal.

Even before we pulled into the terminal, the ojek drivers were trying to pester us to take their bikes; running alongside the bus outside the windows, grabbing the windows and sometimes our arms.

When we got off, we were swarmed by these ojek drivers. I felt completely lost, as only Naga could understand what they were saying. In the end, we managed to get two drivers to drive us to a budget motel; the catch was that we had to pay 10 times more for the ojek than we had done in Maumere. It was obviously an attempt to rip us off, and it was successful, for we were too worn out to argue. Furthermore, the terminal seemed to be “conveniently” located in a particular remote part of the town; with night increasingly getting closer, we faced the prospect of getting stranded on foreign land on our very first day.

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If the ojek drivers were ripping us off, at least they were pretty friendly and helpful.

We learnt that Kelimutu is actually a two-hour ride (approximately) from this town where we would be spending the night. It became obvious that we would not be able to make it up there after all; the transport would probably eat up our finances, and we would have to spend an additional night in the town, which seemed to be exactly what MD had described – quiet, not a lot of places to look around.

We got driven to this Hotel Safari, where we checked the rooms before checking in. We arranged for the ojeks to pick us up tomorrow morning at 1000hrs to the next terminal, and proceeded to our room. We didn’t stay long; our plan was to check out the town and have dinner before it became too late. We wondered into a shop resembling a pharmacy and gotten ourselves some more lozenges. Then we stopped by this roadside restaurant that had a menu similar to the restaurant at the Maumere harbour. We had Nasi Goreng; Naga’s order came with fried chicken while mine had a few sticks of satay. We also ordered an extra plate of kangkong, plus our standard tea/coffee. Though the food wasn’t as fresh as the one we had at Maumere, it was nonetheless good enough, especially after the long day…

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We headed back to the hotel, then washed clothes and showered.

Naga was kind enough to offer the bigger bed to me heh. After our shower, I took out my Neeon, plugged in the earphones and began doing abit of book-keeping for this travel log. The last thing that I did was to edit the photos that I had taken for the past week, since there was some time to kill.

Naga was still was on his book when I dozed off…

To be continued…