Java, The Island

Sunday, July 1, 2007--Rantepao

I met a nice British young man at breakfast. His name is Damien, and he is a television producer. He just got a contract for 12 months of production of weekly roundup shows about qualifying games for world cup soccer. He came here to relax a bit before becoming so involved.

My nose is still stuffy and I still feel a little flu-like--aches and pains in the joints and the feeling of a slight fever. It just keeps lingering, but the nasal congestion gets better each day, I think.

In preparing for my outing of the day, I made a fortuitous discovering. I unpinned the secret pocket that I keep pinned to the inside of the back wasteband of my pants to switch it to another pair of pants. I decided to count my money, and when I did, I saw that the bottom of the pocket was just barely holding together with a few threads. It could have split open and I could have lost my two credit cards and all my extra cash. Losing the credit cards would have been the biggest problem. Anyway, I remembered that I had packed a small piece of self-adhesive patching material in my bag of possible needs. I cut off a section and wrapped it arond the base of the pocket. It is now good again without a worry!

I walked out a cobblestone roadway into the hills today. There were small villages and scattered individual houses. It was rather quiet, since it's Sunday. But a few people were along the way and visited with me. I forgot to put sunscreen on my nose, though, and it got a bit burned. I've got to be more careful about that.

Damien came to the room around 6:30, and we went out to dinner together. We had the typical Indonesia dish--nasy goreng (fried rice). It was okay,. but it wasn't great. But we sat there about 2 hours visiting. It was fun to hear about his life. And he was curious about the around-the-world tickets and how they work.

Monday, July 2, 2007--Rantepao to Makassar to Surabaya

What a long, bad day. I actually felt fairly good. But no one could make it through such a day without feeling bad by the end of it. I didn't sleep well, because I had to take out my earplugs to hear the alarm clock at 6:15. The roosters, the motorcycles, the cats in heat, the dogs, the babies, etc., of the neighborhood seem to be noisemakers 24 hours per day!

The bus trip took 9 hours. That's a long time to sit in a small seat next to someone else. And it was not air-conditioned. I had to take that one, however, to be sure that there would be no problem reaching the airport in time for my flight. And sure enough, the bus had a flat which delayed us (but only for about 15 minutes). People on the bus were nice to me. One lady who operates a guest house told me about her place and asked me to recommend it to others. She told about how the bombings of 5 years ago have changed tourism. She had to fire all her staff, and family members had to take on the chores. He husband is the cook, and she gave me one of two sandwiches he had made for her for the trip. It was delicious. It consised of thinly sliced boiled egg and tomatoes on fresh white bread with homemade mayonnaise. Ummm!

After worrying about making it to the airport for my flight, it actually was delayed for mechanical reasons. Remember, I mentioned earlier that Indonesian airlines have a bad reputation. Whatever the problem was, it was repaired and we left a little over an hour late. That got us to Surabaya about 21:15.

I got a pre-paid taxi and headed to the hotel I had chosen. Unfortunately, it was booked solid. That's a problem I have found with Lonely Planet guidebooks. Too many people use them and can tell which are the best places. Also, they don't list enough places to give alternative choices in the same category of value. I actually prefer Footprint Guides which always have "Handbook" in the title such as Thailand Handbook, Brazil Handbook. They provide about 3 times as many choices within each category of hotel as Lonely Planet does. But they don't print handbooks for every country. I also like Rough Guide as an alternative to Lonely Planet.

I was caught without a hotel room at 22:00 at night. I walked to another place about 2 km (1.2 miles) away. It looked like a dump, and they wouldn't let me see a room. They said they have to charge me for one night if they open the door! Well, I wasn't going to stay in a dump that was overpriced and that I hadn't seen. So I walked another 4 km (2.5 miles) to another hotel. I got there around 23:00. Their room was fine, so I checked in. Thank goodness they had a room. I was beginning to think I would just walk to the train station and sit there all night until the morning train I could catch to my next destination!

I missed dinner with all that walking, and I could feel it during the night. My body felt weak. And I had some aches and pains in the joints (from carrying my luggage and from the flu, I guess). Sometime in the night, I awoke shivering and turned off the fan. It was not from being cold, but from having a fever, I think. It had been a rather horrible and stressful day, so I guess it was to be expected.