People kicked up

It appears that I was negligent in allowing browsers to pick up on this weblog site. It was only intended for people that I knew to see it. I can't say who it was that complained, but they were right to do so, and it alerted me to the error I had made.
Anyway, onwards and upwards.
All that old stuff I wrote is lost and gone now. But there is plenty of new nonsense pouring out of my head and here comes the latest...
The story begins where I had had a big falling out with Sharon, my travelling companion. We weren't a boyfriend and girlfriend. We just had all the disadvantages of being a boyfriend and girlfriend ( fighting all the time, insulting each other, that sort of thing ) and none of the advantages ( kissing, holding hands while walking down the beach, snuggling in bed together and that sort of thing ).
Looking back on it, it was probably my fault. I was a bit stupid. I should have just taken hold of her and slapped the lips on her in a Humphery Bogart kind of way. But I was too shy, and I never did. What I actually did was follow her around and let her make all the decisions about where we went and what we did. It wasn't very manly behaviour, and looking back on it, I'm not surprised she got annoyed with me.
But the scene opens just after someone stole all my money, and Sharon just left me to fend for myself.
The reference to my parents thinking I was dead is due to the fact that I left Australia and never wrote or contacted anyone for two months. There is also a reference to Sharon's pink dress. But I'm not even going to get into that.


Then a terrible thing happened. I didn’t get killed, like my parents were now totally convinced had happened to me. I was on a bus and when I got off, all my money was gone.
All I had was a bit of money in my pocket. But the rest of it was gone. Stolen!
I said to Sharon, “All my money is gone.”
“Tough. You should have looked after it better.”
I thought she was still annoyed after the pink dress thing.
But it was probably more than that.
This had been coming for a while.
“Look. This is serious. I’ve got about ten dollars, and that’s it. What am I going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well you have to help me. What am I going to do?”
“It’s about time you learned to stand on your own two feet, Paddy. I’m sick of you treating me like I’m your mother.”
I wasn’t aware that I was treating her like she was my mother. Maybe I was relying on her a lot to make the decisions about what we should do, but she was a bit older than me, and she had a quite strong personality, whereas I had a tendency to just float about, like an autumn leaf, allowing the breeze to take me wherever it wanted to. I’m still a bit like that.
So we found a hotel and the next morning she had gone.
I went to the police station to report the theft.
I don’t know how the police operate in most countries, but this is how they operated in Indonesia at the time. They asked me what bus I was on, and they were going to arrest the bus driver, and probably beat a confession out of him. Luckily I couldn’t remember the bus I was on. I didn’t want some poor driver who hadn’t probably stolen my money anyway, to get beaten half to death by these policemen, who were being very nice to me, but looked like they could probably be really nasty if you were on the wrong side of them.
You have to understand that Indonesia relies quite a lot on the tourist trade, so they like to keep the tourists happy, and they aren’t very happy when they aren’t. And I wasn’t. Because someone had just stolen a considerable amount of money off me. And my best and only friend had deserted me.
“This is a terrible thing that has happened.” said the police chief.
I was actually in the police chief’s office. This was how seriously they were taking it.
“We will find the person who did it. But in the meantime, take this.”
He gave me a letter.
This is no word of a joke.
This letter entitled me to travel free on any bus anywhere in Lombok, on the authority of the Chief of the Police.
I wish I still had it.
It explained that I had been cruelly robbed while on a bus, so you had better let this man travel for free, or we will arrest you and beat you half to death, and if we find out it was your bus he was on when he got robbed, we will beat you half to death anyway. Or something like that.
Then I got a police escort back to my hotel, where they seemed to tell the hotel owner that I was not to be charged for anything.
So I ordered a plate of fried rice, and wondered what I was going to do next.
I got on a bus. I was heading for the ferry company office.
When you are on a bus in Indonesia, it is quite common for someone to strike up a conversation with you.  Most people there want to learn to speak English, so I guess they are just talking to you to practice it.
“Where are you going?”
It was a question I had been asked a lot of times on Indonesian buses. But for some reason this time I just opened up, and everything poured out.
“Someone’s stolen all my money and my friend has deserted me, and I’m just going to the ferry office, because I really need to get back to Australia, and I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
“This is terrible.” he said. “Maybe I can help you.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I work in the tourist industry. I know the people at the ferry company. I might be able to help you.”
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
No. Assat was a really nice guy, but the ferry company weren’t prepared to give me a free ticket back to Kupang just on his say so.
“Well that is very bad.” said Assat. “I thought they would be more helpful than that.”
“Well. Thanks for trying. It was good of you.”
“You must come and stay at my house.”
“What?”
“You must come. We will sort this out. You are my guest. Don’t worry.”
This is the strange thing about Muslims that seems to have been forgotten about in recent years with the whole Al Qaeda thing. An intrinsic part of the Muslim religion is, that if you find someone in some kind of trouble, you are supposed to help them in any way that you can.
So I went to stay at Assat’s house. He lived in a small village, and I don’t think many of them had ever seen white people before. Assat had, because he worked in the tourist industry, but the rest of them just stared at me like I was from another planet.
His house was nice. There was a mango tree in the front garden. If you wanted a mango, all you had to do was hit the tree with a big stick. How cool was that?
But I did learn that the Indonesians, well maybe not in general, but Assat, he was a bit of a chauvinist.
We were sitting in the front garden, and he said, "Do you want a coffee?”
“Yeah. That would be nice. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll make it.”
“No, no, no.”
And he called for his wife, and she made it.
Another thing I would later find out was that Assat had two wives.
But the next thing was a football match. There was a football ground nearby, and Assat asked me if I would like to go and see a game. I was quite into football, so I said, “Yes.”
There were about ten thousand people there. A pretty impressive crowd. This wasn’t the Indonesian national team or anything. It was just some inter-village game.
It ended in a draw and so it went to penalties. Everyone ran onto the pitch and stood around the penalty area. Then a policeman with a stick started whacking all the people who were standing too close. Which seemed a bit severe. But the penalty contest soon got underway, and the home side won, due to probably the best save ever made in the history of football. It was a strong shot, and it was heading right into the top corner of the net. But the goalie, who was an Indonesian, so he was only about five foot three, leapt up and saved it. The crowd went mad. It was the best piece of football I have ever seen in my life. There was practically no goalkeeper in the world who could have saved that shot.
We went back to Assat’s house, and we had an Indonesian take-away.
This consisted of rice, and some kind of really yummy sauce wrapped up in a banana leaf, and delivered by a man on a motorbike.
All the family were there, including Assat’s niece, who was absolutely gorgeous. I mean, she would have given Adrienne a run for her money in a gorgeousness race.
Then it was time for me to have a shower.
And this is the other thing about Muslims. Everyone thinks they are really prudish about nudity. But they don’t seem to be. I went to what I assume was the communal shower for the whole village. This consisted of a wall, about waist height, and a big vat of water and a little pot. You filled the little pot and tipped it over your head. This was how you had a shower.
In my case, this was how you had a shower while the entire population of the village was standing watching you.
Another thing about Assat’s house, and about Muslims in general. He lived right across the street from the mosque. So at four o’clock every morning, this awful wailing started, amplified by loud speakers. It was deafening. It was the call to prayer. I never answered it. I just put a pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep.
“Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“Gilimanuk. You’ll like it. All the tourists do.”
Gilimanuk is a tiny island off the coast of Lombok.
This is where Assat’s other wife lived.
I did like it. It was great. And guess who I met there?
Sharon.
“Hello. Fancy meeting you here.” I said.
“Yeah. Fancy.”
“Well, how are you? How are things going?”
“Things are going fine.”
“What’s wrong? Why are you being like this?”
“Just stuff off Paddy.”
So I just stuffed off. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
I stayed on Gilimanuk for a couple of days. But as far away from Sharon as was possible.
I’ve just looked it up on the internet, and maybe I’m wrong about the name, but I’m sure it was called Gilimanuk. But the internet seems to think Gilimanuk is off the coast of Java. So I don’t know. Maybe I am just remembering wrong, but I am pretty sure that Gilimanuk was off the coast of Lombok. Not far from Sengigi beach. There are definitely some false memories and discrepancies in this account. But considering that I am writing about things that happened twenty three years ago, without any reference material, I suppose it is understandable that I won’t remember everything in exact detail, or events that happened in exactly the right order. Other parts of it are just made up. Obviously I am improvising with the dialogue. No-one could remember exactly what was said in conversations that happened that long ago. But I think the spirit of it is basically true.
There is one episode that is really bothering me though. I am almost certain that I went to Tirta Ganggu with Sharon. But Tirta Ganggu is on Bali, and we had already parted company before we even got to Bali.
The other thing I saw when I went on the internet to find out about Gilimanuk, was “Bintang beer”
Bintang means star in Indonesian. I didn’t drink a lot of beer while I was there, because it was kind of expensive. You could travel around by bus, have a nice meal, and stay in a reasonably cheap hotel, all for the same price as one beer.
Beer was the one thing that didn’t seem to be cheap in Indonesia. So I didn’t drink it very often. But Bintang is probably the best lager beer in the world.
I haven’t seen it ever in this country. But if you ever do see it, you should buy one. Because it is really rather good.
I left Gilimanuk. I explained to Assat that not only did I have to get back to Kupang., I had to go to Bali first to renew my visa for Australia.
I told Assat, and he said, “How much money do you have?”
“I don’t know. About two dollars.”
“Well,” he said. “This seems to be a bad situation.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
“Well, you are stuck in Indonesia and you have to get to Bali, and then back to Kupang, and you only have two dollars.”
“I didn’t mean for you to actually tell me about it. It’s just a turn of phrase.”
“Oh. The English language is so complicated.”
Which it is, compared to Indonesian. Indonesian doesn’t have any tenses. So instead of saying, “I am going to the market.” or , “I went to the market.” or, “ I am at the market.”, you just say something like, “ Me, market.” and depending on what context you say it in, everybody knows what you mean.
“I will lend you money.”
“What?”
“I will lend you money.” said Assat.
“Look. It’s going to need quite a lot of money to get me to Bali and then back to Australia.”
“That’s no problem. I have quite a lot of money. I will lend it to you and when you get back to Australia you can just send it back to me.”
“But you hardly even know me. How do you know that I won’t just take your money and then disappear?”
“I know you won’t. You are a nice person. I will go to the bank in the morning and get the money, and you can pay me back when you get to Australia.”
So he did. And I did pay him back when I got back to Australia. But that wasn’t going to be for a while.
It must have been quite a lot of money to give to a virtual stranger. It was about five or six hundred dollars. This was bound to be a lot for Assat, because Indonesians don’t earn that much. It was probably his whole life savings, and he just gave it to me, without me even asking him to.
Maybe it was that Muslim thing about having to help people when they are in trouble. I have never read the Koran, but I am pretty sure it doesn’t say you have to give all your money to a complete stranger because he is in a bit of a fix. But I don’t know. Maybe it does.
It was an extremely generous and trusting thing to do.
So off I went. Across Lombok, and I got a boat to Bali. When I got to Bali, I can’t remember the name of the town that the ferry went into. I’ve tried looking it up on the internet, but nothing looks familiar. But it wasn’t a very big town, and it wasn’t very impressive, so it probably isn’t even on the map.
I arrived quite late in the evening, so I had to stay the night there. I stayed at the worst hotel in the world.
It seemed to be the only hotel in town, so I didn’t have much choice.
I walked in, and it didn’t look any worse than a lot of the cheap hotels I had stayed in.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hello. Have you got any rooms?”
“Yes. We do. Two hundred Rupiah.”
“Oh. Really?” That’s about 10p.
“Okay. I’ll take it.”
How bad could it be?
It could be quite bad.
The room where I was sleeping had a roof-space hole in it, and during the night the most vicious mosquitoes came down out of it and bit the Hell out of me. The place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years, and when I went to the toilet, it was like something out of a horror film.
I went out in the evening to find something to eat. There was a restaurant across the street. All they seemed to have on offer was cold rice and some unidentifiable meat. So I had that. Then I ordered a Coke. They charged me what I thought was probably too much, but I’d had a long day and I couldn’t be bothered arguing about it. I was sick of having to argue about the price of everything in Indonesia. Because you did have to argue about everything. It’s not like this country where they just tell you the price, and that’s the price. You have to haggle about everything, and even though it’s really cheap, you still have the impression that they’re ripping you off, so you haggle.
But on this occasion, I just couldn’t be bothered, so I just paid them. It wasn’t really that much. But they literally laughed in my face when I handed the money over. They couldn’t believe that a tourist would be so stupid as to pay that much for a Coke. It was about 20p.
Then I got to Denpasar, which is the capital of Bali.
I got my visa sorted out and then I went to Kuta. Kuta is like Tenerife for Australians.
They are all going mad and drinking a lot, and behaving really badly.
I went into a bar and I met Sharon again.
“Hello. How are you?”
“Oh. It’s you. What are you doing here?”
“Well, I had to come here to get my visa renewed.”
“ I thought you didn’t have any money.”
“Well, I didn’t. But then I met this man and he lent me some money.”
“Great. So is he your boyfriend now?”
“No. He was just a nice man, and he lent me some money.”
“Great. Well I’m really pleased for you.”
“What are you up to?”
“I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He’s called Permagnus and he’s from Denmark or somewhere.”
“Permagnus?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what kind of a stupid name is that?”
“There’s nothing stupid about it. He’s Danish. How stupid a name is Paddy?”
“I’m not actually called Paddy. I’m called Michael. But I take your point. Michael might seem to be a strange name in Denmark, or wherever this stupid boyfriend of yours is from. But in Ireland Paddy and Michael are quite common names. Permagnus might be considered to be quite a normal name in Denmark. But it’s a strange sort of a name, don’t you think? Permagnus? It’s a stupid name. What’s he like, anyway? I bet he’s an idiot.”
“Stuff off, Paddy!”
So I stuffed off.
I saw Permagnus as I was walking out of the place. He was coming back from the toilets. He looked like a body-builder. I didn’t think he was the kind of guy Sharon would go for.
Then I met Gunther. Gunther was German and he loved Indonesia.
“Isn’t Indonesia so good?” he said.
“Well actually, I’m not having such a great time of it.”
“You must come to Ubud.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s really great. Let’s go. I have a motorbike.”
“Okay.”
So off we went.
It took most of the day to get there, so it was quite late when we arrived. We checked into a hotel, which seemed nice, but when we got to the room, there was just one double bed. I looked at Gunther and he looked at me.
“It’s okay” he said. “You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you? I’m not gay or anything.”
“No. Yeah. That’s no problem. I’m not gay or anything either.”
“Okay then.”
So we crawled into bed together.
It was quite a luxury hotel, so it wasn’t like we were lying right up against each other. The bed was actually quite spacious. So we had a comfortable enough night.
The next day we went to look at the art galleries. The carvings were amazing. Sort of tourist fodder, but good nonetheless. Then we went to a restaurant in the evening. And the food was really good. I mean it was really good. I don’t know that much about good food. But this was the best food I’d ever eaten for a dollar in my life.
Gunther and I met two girls in the restaurant. I think they were Swedish, and we bought them a drink, and it looked like something might happen for either Gunther or me, but it never did. So we just went back to the hotel.
Then we went back to Kuta. Gunther was leaving, and going back to Germany. We went to the airport.
“Here” said Gunther. “This is the address of the man I rented the motorbike from. And here are the keys. It is all paid for for another week, so you can have it if you want.”
“ I’ve never ridden a motorbike before. I don’t know how to do it.”
“It’s easy” he said. “I’ll show you.”
So he showed me. It wasn’t that difficult. Although I don’t really understand why you move the gear lever up for the first gear change and then down for the rest. But I soon got the hang of it.
So off I went. I thought, “Where am I going to go?”
So I went back to Lombok to visit Assat again and let him know that the visa was all sorted out, and as soon as I got back to Australia, I would send him his money. All I needed to do was get a ticket for the ferry.
“But what about this motorbike?”
“Gunther gave it to me. He rented it on Bali.”
“So, where is he now?”
“I don’t know. He’s probably back in Germany.”
“Well, don’t you have to take the motorbike back to the person who owns it?”
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point. I hadn’t really thought about that.”
So I knocked a mango off his tree, said my goodbyes and headed back to Bali.
Then I nearly got killed.
I was driving along on the motorbike. Now, this seems to be the way Indonesian road traffic works. If you are driving a big vehicle, like, say, a huge truck like the one that was coming towards me, you basically have right of way. Anyone in or on a smaller vehicle, it’s just up to them to get out of the way if they don’t want to get killed.
It seems to be a fairly effective system. I never saw any road accidents the whole time I was there.
But I was about to see one now. I was about to be one now.
I had pulled out to avoid a big pile of sand at the side of the road. There was plenty of room for us to pass each other, but the truck driver obviously didn’t care much about this. He just ploughed on and he was coming right at me. I veered to the side at the last second and went over the pile of sand and landed on the road again at the other side. It was a miracle that I didn’t fall off and kill myself, because I was going quite fast and I wasn’t wearing a helmet.
When I got back to Bali and returned the motorbike, the man said, “Who are you?”
“Oh. I’m a friend of Gunther’s. I’m just leaving the motorbike back.”
“It’s a good motorbike?”
“It certainly is. It handles piles of roadside sand pretty well.”
“What?”
“Oh. I was just in Lombok, and I nearly had an accident.”
“You took the motorbike to Lombok?”
“Yeah. I just got back this morning.”
“You aren’t allowed to take this motorbike to Lombok. It is only registered for Bali.”
“Oh. Well I didn’t know that. Anyway, here it is back. I put some petrol in it.”
So off I went. But first before I went off I stayed in Kuta for another night. I found what must have been the cheapest hotel in the whole world. It was about 5p and that included breakfast.
It was run by this really old man. Most of the guests there seemed to be quite familiar with him, and they all called him “Grandfather.” Which I thought was nice.
I went out for something to eat that evening. And I met Sharon yet again. The world can be amazingly small sometimes.
“Are you still here?” I said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I just went to Lombok on a motorbike. I nearly got killed. You should have seen it. And now I’m heading back to Australia.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ll see you when I see you I suppose.”
“Do you not want to hear about how I nearly got killed on a motorbike? It’s quite an exciting story.”
“No. Not really.”
“Are you still going out with that guy with the ridiculous name?”
“What if I am?”
“Nothing. It’s a free country, I suppose.” Even though it wasn’t a free country. Indonesia was a dictatorship at the time. “But I think he looks like a bit of a dick.”
“What would you know? You don’t know anything about him.”
“ I know he has a really stupid name. And he looks like a body builder and everyone knows that they are all dicks.”
“Stuff off, Paddy.”
“No. I won’t stuff off. It’s a free country,” even though it wasn’t, and I was being slightly repetitive. “I’m going to sit here and have my dinner, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Then I remembered Permagnus. The body builder. If he came back to the table and found me there arguing with his girlfriend, he might have done quite a lot about it. But he never did come back.
“You’re not still going out with him, are you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m just making conversation. What happened? Did you tell him to stuff off, or did he tell you to stuff off?”
“You’re a bloody idiot, Paddy. Do you know that?”
“Yeah. I do. Because you already told me that. But do you know what, Sharon? You’re worse than an idiot. You’re supposed to be my friend. And someone stole all my money and you just left me, and didn’t try to help me like you would expect a friend to do. So stuff you Sharon. And your stupid-named dick of a boyfriend. Who obviously isn’t your boyfriend anymore because, despite the fact that he has a stupid name, and he’s a dick, he has obviously realised that you aren’t a very nice person and he doesn’t want to go out with you anymore. So there!”
That wasn’t a very nice thing to say. And it was a bit childish.
Sharon actually looked like she was going to cry.
“Look. I’m sorry. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I deserted you. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“That’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m getting the boat back to Kupang tomorrow, and then the plane to Darwin. So everything is all right.”
“Oh.”