Given that the long Christmas/Muslim New Year/Ordinary New Year holidays were falling from weekend to weekend this year I decided we’d spend the week down at our place in Anyer on the west coast of Java, and hope to God that Anak Krakatau (’Son of Krakatoa’, he’s a big lump of an adolescent now with all the temper tantrums and eruptions and emissions that that entails) wouldn’t be emulating his old man’s finest performance while we were down there.
I chose Anyer quite deliberately, it’s a quiet little resort and only two hours drive straight out of Jakarta and for most of the time you travel along a decent toll road, although it should be pointed out that once past the grim industrial town of Cilegon the road is pretty awful. Now when I say “resort” don’t imagine we’re talking about Pattaya or even Kuta here, we’re not, not in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s a place for local people and the night life consists of hanging around roadside sea food restaurants eating delicious freshly caught fish, but little else.
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I have long been convinced of the fact that the three greatest books in the English language are the complete works of Shakespeare, the King James Bible and Her Majesty’s Stationery Office’s Highway Code and invariably societies that read these books tend to be more successful, peaceful, safe and healthier than those which do not, it goes without saying that the vast majority of Indonesians are cheerfully innocent of any contact whatsoever with these magisterial tomes.
The streets of Jakarta swarm with busses and motorcyclists that don’t believe the rules of the road apply to them but woe betide a car driver who crashes into one of them; from nowhere will suddenly emerge a street mob intent in exacting retribution on the driver seen as being at fault.
Indonesian people are on the whole the friendliest and most laid back people you could want to meet but every so often, well, just let us contemplate that one of the few phrases in Indonesian ever to make it into English is “running amok”, so it pays to take care.
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Bible Study, Anti-War demos, Girls, and Blok M
“You’d be crazy to go to Jakarta, it’s a dangerous place, something bad could happen to you there”, so said Dian as she stretched out on the bed of my room in the Ramayana Hotel in Kuta, Bali. For a girl I’d only met five hours earlier Dian was certainly very concerned about my well-being, probably something to do with her deep Christian faith I imagine.
She had popped into the Santa Fe Restaurant for a pizza and I couldn’t help noticing the Bible that was sitting on the table beside her, it turned out she was from Sulawesi and was working for a shipping firm in Denpasar and was just on her way home from Bible class. We got to chatting and went to the Hard Rock Café and then back to my hotel and she was now dispensing travel advice like an official at the Australian embassy.
It was too late, I’d been bored in Bali and fancied an adventure, my ticket was booked and I was flying to Jakarta the next morning.
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