(Jakarta – Bogor – Yogyakarta - Luang Prabang, Laos)
Good morning from the very relaxed French colonial area of Luang Prabang in Laos. The story so far: a two week tour by train across Java, then a flight to Bangkok and Chiang Rai to join a small group travelling slowly down the Mekong River into Northern Laos. I'm looking out over the fast flowing Mekong river with its fishing boats, long "slow boats" and the somewhat temporary looking vehicle ferry (a shed attached to a barge with a motor, ploughing through light brown muddy waters) to the dirt road on the western side. The air hangs thickly with humidity. I have declined such delights as the "2 Day Mahout Course" and pleas from Tuk Tuk drivers in order to spend some time in this French cafe (with brilliant pastries and baguettes) to write to you(se). Laos is a bit like other parts of Asia 20 years ago: relaxed, poor, welcoming, and not yet with the harassment of street sellers and beggars at any place attracting visitors...
--------------------------------------------------------- This trip started in Indonesia: I reckon I was last in Java about 28 years ago. By now I shouldn't be falling for obvious travel scams, but the "I-haven't-got-any-change-for-the-toll-for-the-Jalan-Tol-from-the-airport-into-Jakarta-and-I-have-no-change-so-you-need-to-pay" scam still got me, and as the taxi driver waited for my small change, passing child beggars climbed onto the roof. On my first day getting around the city I fell into the usual trap for new arrivals: the first carriage of local trains is for women only (they haven't yet signposted them all with the purple WANITA stickers) as is the front of TransJakarta buses. Train guards seem to make a bit of a sport of escorting foreigners down to the standing room only mixed gender section of Comuter trains. Trans Jakarta is a whole different experience: shabby high floor buses roar down the smooth (more or less) reserved (more or less) lanes of Jakarta's main drags. Every kilometer or so there is a station with a high platform and broken or smashed sliding glass doors facing the road with a crush of people waiting for the next bus. It arrives: wide bus doors fly open, crowds push and shove in and out in one melee, leaping the up to 50cm gap between bus floor and platform "assisted" by a kid in a grey uniform or smiling women in red hijabs. They push people back when the bus is semi full, then bus doors slam shut and the bus roars out, leaving what's left of the waiting queue in a cloud of exhaust. The noise, waiting in the bus stations amongst 8 lanes of traffic, is tremendous. It's mass transit on the cheap for the third world and has sped up public transport in a city of huge traffic gridlock. The news report that 4 buses had caught fire in service over the last 6 months didn't exactly inspire confidence. The Comuter trains are rather more efficient and comfortable (unless you find yourself in EKONOMI: see below), but can be confusing. They're largely second hand from Japan and are put into service as soon as they land, still with original signs and destinations often from Tokyo Metro, without the strange Japanese fetish for cleanliness. The train to the brilliant Bogor botanical gardens had the destination of OTEMACHI RAPID. It wasn't. It comes as a shock the first time you see people travelling on the roofs of local trains, sitting directly under the electric wires. The huge rolls of barbed wire hanging from platform canopies (if there IS a platform... the doors fly open on both sides at most stations) don't seem to deter roof riders who climb up the metal grids over drivers' windows and sit on the roof directly above the guard. Uniformed guards on trains and stations seem to be mainly for decoration and to heave people up into doorways directly from the tracks. Most stations don't have footbridges, so you climb up into and through other trains to access your platform, hoping that the doors won't trap you in the wrong train, or that a passing train won't wipe you out on the tracks. OHS? Disability access? I don't think so... Jakarta Post report: following protests by conservative Moslem leaders, the government banned the concert by Lady Gaga in Jakarta because it was inconsistent with social values. A large protest of ticket-holders (many in Moslem clothing) resulted. The country seems (and I am told: IS) more Islamic than it was 20 years ago. The iron fist of Soeharto's rule is gone and the fledgling democracy struggles to cope with growing demands for Islamisation. The Lady Gaga decision often is part of a scam to extract more money from public events in conflict with conservative values as well as a means of social control. One of our hotels warned the tour leaders that when they next visit Malang it will be Ramadan and alcohol, if available, will need to be served in tea cups. My two days wandering Jakarta on my own turned into three when the tour group from Perth on the 1.30am Jetstar flight suffered a delay due to malfunctionng equipment. When the warming light just went off, they took off, only to return to Perth (without being told) some 4 hours later when the crew realised the malfunction was real. They then sat on the tarmac for three hours until a passenger insurrection and the end of crew hours forced a 24 hour delay. When passengers got onto the same plane with the same crew at midnight, it was not the beginning of a happy flight. You can tell the hotel menu items unfit for Moslems as they are each listed with a large smiling pink pig in the margin. On Day 3 in Jakarta, having done the tourist colonial and historical and Wayang thing in Kota and the malls and museums, I took a Comuter train out past the viciously dire trackside slums of Slipi to Serpong., a kind of new suburb of planned ticky-tacky middle class villa developments and crawling traffic. Trip out: fine, air conditioned, Comuter train (Destination: RAPID NAKANO in clear Japanese and English), even managed to get a seat for the last two stops as we hit what's left of the Jakarta green belt. The trip back: shabby Ekonomy diesel hauled train from somewhere further west stopping EVERYWHERE on its way to Jakartakota. How to explain Ekonomy: it's the cheapest and slowest train for the poorest of travellers. Every line has them to help locals to travel, especially to and from markets. Comforts include: some open windows and every open door; hard plastic benches down the sides, and absolutely crammed with people and goods for/from market except for the space down the middle of each car used by hawkers who endlessly "work the train" selling lovely things in a Dickensian kind of way. Travel is equal parts entrepreneurship, poverty, mobile phone texting and muttering, polite stiocism. In amongst the urchin singers (who then ask for money), beggars with plaintive calls and cries and disabilities chant out loud and touch every passenger as they proceed from car to car. Very young children hand you neatly written notes (their plight) then collect the notes back with or without money. And the sales people are a procession of "opportunities". Do you want to buy biscuits/tissues/block cake/flashy electric glowing spinning tops/glutinous grey sticky rice in banana leaves/Hello Kitty fans/plastic pineapple or soccer ball key rings/bags of mystery nuts/cold drinks of varying hygiene... The carriage is a sweat box with six windows and two double doors on each side of a crush of humanity and huge bags of goods. Half the passengers sit on the floor which is worn down to the metal ribs of the carriage. The grimy grey ceiling, floors and walls are illuminated by a single fluorescent tube in a cage. Back packs are worn on the front to deter pickpockets and hands are fixed on bags, pockets, and belongings in the crush. The place to be is sitting at the open door. One bloke has it worked out: crouched on his feet on the carriage step, carefully reading a broadsheet newspaper as the train rattles along back in past the Slipi slums. For some reason the draft and rush of breeze from the moving train doesn't disturb his reading (as one newspaper seller keeps pushing me from behind to buy his sole English copy of the Jakarta Post. If I could move in the wedge of bodies, I’d show him the sweaty copy I already have. And after the perspiration has been running down my face and back and legs for an hour, the train pulls into Tanah Abang and the rush of boarding bodies and goods fights the unstoppable tide of people trying to get off..
After that, I was quite happy to travel "Executif" on the trains across Java, but everyone needs to experience Ekonomi just once... One thing hasn't changed: if you are travelling alone or in a small group you will be approached by high school or university students whose assignment is to converse with a "putih" (white) tourist and provide evidence that you have done so. Previously a photo would do, but in Jogjakarta I found myself filmed on mobile phones as medical students practised their questions and answers. Even the poorest seller in markets is texting away on mobiles, as are monks in Laos... All over Java, school kids greet tourists of any gender with "Hulooooo Misssterrrr" often followed by "Photo Me?" In Borobodur this became many, many invitations to pose for/with family photos: I drew the line at baby holding... They were VERY insistent... Police in Java pull over motor scooters ridden by adults without helmets to enforce the new law. Kids don't need to wear helmets; apparently they can bounce? When the tour group did stagger in from Perth and the "joys" of Jetstar, I have to tell you that I started to feel like the youngest member of a large and ageing and frail Probus Club from Hell... The good news is that we stayed in a series of Dutch colonial hotels of increasing magnificence (and ramps and porterage), and that those of us who were more mobile (about 7 of the 40) had long afternoons to roam around independently during extended siesta times between lunch and dinner.
I teamed up with the next youngest travellers: John and Gaynor, who had grown up in British colonial Borneo complete with plantation-manager parents, and the English boarding school experience in Malaya and then in Perth. Their stories of how families survived the Japanese (if they did) and colonial life added interest to slow dinners (with a background of elderly complaints about spicy food (!!)). Their Bahasa language skills and dry humour got faster service and fewer confusions... Much tut tutting about their unmarried status enriched the trip through Bandung, Jogjakara, Malang and Surabaya no end... News: The head of Bank National Indonesia has been arrested for buying votes. Her first move on arrest was to call for a priest to visit her cell. This was seen as Good Thing. Indonesian MPs are reported to be seen as the most corrupt group in the country, closely followed by the police. I did a nostalgic wander around the backpacker area of Jogjakarta. Apart from Internet cafes, not much has changed, although the losmen where the managing bloke kept trying to create a double bed for Mistress Barbara and myself 28 years ago has been bulldozed for a bypass. After a touch of Borobodur Belly, I went trudging in search on Superman's Wahrung with its banana pancakes. It's still there, though not as small, grotty and smoky and no longer with Michael Franks playing endlessly on the cassette machine.
You know you are on the backpacker circuit when the menu includes such "Indonesian Favourites" as:
Cappucino Cola Milkshake Rp17,500 Moccacino Sprite Milkshake Rp 17,500 (with extra rum: Rp 25,000
The lemon and ginger tea came with a 4cm lump of fresh ginger in the bottom of a schooner glass. News: The local leader in Acheh has directed that Christians in his region demolish most of their own churches so that they are not seen to be competing with Islam, leaving only 4 "condoned" Christian churches in the region. Locals' appeals for intervention from Jakarta are ignored. Christian services are now held in secret as a "passive protest".
I'm about to get onto a flight to Vientiane, so it's "Hulooooo Misssterrrr" to you until I get around to another email. The flight is with Lao Airlines: I DO hope I get around to another email as their planes have a habit of impacting hillsides at high speed. We are flying on their "new jet" (singular) which could be interesting... After Vientiane, I'm travelling overland through Thailand and Malaysia to the shopping mall known as Singapore.
More news: A Bangkok bus driver will continue to drive his route 59 service even though he travels through regular clashes between the Art School and Technical School students along his route. There continue to be several fatal shootings. Hope all is rather more peaceful where you are. Best wishes, Andrew