Ende to Banyuwangi
March 15th
Full Moon
"Waiting... Still waiting..." i wrote in my diary on Wednesday, 15th March. "Only six more hours or so to go now. Jeezuz i'll be glad to get off this island. I'll be happy when i get on that train in Java and we're speeding quickly towards India."
We'd be in Java on Saturday morning. Unless the boat sank. With luck, we'd be in Sumatra on Sunday. And maybe even Singapore on Monday. However, i'd believe that when i saw it!
On the way to catch the boat, we had a drink in a bar near the port. At first, when i went into the toilet, i thought i was hallucinating. But no. There really were fish swimming in the mandi! (A mandi is a largish concrete tank you find in most bathrooms in Asia. It's used to hold clean water for washing and flushing the toilet.)
It was well after dark when the K.M. Kelimutu came into sight round the headland, lit up like a floating christmas tree on the horizon. By that time there was a massive crowd on the dock - at least a thousand people.
Like fools, when the boat tied up we managed to be in the middle of the crowd, near the gate at the end of the jetty - which was closed. They wouldn't let us onto the jetty, although a lot of people seemed to manage to get there.
Hundreds of people got off the boat, slowly flowing down the gangplank and threading their way through the crowd on the jetty. There were about three lights in the whole of the dock area and the one right over the jetty gate was going on and off every few minutes.
Eventually everyone had come off the boat and they started to let us onto the jetty. But, of course, not through the main gate, which we were getting squashed closer and closer to, but through gates at either side, which were round a corner of the fence from where we were.
We got extruded onto the jetty - squeezed, under incredible pressure, round the corner and, the pressure intensifying ten times at this point, through the small gateway, to pop out into the open space on the other side. We had to do our share of pushing or we would have been squashed, shoved around and possibly even trampled on, only to end up where we'd started when the mob had flowed past. I'm glad i wasn't an old person or a small child!
So we got to walk halfway along the jetty in relative comfort. And then it started again. This time the cram was for the gang plank. We managed to stay in the middle of the crowd. There were no railings and nothing to stop people falling off the edge and into the water. It was incredible that so much pressure could be maintained by a crowd that had absolutely nothing solid at any of its boundaries. Eventually you could manage to get shoved onto the bottom of the gangplank - although this was a very tricky maneuvre. Then there was nothing left but to walk up it at a fairly quick pace.
The chaos and pressure didn't ease up at the top of the gangplank, of course, but eventually we found ourselves on a rear deck with a roof over it and not all that many people. We grabbed a space there, at the top of some stairs, and that's where we stayed. A french man who'd been staying at Ikhlas was there with us at that point and we shared a drop of arak to celebrate our survival of the intense experience we'd just been through. It was a feeling almost of elation at surviving such a nightmare. Before too long we were underway and steaming mercifully away from Flores.
- - -
We seemed to have captured one of the most comfortable spots on the ship. The deck was timber, so it wasn't too uncomfortable to lie on. There was a roof over us if it rained and there was a decent air flow without it being a wind.
In contrast, ekonomi sleeping quarters were a nightmare hell. Massive dormitories, where the sleeping spaces were large communal platforms with, if you were lucky, rows of mattresses which you had to pay separately to hire. About seven sleeping places were on each side of the platform. The dorms were vaguely air-conditioned and, for me at least, were hideously stuffy and claustrophobic. I couldn't have slept down there, so i was glad we got a decent deck space. In total there were about a thousand sleeping spaces.
There were hundreds more people than the actual sleeping-space capacity of the boat, so there were people all over the decks and corridors and everywhere else. At a guess, the peak ammount of people on the boat was probably around fifteen hundred, although it was very hard to tell.
The first night, which was the full moon, was a bit strange and i didn't sleep too well. It was really cold first thing in the morning, just before light, but it wasn't totally unbearable and it didn't last very long. In the morning we arrived at Sumba, an island to the south west of Flores. Being stopped at Sumba seemed to drag on forever. I wasn't in a very good mood and i just wanted to get moving. Eventually we left.
From there to Bima, the port we were stopping at on the island of Sumbawa, north west from Sumba, was a pleasant trip, with views of land all the way. We passed the western end of Flores, the island of Komodo, where the gigantic lizard-like Komodo dragons come from, and along the east coast of Sumbawa. The section of river estuary leading to Bima was interesting too. Instead of channel marker buoys, there were red and green mini-lighthouses along the shore.
I wasn't in a very good mood for this part of the journey. The stress of being what seemed to be the only form of entertainment for the Indonesians on the boat began to get on my nerves. It really was a constant stream of people wanting to talk to you. In some ways i liked the friendliness, but it was a phenomenal strain, having to have shallow conversations with hundreds of people in one day, which were near enough exactly the same every time. I wasn't too bad till some preaching muslim guy sat down and started on at me about allah, in English that was a strain to listen to, and trying to make me say in arabic "there is no god but allah" or something. But it wasn't anything to do with the fact that he was a muslim that pissed me off, a christian pulling the same stunt would have received a much less polite response from me.
I spent most of that section of the trip lying down. That was the only position you were safe from someone trying to talk to you. I developed a temporary disliking for Indonesians at that point in the journey!
From Bima, somehow, things got better. It may have been relief at finally having got well out of sight of Flores. But there didn't seem to be so many people hassling me either.
Bima was an amazing contrast with Ende, as far as dock-side behaviour went. Everyone was really organized and there didn't seem to be any pushing and shoving. They even cleared a path through themselves for the people coming off the boat to pass through un-harrassed!
It was interesting to see a couple of timber-built barges at the dock in Bima. One of them looked like a very similar shape to the old Thames barges, except it had much higher sides. And presumably a deeper keel too - although possibly not much deeper.
It seemed possible that they still built timber ships like that somewhere around those islands, although somehow i didn't think it was likely. But, of course, there was plenty of timber and labour was cheap, so they were probably a much more viable proposition than steel.
It was after dark when we left Bima and the driver used floodlights mounted on the top deck, right above the wheelhouse, to pick our way back down the river.
That night i slept really well, my body getting a bit more used to the hard floor softened only by a couple of very thin cotton blankets.
- - -
The next morning i woke up fairly late, from a very weird dream. We were passing along the coast of Lombok and Gunung Rinjani, a big volcano on that island was off the port beam. From that angle, i could see it was in several sections and not one solid mountain, which i'd never realized before, as i'd only seen it from the north west.
I was feeling quite happy and enjoying the view and the feeling of familiarity with Rinjani. But my peace and pleasure were soon destroyed by the arrival of Ahmad Faisal, the preaching muslim. This morning he didn't piss me off as much as he had the previous day, probably because i was in a better mood anyway. However, i had to put up with him for at least quarter of an hour before i managed to escape and join the queue for breakfast.
Breakfast was the same as yesterday. A stainless steel tray, divided up into smaller, indented sections, with a large portion of rice, a small portion of omelette and a small amount of red chili sauce. Unfortunately there wasn't anyone handy to eat the omelette today, so it went to waste.
Lunch was similar, except instead of the omelette and chili sauce, there was boiled vegetables and a small bit of fish. The previous day's evening meal had been fish and boiled eggplant, so that day's would presumably be the same. Fortunately we brought some peanuts, which added a little protein into the meal.
Mid-morning, we passed Gili Meno, Gili Air and Gili Trawangan, a group of three little islands off the north west corner of Lombok. It's always interesting to see places from the water that you know from the land. I'd spotted the hill on Gili Trawangan from a long way back. At that time, all that was visible of Gili Air and Gili Meno was a little bunch of tree tops apparently sticking up out of the water. Later, there were four strips of white sand, with trees behind, separated by short stretches of water. The fourth beach was Bangsal, on Lombok, where the boats go to the Gilis.
At about eleven that morning we docked at Lembar, which is south of Mataram, the capital city of Lombok - and also, i think, the capital of the province, Nusa Tenggara Barat. We went ashore in the hope of finding some fried tempeh, but didn't have any luck.
When we got back aboard, the deck where our beds were was absolutely crammed with people. We lay down to try and save a bit of space, but in the end, i just couldn't handle the claustrophobia in what had previously been a pleasant area.
I got up and had a wander around and found there was hardly anyone up the front of that same deck, where the french man (who had been at Ikhlas) and a belgian man (who'd been there too) were sleeping. So we moved there. That was obviously the end of the comfortable part of the trip!
However, our new spot turned out to be a nice change of scenery and a pleasant place to sleep too. It was also pretty quiet except when the boat was coming into port, when it was quite crowded because there was a good view straight ahead from there.
The quay at Lombok was crowded with people selling things, rather than just food. There were watches, t-shirts, books and all sorts of old tourist junk. We were obviously getting into heavily touristed waters at that stage.
- - -
The last part of the journey from Benoa (Bali) was fairly quiet. A lot of people got off there, including a whole mob of about a hundred soldiers. I was amazed at seeing all those soldiers assemble on the quay, as i had no idea there were anything like that many on board. They must have had them locked away in the section of ekonomi that was closed. Presumably they were on their way off a tour of duty, performing acts of genocide in east Timor. They certainly got on before Flores, anyway.
Nobody at all got on board at Bali.
We slept in the front section, below the wheelhouse, where the french man and the belgian had been sleeping. They'd got off at Benoa. It was really good at first, as there were no lights there - presumably because they reduce visibility for navigation by shining on the front deck. But later on it got extremely windy which made sleeping very dificult.
Anyway, when we woke up, at about one in the morning, we were already docked at Banyuwangi, which turned out to be as far as the ship went. It's at the very east end of the island of Java, which is roughly a thousand kilometres long. We needed to get to the exact other end, to cross over to Sumatra, which is the next island. At Banyuwangi the clocks went back two hours as we changed over to western indonesian time.
There were half a dozen or so buses on the dock, mainly going to Surabaya. We spoke to someone working in a restaurant there and he said there was a train at about eight o'clock to Jakarta and the train station was about one kilometre down the road. He reckoned we should sleep on the boat and catch it in the morning.
We had another look at the buses. I was tired and dazed and couldn't face the idea of the rest of the night on a bus. In the end, we went back aboard the Kelimutu and grabbed a couple of mattresses in one of the now fairly empty ekonomi sections. It was quite pleasant with most of the people gone and it was great to stretch out on a mattress.