(Singapore - Jakarta – Yogyakarta - Prambanan – Singapore)
Last time I emailed you all I made an off-hand comment about an airline including prayers for a safe arrival in the in-flight magazine: possibly not such a silly idea in the light of recent events…
Following Sri Lanka I had a semi-planned journey from Yogyakarta to Singapore, which became even more semi-planned around volcanic eruptions and political protests and rallies as I travelled to complete some “unfinished business”.
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Changing planes in Jakarta was a fairly convoluted process of cash-on-entry for a sticky visa, stair climbing, lack of useful signs, and a flight that wasn’t on the departures board, but which did take off for a very buffeted-about journey to Yogyakarta; later explained by an erupting volcano in West Java. The Garuda “lunch boxes” were left largely unopened, as the plane circled and jerked about for half an hour over the lush green rice paddies, dark red villages and sparkling south coast. Yogya Airport is one of those old-style-climb-down-the-back-stairs-and-walk-the-yellow-line-along-the-asphalt-in-the-drizzle-to-Arrivals terminal. I’d been through Immigration in Jakarta, and was clutching my Customs Declaration form; my bag from Singapore arrived, unmolested, and there being no Customs, no officialdom was at all interested in its contents…
Prambanan: a 9th Century Shiva temple, 47 metres of layered carved stonework high in the heavy, humid heat, an hour on the stuffy local bus west of Yogyakarta with Sunday crowds. After walking around the line of leaping Indonesian models in front of professional cameras, and past the traditional Javanese gamelan and dance, The Sunday Javanese Tourist Site Experience awaited: five groups of high school kids in blue T shirts with note making teachers all lying in wait to entrap English speaking visitors to practice their questions: “What is you-or nem? Where are you frum? What do you like about our country?”; dutifully taking it in turns so their teacher could tick who had asked what from the Sunday Language School, followed by group photos and exchanges of “bisinis” cards (as I’d run out of Oz souvenirs after the second group). On the way out of the temple park, groups of locals asked for group photos with the tourist and asked some of the same questions, followed by: “Why is your government so arrogant?”
And back in Yogya, through massed political street banners for the forthcoming elections, a Save Our Current Generation With Islam march was sandwiched between bus stops, becaks, horse drawn carts, roaring motorcycles and obsequious T shirt sellers…
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How to cross the road in Yogyakarta:
Stand on the kerb (or where the kerb should be) and raise your hand: high in the air like the teacher needs to know you need to go to the toilet NOW!!.
Maintaining this hand-urgently-raised stance, move slowly, deliberately into a break in the traffic, staring fixedly ahead, relaxing your raised hand so it appears you are in the surf, summoning help (and once surrounded by moving traffic this will seem very appropriate).
Move slowly, deliberately in a straight line so the traffic will swim/swarm around you.
Once you have reached the far shore, lower your hand and refuse any offers of transport from desperate becak drivers or passing ostlers.
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One reason I’d returned to Yogya was to buy artworks I’d seen 18 months ago: a kind of “reverse batik” (painting the cotton in black, painting a tsunami image using traditional patterns in wax, then bleaching the cotton to produce a final artwork). The gallery, upstairs from the crowded and vibrant Jalan Malioboro, was a bit surprised that anyone would arrive without a tout in tow, but “my” artist was there and following 30 minutes of sweet black tea and bartering I was a proud owner, after being accompanied to a dingy tours office near the station to hand over the cash.
So, it was back down to the lively Sunday evening crowds in Malioboro and the other main reason I was back: New Banesa Music Angklung Malioboro.
If you go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtDXsIwU3Z4
… you will hear a small segment of the vibrant and mesmeric Yogya street music, mixing traditional bamboo instruments with a variety of percussion, (without the one-way procession of traffic noise of roaring motorbikes and buses; the cloying humidity and the smells of Javanese cooking and drains; the security guys with the red wands trying to keep the roadway clear, and the passing horses and carts and the odd stray cat and dancing kids and crowding audience throwing notes into the passing tin, and the gaunt backpackers looking for a cheap guesthouse in the laneways near Tugu station). At night, the length of the main drag has a different band on every block playing this driving and uplifting stuff.
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Argo Lawi express to Jakarta:
It takes only two conductors and two uniformed security staff to check every ticket on the train (you had to show your passport to get onto the platform) before a day of dozing and reading across the mountain range and rice paddies of western Java, and two more uniformed staff pushing a shopping trolley loaded with bottled water through the “Eksekutif” carriage to take lunch orders, followed by two more uniformed “On Train Cleaners” (who “do” the carriage at least once per hour) to provide the service for 8 hours of smoothish travel. Seated next to me is a real estate agent from Surakarta. After about 20 minutes of his faltering English and my more faltering Bahasa Indonesia, and my confirming that I have not met his friend in Brisbane and yes the Australian government is arrogant, he opened a book of prayers in Arabic and spent most of the rest of the day in deep prayer. The prayer cycles lasted for about 20 minutes with uplifted hands, followed by closed-eye meditation, followed by another cycle of prayer. So here’s a thing: at what point does a passenger with a full bladder, following a lean- railway-nasi-goreng-with-teh-panas-lunch, interrupt this intense religious cycle to squeeze past to get to the kamar kecil at the end of the carriage?
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Jakarta to Singapore (to pick up my flight home…): On-line in Jakarta, the DEFAT security warnings for Indonesia were becoming more strident; those for Bangkok in mid-bring-down-the-government-protest-mode were softening (“but stay well clear of street protests”) and the west Java volcanic eruptions were causing flight cancellations. On the way back from confirming Jakarta-Bangkok-Penang flights and a train ticket to KL and Singapore, I had one of those conversations on Sudirman station: “Where are you from? What do you like about our country? What job do you do? Why is the Australian government so arrogant?...”
Jakarta-Hatta Airport: the flight to BKK was still departing, in amongst the growing numbers of cancellations. I willingly paid my capitation tax (you need adequate cash to pay to arrive and to leave Indonesia) and 4 hours later I found myself emerging from the Silom subway station into a crowd of intense whistle-blowing, politically-protesting Thais… also finding that the laneway where I was staying was guarded by the Thai army, sandbagged, camouflaged and very, very armed.
Welcome to Bangkok!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Some days later, having visited friends I could not see in two cities when I returned home early last year, and after a leisurely day (and toxic catering) on Malaysian Railways, I found myself queueing up at Woodlands border terminal, entering Singapore, or so I thought.
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How to Arrive in Singapore by Train (Not):
Get off train from Kuala Lumpur. Queue. Get asked by unsmiling Immigration Officer for “form”. What form? The Entry Form. It’s over there (and two thirds of the queueing foreigners endured the dance of leaving-queue-finding-form-filling-form-rejoining-queue).
Immigration Officer holds passport like it’s a turd, flicking through the pages; flicks through the pages again; flicks through every page yet again:
“Where is the initial from Malaysian immigration?”
The passport had been given a cursory check by a Severe Woman at Johor Bahru station. I hadn’t though to ask for an autograph. I cannot enter Singapore but I have left Malaysia.
I am directed to go back to Malaysia(!)
(To the stationery train? Walk across the causeway? What does this mean?)
The supervisor is called (a smaller and gruffer version of the unsmiling Immigration Officer).
He grabs my errant passport and leads me to a row of stackable chairs on the other side of an adjacent doorway. The other side of the chairs, it seems, is a couple of empty desks which are “Malaysia”.
We wait. The Gruff One calls out. A cleaner appears and does not understand and scuttles away again. In the time it took to find the rumpled Malaysian Immigration official who shuffled in our general direction, the water and bad coffee of the several hours on the train were suggesting they needed to be offloaded. Sadly, I was in “Singapore” but the wash rooms were in “Malaysia”, on the other side of the line of chairs. Out Of Bounds.
I handed the passport over the row of chairs. It disappeared behind a partitioned office. I waited with my gruff Singapore Minder. Passport reappeared: I was now required to prove to the Rumpled One that I was on the actual train that was still in the platform. (It was the only way into this facility because every other possible entry is barbed-wired, guarded and security-camera-ed.)
I passed my train ticket over the row of chairs into “Malaysia”. Rumpled One, passport and ticket disappeared behind the partition for more deliberation. All three reappeared and my passport was handed to the Gruff One who checked for the autograph. It was there. He led me through another set of railings into “Singapore”, after 45 minutes of bureaucratic turpitude. My "thank you" is ignored. I make my way up an escalator, along a corridor and down another escalator to a bus stop and taxi stand.
There is nowhere to change money. There is no ATM, and I have a wallet full of Malaysian currency. There is no wash room.
Welcome to Singapore!
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(And subsequently, train services across the causeway from Johor Bahru have ceased, leaving only crowded commuter buses and huge queues for arriving land passengers...)