Travelling in Java. By Damon S. Craig.
published online in 2016 from a 1993 manuscript with rights reserved by the Author.
“Why are you pointing at him?” I asked curiously.
“Because he’s pointing at me!” She replied abruptly.
“Probably because you’re white.”
“We’re all the same you know!” I wasn’t really impressed by what she had to say nor interested in it. We had been travelling together for only a week in Java with two Japanese girls. That week was spent in the area of Karawang and mostly Desa Kuta Ampel, a village of about six thousand people, looking critically at it in terms of its level of development. It was a helpful introduction to life in this place and also gave us a look at the complex and corrupt political system in operation here.
We left the main group on Sunday morning bound for Yogyakarta. We spent the morning visiting an active volcano and then planned to catch a bus at Sumbang, to get to Bandung, to yet the train to Yogya. We had learnt not to rely on bus drivers and we had to hitch a small bus from some highway back to Sumbang and managed to make all the right buses and were at the train station early, but later than expected. The train left exactly on time and took us through the night to Yogya. I was a bit apprehensive about arriving at 1.00 in the morning, but the town seemed to extend its arms to greet us as we stepped off the train. Hotels offer huge commissions to touts who can drag tourist to their establishments. With guide book in hand, we wandered off down Gang I of Sosrowijayan, an area of the city that was famous for cheap rooms and food. We basically fell into a small losman and the four of us just died on one massive double bed.
I had a chance to think about the trip down, and the people, I was with. Myself, an Australian, travelling with a German girl named Ulrike and two Japanese Girls, Ayako and Reiko. I was still at this moment, not too sure how the group would work together. Here I was sleeping in the house of a stranger with strangers everywhere. Only a map to guide us. I met a traveller last week and he said that when you get worried or confused sit down and have a cup of coffee, and whilst you drink, watch what is happening. I listened but didn’t really think it was that important. But during the next week I was to take this advice on a lot more than I expected. I slept with my money and travel documents tied around my waist. They were, unlike my time here, replaceable, but I didn’t want to lose any of them.
As the day slowly grew so did the number of people in the restaurant down the alley, and as our stomachs were filled so were the streets. It was just money, nothing else, beggers, sellers, minders, touts, thieves. But what was there to let me know the difference? There I was with my ‘innocent until proven otherwise’ approach walking with one hand over my eyes and the other on my money belt. I had wanted to see so much but now wanted my eyes to close. We purchased some small items of clothing and jewellery. The heat guided us through a set of swinging doors to a table where we sat and quenched our thirst.
‘Satu air minum, besar’ a large bottle of drinking water. I examined the seal and then opened it. A substance we take for granted at home, we can even afford to wash in it, just turn the tap, read the meter and send a cheque. From our experience in Karawang and our visit to the water treatment plant, well I’ll just say I’m still brushing my teeth with bottled water. We were interested in some batik art and were taken to a travelling exhibition of student art. It was most impressive but chronically expensive. They were giving us last-day-in-town discounts, but we didn’t buy. I wanted to get out of this town so walked to bus station to go to the massive Borobadour temple. The ride there was fine, we had to change buses at Magelang. We hired two ‘Becaks’ to take us to the site and also to the two smaller temples of Pawan and Mendut. It was a massive sight. I ran up the stairs with excitement and looked out from the top. There was a storm rolling in but it didn’t bother me.
We went back to Yogya by bus, where the dark, rainy weather pushed us in to Becaks to get back to the losman. We had dinner in our favourite restaurant and that is where we met up with some friends of ours, quite by accident. We sat and talked to them a while and made plans to join with them to go up to the Dieng Plateau the next day. After dinner we went to an all night coffee shop where some of the group had planned to get their hair braided. I just sat on the floor with my notebook and jotted down the day’s happenings whilst sucking away on another cup of road dust. I talked for a while to a friend about gangs. It just goes to show that even though he’s a great guy, you can’t rely on anyone to tell the truth. I spoke of the corruption and the political system that I saw here. It was something that I had not been able to think or talk about in the village, having a top brass government intelligence worker as our guide seemed a bit unusual to me and made me feel a bit uneasy. Every where you go you see people in uniform; police, security guards and government officials. At every level of the system you have a different uniform. But how much authority do some of these people have and what got them in that position? I thought; does a uniform symbolise mass conformity or individual authority? After all, people of authority don’t need to conform and conformists have no authority. But what I did notice at that any governmental matter had to proceed up and down through this system and was handled by different people at each level. I also realised that if this matter was financial or aide related, each level would take its share.
The locals were supplying decorative and engulfing clouds of white smoke into the atmosphere, and drinking away the night. Just after midnight the music started, I knew the instrument and the song. I thought back to the music I heard in the village, strings, drums, flutes, gamalans, voices and dance. I found the music here not to be very happy; wafting, haunting, wailing melodies superimposed on a complex layered rhythm. For me, although I enjoyed the music, the most important part is the emotion and the people that created it, and these are parts I alone do not possess, so I could not try to copy it as I had planned. When we were in the village we purchased guitars for the 5 schools there, although I saw them as luxuries I supported the move. But now I realised how much music was an integral part of the culture here. As well as providing entertainment it served as an outlet for the emotions of the people that lived in a place where children cry, people die, crops fail and disease prevails. I also thought of how many people I had seen in buses, on the street corners and outside restaurants relying on music to give them some income.
That night as I slept, I saw myself walking through the jungle, being cut and scratched by the trees. I walked carefully along the high ridge, holding the branches and watching every step. To either side of the ridge was a village and then it faded away.
The next morning we walked up to the bus station to catch bus to Magelang, another to Wonosobo, a horse cart across town and then we packed into a small minibus to go up to Dieng. The ride up was hot and steep but the scenery was magnificent. When we stumbled out of the bus, we were hit by a wind that turned the drips of sweat on our tired bodies to ice. We went into the Djone losman just next to the bus stop and had refreshments. With guide book in hand we went for a walk across the plateau. There was a small row of rat infested temples that, like the Borrabador trilogy, lined up perfectly with the Pima temple on the hill. I couldn’t understand why, in a region where even the steepest hillsides are terraced, this plateau had not been used for farmland. It quickly grew dark but we walked an around the plateau, listening to the prayer calls from the two mosques in the town. I have come to quite appreciate the vocal techniques of the prayer readers, but objected to the two mosques not giving the same broadcasts. It was like a western t.v. network with all the channels on the same frequency. We had dinner, played chess, drank coffee and talked. I was feeling tired but did not want to sleep. When it was time I curled up on the floor of our room with two blankets and talked some more to my friends.
As I slept I saw the two villages, to the left was light, joy, trust, health, money, safety, love, understanding, knowledge and food. To the right I saw darkness, sadness, corruption, disease, debt, danger, hate, confusion, ignorance and hunger.
We had planned to be up to watch the sunrise from the hill top, but managed to be on the go by 6 o’clock. We tool; the hard way up through the farm land (only because we couldn’t find the easy way) and sat on the hill top absorbing the scenery. We went back to the losman quite quickly, and after having a most refreshing shower and breakfast, were on our way back to Yogya. The ride down was much quicker, the speedo registered zero, but I’m sure we were well over the safe speed for a vehicle of that size on those mountain roads.
Back in our base camp, we had time to book our train tickets Jakarta for tomorrow evening and then were on our way in a fleet of money grabbing becaks down to Yogya’s southern bus terminal to get the bus to Perangtritis. The ride was very fast along flat roads down to the ghost coast. Perangtritis is one of those ‘blink and you miss it’ towns. As we got off the bus to the left of us was the swimming pool/fish farm. We were met by Yenny, the owner of a losman, who knew our friends from last week. He led us down the sandy lane, between the two rows of losma-resta-shops that made the main street of this town. There was not enough room at Yenny’s so the girls slept in the place cross the lane. Ayako was not well so she spent most of the time in bed, we would see her occasionally to give her bottled water and food. Some of us went for an evening swim and watched the sun set over the ocean.
I had saved a lot of money during the trip, so treated myself to a large dinner and a couple of soft drinks. We played a bit of chess and then I took my pillow and went outside and lay under the stars on a small stone wall. There was a couple there, an Indonesian man and a British woman. They were drinking rice wine and offered me some but I wasn’t interested. Like me they liked music and were listening to Michael Jackson’s album ‘Dangerous’. I stayed there playing join the dots with the stars above. I made strange shapes in the sky and then made them stand up as solids, and depending on how I twisted my eyes I could change the shape. Each star, a reference point, data, an experience, a memory, an emotion and as I joined more stars to my shape, it grew more complex and could be looked in so many more ways. I got lost that evening somewhere between the stars, the music and the thick coffee.
The rest of my group came up from the beach and we went over to the only open restaurant for some chips and drinks. We talked about ghosts but although I’ve had some very strange experiences in my life and was in a most gullible and un-human state I didn’t really absorb much of the conversation as fact.
I ate breakfast on my own and was down on the beach by about 9 o’clock. The water was very shallow but had about 3 very strong rips running down the beach. By lunch time my skin was the same colour as the dusk sky the previous evening. We ate lunch and checked out of the rooms and after a last walk down the lane were off on the bus by 2 o’clock. We spent the journey hanging out the door of this speeding bus shouting ‘Yogya’ trying to rouse up business for the driver.
We again commandeered becak transport, to get us back Sosro. We negotiated a price and then were off, but were strangely taken down a back road where the drivers started to complain and renegotiate the price. I wasn’t interested in this so I just got up and walked. After a bit of shouting we were on our way again for the same price. We had about an hour to run around the shops and pick up a few last minute items and gifts, and then we were at the station by 6 o’clock. Our train rolled in at 6:30 and left on time 5 minutes later.
We had dinner on the train and lots more road dust coffee. I slept a little and spent the rest of the 11 hour journey sitting at the carriage door, looking at the distant city lights and trying to keep cool. I thought about- my dream and the differences I saw, two worlds almost totally opposite. The jungle that slows down our progress through understanding our world. The ridge line, the fine separation between the two worlds, a place where travel, let alone living, is difficult. People often say that the mee goreng is always better in the restaurant next door. Then as the train shuddered over another river bridge, I sipped my coffee and thought, the only difference between any two extremes is the absence of the other. I smiled and then went back inside to get some more sleep.
We were swamped by touts and drivers at Gambir station that morning. Again led by the trusty but rather torn guide book we walked on to Jalan Jaksa, a well known street of backpackers losman and restaurants. We wandered in to Angie’s cafe, where they kindly let us use the shower. Even though I ate last night I had a hunger that needed satisfying. After sitting there for 3 hours we needed to yet moving, so walked up to the shopping centre and spent the last part of my flexi-cash. We met back at the fast food outlet downstairs and were in the right place to be filmed for a t.v. show. There was lots of laughter and talking about almost anything, and the only casualty was a straw hat that found its way onto a seat just as I sat down.
We went back to Angie’s and were met by Al Busra, our guide from the village. We talked about our experiences and the latest political gossip. We settled our last bill, picked up our packs and were out the door, heading for the bus terminal at the train station. We met a white Kenyan traveller named Nick, and he came with us to the Airport. The bus was air conditioned and even though it seemed like just one huge traffic jam, we made it to the airport in 40 minutes. We met some other friends of ours there that had been there all morning and we all checked in together. I had no troubles, but two people in our group almost didn’t: get on the plane. We took a while to clear customs, and then ran through the massive, empty and very expensive new terminal building to get to the aircraft. We taxied out and were away, I thought back to the time there, all the places I had seen, the food I’d eaten, the people I had met, the things I’d bought and me. All these things will fade away very soon, all except me. The time there had changed me, and my way of thinking and this is something that will live with me forever.