Indonesia to Thailand

Richard W. Frank

Anatomy of Restlessness

"What am I doing here?"

-Rimbaud in Ethiopia

The ninth century ruins of Prabanan and Borobudur in Central Java with their various incarnations of the divine (Buddha in many poses, Shiva, Durga, Ganesh-Shiva's elephant-headed son) left me with tired feet and a small idea of an entire culture and people I recently did not know existed.

Things were going smoothly in late May when the immensely popular Sultan Hamengkubuwono X who still rules the Javanese cultural centre of Yogyakarta called for the ouster of Suharto last month, I knew the president did not have much time left in power. All too abruptly, my brush with the ancient Mataram empire came into conflict with the political dramas unfolding in Indonesia. One morning while I was savoring a rare cup of real coffee, my waitress interrupted my reading to inform me that her store was closing due to the impending riot across the street. Down the road was a university that was breathing forth a mass of students some with blue bandannas and revolutionary signs. The stern police were cordoning off the streets and amassing forces themselves. This was not a good sign. The day before six students were shot at a campus protest in Jakarta. I meandered the other direction towards my guesthouse. Along the way I witnessed stores closing at 10am with signs on the windows supporting change. McDonalds and KFC were all for "reformasi." Trying to get money from an ATM, I met Ann and Dave, a British couple who were also running low on rupiah. The town was shut down and people lined the streets waiting for something to happen. Not a good sign.

We ambled back to the travelers enclave in Sosrowijayan. A gaggle of Westerners were eating pizza, watching CNN, and planning their escapes. Wolf Blitzer told us that Clinton wanted Yanks to leave the country, Suharto was still in Cairo, and I only had $18 in rapidly devaluating rupiah. This all seemed unpleasantly real. Visions of "Salvador" danced in my head. Wahoo.

Dave, Ann, and I decided it would be wise to take the overnight bus to Jakarta and try to catch the weekly boat to Singapore. I had planned to head north to Sumatra but my two month visa would not give me enough time. We were told by the bus company that the situation was too dangerous to come to the center of town so we had to grab several rickshaws to the 'burbs. The 15 hour ride on the dwarf, midget, and Lilliputian bus was not my most comfortable journey. A coral cut I had received three weeks earlier in Flores was aggravated by the antique miniature Inquisition seat in front of me. The antibiotics I had taken for an ear infection in Bali had kept the swelling down for awhile, but the gangrene was making a comeback.

We were unceremoniously dropped in the outskirts of Jakarta in the predawn gloom. We made it to the ferry terminal after an accidental 45 minute detour by an inebriated taxi driver/lounge singer. Dave and I took motorcycles to try to buy tickets with our rapidly depleting funds. Of course all the travel agencies did not take visa, and we were $8 short. We tried calling our embassies, but the lines were jammed. We tried knocking on their gates without luck. Swear we are not suicide bombers, really! The drive to the heart of Jakarta brought back vivid memories of the April '93 LA riots. Flipped, burnt-out cars obstructed the roads and the skeletons of shopping centers stood starkly by.

The Army had a perimeter set up around the center of the business district. We went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to try to exchange funds. Our chances of catching the boat were looking grim. In the face of the hordes of businessmen and reporters walking by, we felt irredeemably scummy after our all-nighter. BBC did stop to talk while waiting for their motorcycles. All the hotels in the area were filled with ethnic Chinese waiting out the crisis while their businesses burned. As 3% of Indonesia they hold 80% of the nation's equity. In our poverty we looked on enviously as they ate brunch. We filled our water bottles in the lavatories, took bathes in the sinks, and after three humid hours we returned to Ann empty-handed.

With options narrowed, we spent our last taxi money to join the hopeful and the desperate at the airport. By this time my calf had swollen to look like an over-inflated hairy scarlet balloon. Was this what the initial stages of gangrene looked like?? The next ten hours were spent testing limits. This had to have been a verse from Dante. Television crews interviewed attractive women, and groups of people filled empty floor space trying to sleep. We were able to nab three Silk Air business tickets on their 10pm flight. We gorged in the duty free restaurants courtesy of VISA.

On arrival in Singapore I broke the law by bringing in three packs of gum, and a fatigued US private held up a sign offering help to American arrivals. A little late, buddy. We collapsed in a guesthouse across the street from the Raffles hotel. The next morning I limped to Mt. Elisabeth hospital where I was told I had a 104 fever to go along with my leg. I was released the same day by promising to stay on a sofa at Starbucks during the several days needed to complete my series of shots. I drank ambrosia and power relaxed. I froze of the IMAX slopes of Everest, watched some trashy action flicks, and replaced my threadbare wardrobe.

I headed north by train to recover in the more economical confines of Malaysia. On arrival in Kuala Lumpur I was waylaid by two impossibly short and plump women with umbrellas and an unlikely line straight out of the "Dangers and Annoyances" chapter of Lonely Planet. They would give me lunch if I would give some hints to a niece going to study in Sacramento. Yah, sure. This was too good to miss. I dropped everything I owned in my room and a safety deposit box keeping only enough ringgit to get back from the scam. I stepped into a taxi with my munchkin marauders and was taken to the 'burbs. After a drink and a bowl of noodles and several minutes of a C action movie, I was introduced to a man that oozed sleaze and gold plating. What was my game? Oh, blackjack?? With a show of conspiratorial generosity he offered to show me a way to win. He led me to a windowless room with promises of making my fortune in Australia. A card table was already set up with chips and two decks (these people must have a low opinion of travelers' intelligence). I played along as long as I felt safe. One of the midgets (I think it was Tweedle Dee) came and sat next to me and offered me a cup of coffee.

After I learned the pitiful shtick, a "businessman from Brunei" looking suspiciously like Sleaze's brother arrived and said he was here to play mahjong but would play 21 if I wished to put up $300. By this time the potion in the java was starting to take affect so I tried to make my exit walking as best I could. As I went through the door, Sleaze put his finger to his lips. Shh.....

I made it to my guest house and slept for 16 hours.

—

Bangkok.

Even the name elicited images of a modern Gomorrah with good food. Stepping of the train I found a modern city wreathed in clouds and streets that were remarkably clean. I swear this country has the most dramatic clouds I have seen in months. Australia had sky, Thailand-clouds. The traffic was no worse than the 405 on a Friday afternoon, and the skyline was dotted with golden wats. The "shows" that I had heard about were limited to a small area where fat German men went on sex tours. Yeesh.

Khao San Road is London's Earls Court set in Asia—a travelers' convention of tanned freaks and pale Europackers trying to get their Asian bearings. A pleasant interlude of videos and fruit shakes. I was on a mission to go trekking, so I headed north to the province bordering Burma. I had an image of riding an elephant along a narrow jungle track and being feted by long-neck Karens. Instead, I found myself on a country bus without windows bouncing down the road with Oliver, the Swedish rock singer and Enrik, the Nicoise engineering student. I had met them in a cooking course in Chaing Mai where we heard of a small village to the East called Pai. It is the perfect backpacker way-station situated four hours from anywhere. We found some bamboo bungalows over the river run by a Swiss dropout who made killer muesli. We were the only folk looking to trek in town, so we had a Shan guide Nando to ourselves. He took us trudging over humid hill and dale and cooled us off under waterfalls and with hot tea. We slept with Lisu and Lahu villagers who farmed rice and were addicted to opium, their other major cash product. We were woken up in the mornings by horses wearing bells and a pig being reluctantly castrated under our room. We found it staggering around town later with a pained expression surrounded by the dogs that had earlier ate his discarded manhood. When we were not looking the village men snuck spoonfuls of our expensive sugar into their mouths. Mr. Tun our old tattooed Burmese rebel porter made us cups out of bamboo and looked at us with the steady gaze of a warrior.

I spent my birthday floating down the Maekok river farther north on a bamboo raft with two guys from Seattle. We played Huck and Jim and lazed while our two pilots did all the work.

The Golden Triangle was a hollow excuse for a tourist trap filled with Italian and German groups taking photos. Blah.

My favorite experience of this segment has to be hanging off the back of a songthaew group taxi, wind whipping my hair back and bringing tears to the eye, verdant greenery as far as the eye can see running into the blue and white stew of a sky, my arms grasping the rusty ladder keeping me from falling to the road, a feeling of being completely alive. Man!

With my visa expiring this week I am forced ever onwards. I waited for my Vietnam visa on the shores of Ko Samet with scantily clad 19-year-old European college girls, packs of idle dogs, and a guy fresh off the plane from Staten Island carrying brass knuckles, an 8in. hunting knife, and a gargantuan role of duct tape. He was sure that the bugs, dogs, and locals were out to get him, he had malaria already, and he wanted an UZI to "git them dam daaugs." He had to run into the ocean twice with all his black clothes sticking to him to run away from the dogs he tried to kick with his steel-toed combat boots.

Now I am forced to watch the political meld with the athletic in the 2am Iran-US World Cup match before rushing to my 8am flight to Cambodia. I will do my patriotic duty as part of the Great Satan.

The elections in Cambodia are not until July 26th, so things should not heat up until then.

Jeez....I have run on again, haven't I? The air-conditioning in this cafe is trance-inducing, and I am loath to leave it. I thank y'all-my Diaspora of friends, family, and fellow vagabonds—for hanging with me for awhile and are still awake (or just paging down surreptitiously). Life is still great here so stay cool, enjoy the commute home, and remember this lost Angelino in the jungles of Siam. I promise to drop postcards from places with cheap postage.

Yours Faithfully,

Rich

Onwards to Cambodia

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