Heaven & Hell in Indonesia (standard:travel stories, 5694 words)
Author: John Ahern	Added: May 19 2010	Views/Reads: 3188/2765	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Rough Travel from Australia to Borneo via The Spice Islands & Sulawesi 2008. See photos here: http://www.johnahern.net/page21.html

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

with a rope around my waist to stop me flying about the open cockpit or 
being washed over the side! 

This boat has no wet weather gear and even the lifejackets are pretty
useless – took me ages to find them under tons of gear dashing back 
from the lockers to the helm every 5 seconds and, just for the warmth, 
I am wearing the only one that remotely  resembles a jacket. Wearing 
all I've got, just T-shirt and shorts I've been soaked thru since we 
left Ambon and my skin is starting to peel, but compared to three of 
the others I am the lucky one without the ‘mal-de-mer'. 

I just realised I am really hungry – nothing since the bread and cheese
24 hours ago. I dare not go below in case I step on someone (or their 
vomit!). Maybe I should try to wake the skipper and ask if he knows the 
wind has increased by 10 knots since he went below – maybe I should ask 
him “SO WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YA, MATE? I'M STARVING! 

Banda Naira: I was stared at as I came ashore and kissed the ground—the
locals must have thought I was one of them; a Muslim! I've got a bad 
chest infection and was lucky the others, Mick and Craig were able to 
relieve me as I was only fit for my bunk during the second half of the 
voyage. At one stage Mick seemed to have revived and opened a tin of 
stew for me and warmed it up – I'll never forget the look on his poor 
face as he handed it to me before he suddenly rushed to the side to 
throw up! 

As the yacht pitched and rolled I soon realised I had to lie with my
head to stern to stop my body being pushed up through my skull and into 
my brain when we went down and wallowed into those troughs. I had to 
tie myself in too as it's a long way down from the top berth. In the 
end I was a bit delirious. 

I was able to get some good food at a little guest house in the port;
‘Delfika'. This proved to be the best food and accommodation I found in 
Indonesia, one of the rare places that served vegetables!  Just a few 
rooms surrounding a garden with a waterfall and a parrot named Yoga 
who's been chained to his perch for decades. I got on well with the 
proprietor (and the parrot), a gentle soul named Bahri (the proprietor) 
who had the only computer on the island of Banda Naira—a very slow 
connection that sometimes took hours to log-on and up to 10 minutes to 
download a page! I would spend hours trying to send an email. 

Bahri seemed oblivious to my pleas regarding Yoga not being allowed to
fly around and I tried to appeal to his religious beliefs in that Allah 
probably never meant for flying creatures to be tied down just for 
man's pleasure “You are committing a BIG sin Bahri” I said, but it made 
no difference. Meanwhile I'd play my whistle for Yoga, I reckon he knew 
the tunes by the time I left—Carrigfergus, Down by the sally Gardens, 
Eine Kleine Nacht Musik and Papa was a Rolling Stone. 

Bahri has the contents of my iPod in his computer and I doubt he'll ever
listen to that stuff—I saved the memory card after the iPod went 
underwater one night in Ambon when I put my trust in a drunken sailor 
to take me from the shore to the yacht and we all ended up in the 
water. Lucky we were close to shore, I've no doubt I would  have 
survived but I'm not sure about the others who were a bit pissed! Now 
that conservative Muslim has my stuff in his computer; 600 songs from 
Beethoven to Punk and Rap and the Rolling Stones and Theodorakis, 25 
Goon Shows and about 10 hours of ABC Radio National programs including 
programs of Science, Psychology, Books, Philip Adams interviews etc.. I 
wanted to clear the card so that I could use it in my camera. 

I got some antibiotics for what may be pneumonia from the tiny ‘obad'
(chemist) but there was no info on dosage. I emailed my friend the 
Doctor Manolis Proheraris of Crete and he gave me the required advice—a 
seven day course and it cost  just a dollar! On his advice I wrote the 
dosages on the other medications at the ‘obad', doing my bit for any 
unfortunates, shipwrecked sailors and others, who may stagger in. I 
started to improve after a couple of days. 

The yacht's crew are making plans to sail away for Australia; the  sails
have been repaired by the locals and the boat has been drying out. 
However, the weather is still rough outside and I am really amazed that 
the two female crew (they suffered most) are ready to do it all 
again—guess they have no option anyway as the once-a-week flight has 
been cancelled—again. I think I'd never get on a boat again if I'd 
suffered just a little of what I'd seen them go through. 

LATER: I'm back in Banda Naira from the Island of Ay - poor visibility
for snorkelling because of the heavy rain. Travelled out there with the 
French ‘Balloon Man' Oliver and his pretty but more conservative 
girlfriend from Barcelona. She told me she lives on a yacht in 
Barcelona, a hulk that needs a handyman to repair – she picked the 
wrong man in Oliver! However, she couldn't have wished for a nicer and 
more attentive clown in her life – like a child with a beard! For many 
years he's been making his living entertaining kids with his balloons 
in places like Japan, making all kinds of animals with so much fun and 
enthusiasm.. His ‘real' job is merchandising for such stars as Madonna 
and U2 at concerts in different parts of the world. He's also a chess 
champion and the word was soon about on the Island and the local 
schoolteacher came to play each evening. 

We stayed in a nice clean house run by the Muslim mayor of the Island, a
man who had several sets of clothes which he changed in the same order 
every day – outfits ranging from hippie beachcomber to traditional 
Muslim garb with headwear, the latter he would wear in the evening. It 
was difficult to recognise him. Oliver says he likes to be addressed as 
‘Monsieur le Mayor'. 

There are no cars on the Island, just narrow, mostly concreted pathways
and these pathways are of the coverd in bedsheets and tablecloths where 
the householders dry their spices in the sun. Looking at the guest book 
you could see tourists were few and far between over the years. The 
generator came on at dusk and we would to sit around the table in front 
of the compulsory television as we ate our fish, cassava and rice (no 
variation) watching the typical Indonesian program format that 
everyone, adults as well as kids, find so entertaining: Girl is 
abducted by bad guy who turns into a monster (he can keep changing 
shape as it suits), she sends out a signal and schoolboy boyfriend with 
powers comes to her aid and battles the bad guy in all his various 
forms with big noises and exclamations flashed across the screen: 
Kapow! Bang! Eek! Wallop! Ouch! And then they all have a sing-along 
when the monster is dead. The only fat kids in Indonesia are starring 
in these programs and they must be the same handful I've seen around 
the (usually one and only) shopping plaza in cities such as Ambon, 
Balikpapan and Makassar where they have their own McDonalds and KFC 
equivalent. 

The ferryboat to and from the island is DANGEROUS! On the return journey
I waited on the beach in the rain, early in the morning while they 
loaded the narrow boat with so much stuff; bananas, coconuts, cassava 
etc., that the water was up to the gunwales before the passengers 
numbering  about 30 aboard to take their chances on the big rolling 
waves. The skill of the helmsman and his two big outboard motors which 
he used in turn to start, stop and weave us about the heavy swell. 
Sometimes we were surfing down the back of a wave with both propellers 
clear of the water. And as usual in Indonesia, not a lifejacket 
anywhere! 

The weather is still wet and stormy , flights just once a week out of
Banda on a 50/50 gamble and just ONE ship every two weeks already 
running a day or two late because of the bad weather that nearly 
shipwrecked us on the voyage down. I'd be marooned for a further two 
weeks if I hadn't cached a ride on a cargo ship 'Atlantis' currently 
unloading at the dock and sailing for Seram tonight. From there I'll 
try to get back to Ambon and fly to Makassar and go overland to Toraja 
and  the Togean Islands in North Sulawesi. Feeling much improved and 
just a bit of a cough. Making good headway with the language too! 

Ambon again! And it's like heaven after what I've been through recently.
It all began well as we departed Banda after dark though I was amazed 
that we made it out of the harbour with all those ragged sailors more 
interested in the TV which had prominent place in the wheelhouse. The 
young captain made sure I never left his side and stared at me to the 
point that I wondered if he'd ever seen a white man in his life – 
everything I did, every move I made was like a fantastic occasion to 
him and his crew. I thought I'd go crazy! 

I was dropped in the east of Seram – out of the frying pan into the fire
– the road to Amahai and a ferry to Ambon was washed out in numerous 
places. Thus began a journey on minibuses, cars and mostly motorbikes 
between the broken bridges and the rivers which I had to wade across 
and all this in heavy rain. Dropped in Amahi at dusk near a hotel in 
the jungle at the edge of town and I doubt they ever had a guest before 
me! Dirty, dark and smelly it was too (and the same for the staff) and 
it  reminded me of something out of a horror movie with it's red 
painted rooms and high ceilings. There was no way of drying out my 
gear. 

After all the payments for the different transports between the washed
out roads and broken  bridges I discovered I only had enough cash to 
pay the hotel and tomorrows boat fare with NO rupiahs left even for a 
meal if I could find one on that wet and dismal night.  AND the ferry 
terminal still 10klms away meant I had to get up at 4am and walk the 
distance in two hours to be in time. No problem, I thought, and at 4am 
the rain was like a waterfall and there was nothing for it but to step 
out. 

I walked a mile in ankle deep water with my little flashlight trying to
find the road. I was soaked through but that was nothing new as 
everything was still drenched from the day before. Now my boots were 
full of water and I stumbling on blindly, trying to keep my speed up. 
Out of the dark came a voice and there was a trikeshaw and the most 
desperate looking driver I'd ever seen (most of them look like the 
lowest form of humanity in Indonesia and they have brains to match) and 
he must have been very desperate to think he'd find anyone looking for 
a ride in such deserted place at that time of night. He was barefoot 
and had wads of plastic shoved into his belt and his hatband – one big 
sheet would have covered him but I guess he only had these scraps which 
were just about useless and I doubt he had the sense to spread them out 
anyway! 

Until then I had nothing but bad experiences with trikehshaw drivers –
if you want a cheap ride and be taken well away from where you want to 
go then they're OK!  He staggered along beside me, muttering,  pushing 
his bike and clacking his bell – it's not a bell in the real sense but 
two bits of flat, rusty metal that bang together making a ‘clack, 
clack.' sound. I gave in, I thought he could ride as fast as I could 
walk (wrong) and I would be sheltered in the plastic canopy in front of 
the handlebars, wrong again and deafened by the rain. I told him I had 
no rupiah but I'd pay him five Australian dollars. Soon we were going 
along a road that had a few lights and then, in spite of my protests he 
turned right and after a few blocks we were down by the shore – I could 
hear the sea but not see it in the pitch black. 

He asked for his money and then began my long explanation (again in my
pigeon Indonesian) about me wanting to go to the terminal to catch the 
ferry. He  suddenly ran off splashing thru the mud and then I hear him 
rapping on someone's door and there was a conversation coming and going 
on the wind with whoever he had woken up. He came clattering back, he 
jumped on, I jumped in and once more we were flying along at walking 
pace and onto the main road again that soon turned into a narrow track 
with potholes that did terrible things to both his bike and my bum. 

Most of the time we just walked as the progress was faster and once or
twice his chain came off and he was lucky I had my now fading 
flashlight. I was never really sure whether we were on the road of off 
but just before 6 am and still dark we arrived at the desolate port and 
woke up the harbour master who gave us a cup of tea. I paid the driver 
his $5 and he looked so worried that I also gave  US$5 – he still 
looked a bit unsure as he sat there on floor of the veranda, 
occasionally retrieving the notes from his rags he would hold them up 
to the light and put them away carefully again only to pull them out 
and start the inspection again and passing them to the harbour master 
for his opinion. 

When I finally came ashore on the other side I had to hitch a ride to
Ambon and it was still raining. 

Ampana, Sulawesi Lots to tell but no time - I just found the only
internet connection since the Spice Islands and the ferry is about to 
leave for the Togean Islands - survived the trip from hell to get here 
last night - 55 klms thru the jungle on back of a motorbike in sheets 
of rain and had to wade across several rivers, holding my pack and 
boots above my head,  where the rain had cut the road. A 'bemo' 
(minibus) and motorbike were swept away by a landslide on that same 
road last night and a number of lives lost. 

Finally meeting some tourists and it's a bit scary - big hire cars and
personal guides. They are particularly interested in Tana Toraja with 
it's hanging cave graves and the frenetic slaughter of animals from 
chickens to pigs and buffalo that marks the annual funeral season where 
THOUSANDS of animals are hacked to pieces – the Torajans believe the 
more animals slaughtered the better chance the departed one has in the 
after-life. The terrible sounds of squealing pigs and bellowing buffalo 
can be heard all over the valley as they go about the slaughter with 
gusto. This goes on for two months every year. 

Met two girls, travelling separately and each telling a different tale
re the perils of being a female travelling alone; the short little waif 
with the red hair had many problems with flashers and perverts whereas 
the tall good looker had no problems – could be the fact that the 
little one had piercings only a scrap metal merchant would be proud of 
– you name the type and place and she had it! There was even a faint 
ringing sound whenever she moved or even opened her mouth to speak! She 
had already lost her passport and bank card and was sleeping on a sofa 
in a hotel lounge while she awaited help from home or the consulate in 
far off Jakarta or something. We ate rough on the street and the poor 
thing devoured most of the fish and I made do with the dreaded coconut 
and pretend vegetable, whatever it was. 

Gorontalo, Nt Sulawesi Arrived  by boat from the Togean Islands in the
North of Sulawesi where the snorkelling was good but the corals are 
mostly dead there too. No electricity and had to catch fish each day to 
survive. (I hate fish!). Actually, I can eat fish every day if it's 
BBQ'd or grilled without the usual palm-oil or sauce. 

There were two dive centres at Kadidiri, foreign owned and operated and
Aka, the original owner of the beach (he sold most of it for a few 
hundred dollars a few years ago) still runs his VERY basic ‘Pondok 
Listari' with his wife and teenage daughter. Other family members drop 
in as they paddle by to and from other islands but everyone just sits 
around and does nothing much while the place is falling down around 
them. It's just an old shack on stilts on his remaining  patch of beach 
and the ‘accommodation' are three thatched huts with incredibly hard 
kapok beds, pillows stuffed with sand or rocks and gaps everywhere in 
the walls and floors and no locks on the doors. The ‘mandi' 
(toilet/bathroom) is just a hole in a concrete block and a bucket and 
scoop (as usually the case) to wash. I seldom went in there! The lights 
are provided by a generator that's helped by a solar panel and it 
rarely worked while I was there. Reading with a candle is highly 
dangerous in a bamboo hut so we would sit at the oilcloth covered table 
on the long veranda, just a thatch roof and no walls, and fight off 
moths and other bugs that flew in as we squinted into our books by the 
gradually fading light of the lantern that never had enough fuel to 
make it bright enough. Actually it was better there without the 
electricity anyway—no noisy generator to run the (usually) screeching 
radio and the main evening entertainment was the antics of the five 
cats and kittens. Reading Captain Bligh's Portable Nightmare by John 
Toohey—excellent! 

Aka would spend his evenings repairing his fishing lure (he only had
one) or carving dolphins out of shells. I gave him a pair of $2 glasses 
and though at first he seemed sceptical I noticed him wearing them each 
evening and some of his family wearing them between times. My first 
evening there I went fishing with Aka and Boris and Aka's brother and 
we had four lures. We trawled all over the place as the sun was setting 
and it may have been beginner's luck because I caught the fish—big ones 
that fed us all. The next trip wasn't so lucky and I lived on eggs and 
rice for a while. If there was a fish to eat Boris got it as he loved 
the smelly sauce. 

After the first night we only had one lure because Aka's brother left on
his boat taking his tackle with him. There was a lot of painting and 
fixing to be done to that remaining lure and it was tough going to keep 
us all fed. I later sent him a box of tackle from Manado, wonder if he 
ever received it. Towards the end of the week I was looking in my 
dictionary for the word ‘Kudisan' meaning Scurvy and before I could put 
it to use the woman showed up with a shopping bag that had something 
green hanging out of it. She had made the treacherous voyage in the 
narrow outrigger to another island that morning but I think the 
priority was fuel for the lamp because the ‘green stuff' was more like 
something you'd find on the road after it had been run over by a few 
trucks. Meanwhile I was like the ‘Bush Tucker Man' searching for 
berries or whatever in all that jungle – so much greenery about but 
nothing green to eat! The coconuts were good though whenever the milk 
was sweet. 

I often wondered if it might be better to just go over to one of the
slightly more expensive resorts but the thought of all those fat, loud 
tourists turned me off. The term  resort  is not what the word usually 
conjures up—Indonesian island resorts are usually just a collection of 
simple huts containing a bed, fan and if you're lucky, a mosquito net . 
There was so much time wasted by my family that nothing got done in the 
way of repairs and maintenance—they had mobile phones, one for every 
member of the family and the only reception was at the north west 
corner of the veranda (nearest the resorts) where the phones hung on 
nails in the post. There they would occasionally alert the family who 
came running past us from their covered hovel (kitchen/livingroom/beds) 
at the other end of the veranda. Aka must have wondered at his luck 
that he had not sold a foot more of his beach—a fraction more and he 
and his family would have been cut off from the rest of the world's 
mobile phones! I watched the floorboards lifting and the steps of the 
stairs coming adrift and wondered if anyone else noticed and  in the 
end it was I who suffered because of this: One evening there was one 
tiny fish to eat and I had found a potato and asked the missus to make 
me ‘kentang goring' - fried potato –CHIPS! (Oh yes!). The giggling 
daughter brought the little fish (for Boris), the rice (in it's usual 
rusty colander, complete with insects) and the CHIPS to the table and 
it was just then she finally tripped over that loose floorboard. The 
fish and rice landed on the table, lucky Boris,  but my beautiful CHIPS 
flew through the air and scattered all over the floor and the five cats 
got them before I could move! The only other edible thing left was a 
tiny tomato and I wondered how long I'd survive as I was doing my 
‘extreme snorkelling' out there on the reef every day and I had already 
lost so much weight that I suffered every night whenever I tried to 
turn over in my ‘scratcher' with my bones hitting that useless kapok 
mattress. Even sitting reading was a problem for me with the bones of 
my bum poking out! But still, I had energy like I've never had before 
and would have loved a few more volcanoes to climb even after 
swimming/snorkelling 4klms each day. In retrospect I think that it must 
have been about now that my body was starting to live on itself – 
suicide by auto-cannibalism. (Wow!) 

Borneo: Pulau Derawan is a tiny, tear-shaped island off Borneo's north
east in Kalimantan and I‘d say it was one of the best experiences of 
this trip. It was the most difficult place to reach and one of the bus 
journeys north from Balikpapan took 21 hours over the worst roads 
(tracks) in thunderstorms. Because of the distance and expense (the 
island boats are run by a sort of ‘speedboat mafia') there were just 6 
other tourists there and they are leaving today. The island has the 
best accommodation huts I've seen; solid, well constructed cabins up to 
200 meters out over the sea on long jetties where you can see the giant 
turtles, you can feed and swim with them. With the water lapping the 
stilts it's like sleeping on a boat, though I wondered if all that 
beautiful hardwood had been plundered from the fast disappearing Borneo 
forests. 

I spent most nights helping the WWF man collect the eggs as the big
turtles came back and crawled ashore to lay them in the spot where they 
hatched 20 years ago—on a beach of pure white sand and palm trees in 
the light of the full moon. Then we would take the eggs to the hatchery 
compound and dig a hole of about a meter and deposit the eggs—usually 
about 100 from each turtle. Then we would walk around the grid feeling 
for tiny movements under our bare feet and find some tiny turtles 
emerging from the deposits of 60 days ago. As the moon climbs higher 
the rush starts and soon there are hundreds scrambling out in a mad 
dash, pushing each other up through the sand. 

Sometimes we'd remove a little sand from a hole if the turtles were slow
in coming out, the we'd have to feel the shells and if too soft the 
hole would have to be covered over for another night's ‘cooking'. By 
this time there would be scores of turtles running around inside the 
fence, trying to find their way to the sea. We'd collect them in 
buckets and release them to scurry down the beach towards the moon and 
into the water and off on their way around the world to return to this 
exact spot in 20 years. You can see my 3 Derawan videos on (click) 
YouTube 

Another interesting place is the island of Kakaban, like a volcano with
a big lake in it's centre. This lake of green water contains millions 
of jellyfish (non-stinging) and it's like swimming in jellyfish soup. 
Snorkelling under the rocks on the western side of the island was the 
best; colourful corals and fish and an incredible drop-off that made 
you feel like floating in outer-space. 

Apart from the fantastic losmen (simple guest houses and I recommend the
‘Danaken') Derawan has the best diving resort but that too is empty. 
The ‘speedboat mafia' have completely killed the tourism and the locals 
can do nothing about it while their hotels stand empty. The touts have 
a way of always adding to the agreed cost - '"So now you've paid 
hundreds to charter our boat and diving gear, how about hiring wetsuits 
as well, and you'll need to hire a mask too, a snorkle also and you 
need a fin? better hire a second fin too!!" 

They don't even have a ferry service and can't even offer tourists a
ride on local boats for fear of sabotage. Halfway through a charter 
boat journey they'll change the price and the weaker tourists (not me) 
will just pay it! All this in a paradise where there are no cars and a 
good meal of grilled fish, around a rickety table covered in oilcloth, 
outdoors under the moon at April's place costs about $3. Just a 
generator to run the electricity for a few hours each night and the 
main pastime is making babies! 

With the idea of flying to Australia from Bali I have to admit to a
night in the infamous KUTA BEACH Bali Backpacker Heaven – party-seeking 
Aussies (and others) galore but I just had to do it after running the 
gauntlet of pushers/pimps//sharks and transport mafiosies on the 
outward journey. Went scuba diving in the Gili Islands off Lombok and 
arrived here late last night after leaving the Islands at 8am 
yesterday. I had to share the shuttles – boats and buses with the 
European tourists and their sky-scraper back packs, taking their dirty 
laundry on a tour of wild and exotic parts of the globe!  Can't think 
what else they might be carrying – cigarettes perhaps, as they all seem 
to be trying to outdo the locals in chain-smoking – even the beautiful 
people at the dive centers are cool enough to smoke, instructors, 
dive-masters and all. 

I can walk all day with my pack of 7 kilos and I still carry snorkelling
mask and fins as well as a Frisbees, 6 harmonicas and a flute! Though I 
must admit I shredded my ‘other' shirt in a frenzy to scratch a 
mosquito bite in bed last night. (Better to wear your own dirty shirt 
than sleep on someone else's dirty sheet!)  The shirt was showing signs 
of advanced rot anyway after wearing it every other day for nine weeks 
through some pretty damp weather and it was the last of my favourites 
from my brother Gerard with it's Kinsale logo on the front. 

Can't wait to get home to a bit of brown bread, cheddar cheese and onion
and a glass of milk! Then a complete forest of broccoli, perhaps, and 
maybe even a glass or two of red wine. 


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