Under the Volcano Sumatra 2010

WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YOU?

Tuk Tuk

Lake Toba

Sumatra

A lazy walk around Tuk Tuk takes a couple of hours at most. It’s the kind of place where fantasies of escape from the hum drum of home are capable of grabbing hold.

Elegant, gentle vistas of rolling, green countryside. Watery expanses and views to rival those at Lakes Garda and Como in Italy. From most angles you can see the waterfall, rushing down a rocky, red crevise, a gushing background whisper if you listen carefully enough. Clouds hang low over the edges of the caldera.

A list of impressions and a confounding last thought:

Stands of pine,
Lakeside fringes of palm.
Ferries shuffling across the water in all directions
Rice paddies - with mandatory buffalo.
Sour sop on the tree, over ripe jack fruit,
Church spires - Islam sidelined.
Rusty red tin of saddle backed roofs,
Batak spirit houses
Cacao pods — I’d never seen cacao pods before!
Fragrant frangipani - a familiar tropical favourite
Hummingbirds shimmering blue, green, purple as they hover and suckle.
A green hand of bananas - the eye popping sight of its ribbed, pendulous flower.
Angel’s Trumpet.
Waves lapping in the night on the edge of sleepy consciousness
And Emptiness.

So where the fuck are the tourists?
Why aren’t they here?

From Tuk Tuk

From Tuk Tuk

From Tuk Tuk

From Tuk Tuk

THE BARD OF BUKIT LAWANG

Lake Toba

Sumatra

Quotations from Aeschylus, Brecht, Rilke and Baudelaire have peppered my blog posts thus far. Writers struggle for originality and yet it is interesting that texts by others often emerge during the act of creation. A verse, a passage of prose bubble up from the recesses of our past reading experiences. Memory files away good writing — bad writing too — much more than we ourselves realize. And these writings by others set the tone, serve the purpose of providing a foil or support for one’s own thoughts and observations.

As for originality, you do come across it from time to time. Mind you it is not always profound, beautiful or edifying. You find it in the strangest places. On walls, like that at the Hotel Carolina here on Lake Toba (see photo). Then there is the odd, individual you encounter.

At Bukit Lawang I not only had the pleasure of coming up close to Orangutans but to a waiter — a Bard — from whose lips “poetry” flowed quite comically.

Being a waiter (in a rich Western country at least) is pretty much a shit-kicker’s vocation. I have tried it and failed most spectacularly when I was a University student. Serving loud, beer swilling pigs at a well known comedy venue back in the 80s lasted all of one night. I did not have the patience. I was incapable of humouring the rude, demanding patrons or working the tables at the quick pace required. I was hopeless.

The job simply was not me. But then who could seriously sink their personality and talents into such a servile form of employment? You’ve either got to be an ingratiating, arse licker or else someone who sees the humour in their own sad situation as a servant and hams it up in order to survive. Maybe you’ve just got to have mind numbing endurance?

The Sumatran waiter — the Bard of Bukit Lawang — was one such individual who revelled in taking the piss out of his engagement with customers. He was obviously being paid a pittance and working long, hard hours at the hotel restaurant where we stayed. You’d watch him plonking the bottles of beer in front of foreign tourists with a studied smile and camping up the interaction with them to the hilt.

“Yes, mein Herr , you deserve another bottle — you’ve only had three so far! It’s holiday. Relax … “.

And the poetry flowed …

Don’t worry
Be happy
No worry
No chicken curry
No woman, no cry
No money, no honey
But still funny

Explosive laughter all round. A little pirouette and off he’d go to the next table. The same routine, this time in Dutch, the next in French or Italian. He seemed adept at such routines in half a dozen languages. I suspect he was rewarded with good tips. He knew how to work people. He juggled the serving and joke telling perfectly. He was efficient. He was entertaining. He had turned his work into theatre. He was unflappable and was versed in deflecting all criticism.

Someone complains that the food is taking too long to arrive.

“Outrageous!” he cries with a little laugh. He leaps and bounds through the restaurant like a ballerina deliberately crying out in English for all to hear …

“Cook, Cook, when is it coming, the dinner at 26 … today or tomorrow! ” And this line prompts him to break into a song. He turns back in the direction of the hungry couple, la - la -la’s the first lines he does not know and with arms outstretched croons the refrain … “will you still love me, tomorrow?”

Laughter all round. What can the complainants do but laugh along. They’d look like churlish, spoil sports reacting any other way. He sends me a sly wink as he passes and I can read his mind

(“Don’t worry I can handle them!”)

The Bard of Bukit Lawang is someone you could not help but like. He’s a master. An artist. An original.

I know we’d get along famously if we had the chance to meet in some other social context.

But of course, we never will.

CATS WE HAVE KNOWN

Lake Toba

Sumatra

All at once as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly

from Black Cat
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lion is a spritely ginger kitten from Sumatra who recently wandered down the beach and made himself at home at our guest house on the lake. He is not unlike Caramel from Tunisia with whom we had the pleasure of sharing a bed for several evenings in a hotel just off the souk in the seaside town of El Mahjdi.

Wherever we go in the world we run into cats. Their power to seduce is universal. Their mystery a source of never ending wonder.

We have four of our own at home and finding suitable cat-minders is perhaps the most difficult part of travel preparations. Who is prepared to accommodate four Siamese in a bed for anything up to three months at a time? And what kind of person is prepared to cater to outrageously fussy, culinary tastes?

Our four are of a breed which prefer their prime cuts lightly sauteed and milk gently warmed! (How on earth did they manage it?) Their inter-feline rivalaries and jockeying for top spot in the pecking order is incorrigible.

In 2008, a full day of our honeymoon in Rome was taken up visiting a cat shelter amongst the ancient ruins at Largo Torre Argentina. We had arranged to meet two cats which my English language students had come across, amongst many others, on the shelter’s website.

The website provided me with a useful tool for teaching part of the curriculum. My students had been studying Comparatives and Superlatives and a “beauty contest” was conducted between the feline inmates. The class wrote comments and emails to the volunteers at the cat shelter and on hearing my wife and I were coming to Italy, the volunteers extended a special invitation for us to visit.

In Rome we made our way to the the ruins situated in the historic centre. Largo Torre Argentina is an historically significant site, most notably as the place where Julius Caeser was knifed by Brutus. Today cats of every conceivable size, age and breed live amongst the toppled columns and rubble.

The two finalists of the beauty competition, Pandoro and Zebra, were treated to a personal visit and photo shoot. Pandoro turned out to be terribly shy and ran off into the ruins. Zebra had better instincts and immediately snuggled up to my wife thus clenching First Prize and a modest donation of Euros for her upkeep.

People thought we were mad travelling to the other side of the globe to waste a day visiting a few mangy cats, but we enjoyed the encounter greatly.

Without the Torre Argentina Cat Shelter Romans would be much worse off. The city is already facing a population explosion of homeless felines. The shelter plays a vital role in reducing the number of strays on the street. The voluntary organisation desexes thousands of cats every year and finds homes for the strays across Europe — without any government support.

Visit the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary by clicking here.

In India we had a wild jungle cat that hunted cobras. In Thailand a cat obsessed with Yoga glued itself to me every morning at practice copying my every move and wanting to teach me a few of her own.

The most endearing cat in recent memory, however, was Estorgom, whom we named after the Hungarian city where the encounter took place. On that particular cycling holiday we put up our tent at a campside with a lovely view of the Danube. We noticed Estergom at lunch time hustling very skillfully at the campground cafe. Later we saw him sleeping in a patch of violets, the sleek, shiny blackness of his coat in stark contrast to the flowers.

By nightfall, Estergom had made his way to our tent and was arguing that it was cold, that he wanted to be let in and that he would behave.We insisted cats were not meant for tents.

This cross species communication may appear a little far fetched to non-feline types, but those who are cat lovers will know we are speaking the truth.

Before the cycle tour we had tested our expensive, high-tech tent in our backyard where we were subjected to similar feline arguments. All of them were screaming and begging to be let in. When we agreed, the result was dire … torn netting and claw marks everywhere!

We did, however, relent in Estergom’s case and were amazed at how docile and well behaved he was, snuggling up and giving little love bites all night. He had obviously done it all before! My wife claims that if we had been in Australia she would have had to take him home.

And remembering Estergom — or any of the cats we have met and loved — fast asleep, whiskers twitching, deep within their own dream worlds, I am reminded of lines by Baudelaire, who like Rilke, appreciated this animal’s nobility and mystery:

In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never ending dream;

Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand or dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic irises of their eyes.

from Cats
by Charles Baudelaire

A DIGNIFIED DISTANCE

Bukit Lawang

Sumatra

For Craig and Kate

Kilometre after kilometre of palm plantations on our approach into town. Heaps of garbage, plastic bags and bottles dumped by the road side as in the rest of Indonesia. We navigated the suspension bridge to the Ecolodge where we had booked a room, leaving the filthy, littered car park behind us. In the hotel grounds I squirmed, smug in my suspicion that the side show was just beginning.

All around strategically placed rubbish bins for organic and non-organic waste, plastic bottle recycling stations, placards neatly placed alongside shrubs describing their medicinal properties, posters of endangered wildlife with exhortations to save the planet. I roll my eyes. Shallow, feel good environmentalism, I think.

There are Europeans in sturdy boots and expensive hiking pants just back from a trek, knocking back bottles of Bintang beer, each the price of an Indonesian labourer’s daily wage. They - or rather, we - have all come to see one thing : Orangutans.

There are just two places where you can see them in the wild — Sumatra or Borneo. Bukit Lawang, created solely to cater to and accomodate visitors, did not really appeal to me as a priority destination. I half expected to find some hokey, semi-Disneyfied enterprise with staged treks into the jungle and orchestrated encounters with the adorable primates.

The horror of being roped into the pantomime, of pissing hundreds of thousands of rupiah up the wall.

The nightmare did not eventuate.

For sure there were expensive treks and the like on sale for those who want such activity. However, viewing the Orangutans is, by and large, a fairly low key affair. You purchase a modestly priced permit from the forestry office and then make the steep hike to the feeding platform.

Within Gunung Leuser National Park itself, visitors are encouraged to watch a short film discourging contact, closeness and interference with the animals, before the sweaty, ascent. It is explained to vistors that the Orangutans who drop in for food and attention are those who have been reintroduced back into the jungle fairly recently.

There is no guarantee they will turn up. But they do for us.

One older, male Orangutan seems to have been badly clawed. Ointment is administered. The Ranger communicates to the Orangutan that he wants to apply the ointment and demonstatres on himself. The Orangutan at first gestures that he does not want to with a wave of his hand but then relents.

A baby Orangutan is given some orange medicine. The Ranger communicates to the mother that he wants to feed the baby and she cautiously allows this to happen.

Others come swinging through the trees and are fed sugar bananas, high energy gruel and are given water. We take our photos from the mandatory distance spell bound by the scenes. The Orangutans have dropped in for their own purposes and largely seem uninterested in the group of homosapians.

Only a single, male late-comer, angry that he may have missed out on the morning feed, approaches us. The tourists are told to keep their distance and he is shooed away —- he’ll have to come back in the afternoon if he wants something we are told.

The impressive part is that there is only a minimal kind of overlap in the purposes of the visitors and that of the apes. It would be easy to encourage the Orangutans to pose for the cameras, to have tourists stepping up for a shot with an ape. But this thankfully does not happen.

A dignified distance is maintained. And my cynicism takes a well deserved blow.

TO A LITTLE RADIO

Lake Maninjau
Sumatra

Du kleiner Kasten, den ich flüchtend trug,
Daß meine Lampen mir auch nicht zerbrächen,
Besorgt vom Haus zum Schiff, vom Schiff zum Zug,
Daß meine Feinde weiter zu mir sprächen,
An meinem Lager und zu meiner Pein,
Der letzten nachts, der ersten in der Früh,
Von ihren Siegen und von meiner Müh:
Versprich mir, nicht auf einmal stumm zu sein!

Here I am on the porch of our lonely, lakeside losman in Western Sumatra, twisting the dial of my short wave radio in search of a stray English language station, a simple night’s entertainment.

And there we were in the pitch darkness of a two man tent somewhere in Europe angling the antenna after a hard day cycling back roads and mountain passes.

Lilliburlero … familiar GMT pips … “This is London” … the consoling presence of the BBC. Deutsche Welle. Radio Netherlands. Strains of Yankee Doodle Dandy prompting an immediate twiddle of the dial as the Voice of America beams in with typically strident, propagandistic tones. Others ride on the wave of the English language —- Moscow, Beijing, Bucharest, Stockholm and everywhere in between.

I have always carried a radio with me wherever in the world I have journeyed. Internet may have largely superceded the airwaves, but still a radio is a necessary travel item which knows no borders and can be used in any situation.

Brecht — in the most desperate of times — understood “that little box” links you back to your homeland, your language, your culture - wherever you are - for better or for worse:

You little box I carried on that trip
Concerned to save your works from getting broken
Fleeing from house to train, from train to ship
So I might hear the hated jargon spoken.
Beside my bedside and to give me pain
Last thing at night, once more as dawn appears
Shouting their victories and my worst fears:
Promise at least you won’t go dead again! *

Brecht - To A Little Radio (1942)*

Out of the blue, quite literally, an Aussie accent. Radio Australia. The signal waxes and wanes. The Aussie voice blares for a moment and then just as suddenly evaporates back into the ether.

A pang of homesickness.

*Translation by John Willett in “Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956” © 1979 Methuen London Ltd.

Set to Music by Hanns Eisler
Hollywood Songbook (1938 -43)
http://eislermusic.com

AN ACT OF KINDNESS

Bukittinggi, Sumatra

Along this dangerous, stretch of mountain road between Pekanbaru and Bukittinggi we inch past a series of bingles, break downs and vehicles poised on shaky jacks.Tempers flare. Curses and obscene gestures. Streams of abuse exchanged between drivers. No need to understand Bahasa.

A sudden flash of red and blue out of left field; the shrill siren call of an ambulance bursting from nowhere into consciousness. The ambulance demands its right of way and drivers snaking chaotically over both sides of the road grudgingly move aside. A stream of traffic takes advantage of this newly created passage way and opportunistically follow in its wake.

There are families packed three or four tight on motor scooters perilously weaving in and out of the bumper to bumper traffic. I’m shocked, perhaps a bit envious, of their mad risk taking and progress. A few vehicles contribute to the chaos by tearing up the gravel siding until they are forced back on to the bitumen just a few hundred metres ahead creating bottle necks and impossible snags for those behind to negotiate.

The shocking state of the road, the Indonesian love of speed and an almost psychopathic desire to get ahead of the next vehicle - all ingredients which make for disaster. Forget about erupting volcanoes and earthquakes! As I instinctively know, the real dangers are just like those at home: the horrifying, barely acknowledged reality of twisted metal, blood and gore found in newspapers reports every day of the week.

We eventually make it Bukittinggi, once a pretty hill station the Dutch retreated to in the sweltering heat. We grind our way along narrow streets clogged with cars and pedestrains to the centre of town. Grimy, higgeldy-piggeldy architecture. An odd colonial building or two poke out behind crass, celebratory hoardings, tinsel and fairy lights, self serving placards with portraits of politicians and army types offering season’s greetings. Deafening, nerve shattering explosions of fireworks overhead punctuate the night. I’m tired and later realize exhaustion has probably coloured my initial impressions of the town.

It is Idul Fitri —- the end of Ramadan —- and thousands of holiday makers from across Sumatra and further afield have descended upon the town —- precisely at the same time as us!

Why Sumatrans head for this “hill station” en masse at this time of year is beyond me. I have visited stunningly beautiful hill stations in India —- Simla and Kulu in Himachal Pradesh, Missouri and Dharamasala in Uttar Pradesh, Darjeeling in Bengal and Gulmarg in Kashmir. Sadly, Bukittinggi does not compare.

I thought we would just walk into a hotel, offer up a wad of Rupiah and be done with our suffering. What was meant to be a four hour journey has spun out to eight, maybe nine hours. Bleary eyed I walk the streets searching for a hotel. One after the other I encounter FULL signs proudly displayed on counters of even the most filthy, insalubrious establishments —- places any self respecting tourist would not dream of laying his tired head.

Finally I spy a couple of backpackers sitting in the D and J Cafe. I wander up and ask what they suggest I should do. They tell me to talk to Djoko at the counter. I walk into the cafe which is dimly lit and full of young men dressed in black, strumming guitars and texting on mobiles. It reminds me of a scene from some Parisian student dive of the 60s (beatniks minus the mobiles).

Here we are in the middle of Islam’s most important holiday, big bottles of Bintang beer unashamedly sitting on table tops. It turns out D and J is the new, hip centre of town —- and deservedly so.

Djoko tells me in perfect English that we can stay for free in the cafe for the night. I collect my wife from the Hotel lobby where we initially planned to stay. Djoko is genuinely concerned that we have no accommodation, tells us to park ourselves at a table, brings us tea, encourages us to “chill out”, take dinner and wait a couple of hours until closing time when we can stretch out on a Sumatran style lounge and sleep.

After a half hour we are wilting. Djoko notices and offers us his room upstairs instead. We take a shower in the restaruant WC —- blessed relief! We are then led up a ladder from the cafe kitchen into a small, attic compartment. A tiny room with not much more than a wicker mat and pillow on bare, wooden floor boards beckons. The walls are lined with panels ripped from large cardboard boxes, presumably to keep out draughts and light from below . Djoko rips open a plastic package —- a new mosquito net sent to him by a friend from Australia. He wants us to be comfortable. He is anxious that we get some good kip.

The night before we had stayed at the Hotel Ibis Pekanbaru catering to spoilt Western tastes and expectations of luxury. This room in a tiny loft over a cafe kitchen, is, however, much more highly appreciated. We crash. We sleep like babes. Djoko’s act of kindness, we are quickly coming to realize, is characteristic of most Sumatrans who will do almost anything to help you if they can.

The next morning Djoko feeds us fruit pancakes, strong, tasty Sumatran coffee and waves down a mini bus that takes us to the bus station where we transfer for Lake Maninjau. I half expect Djoko to present us with a big bill at the last minute —- and I would not have hesitated to pay it given the situation we found ourselves in. But there is no tightening of the screws, no attempt at extortion. There’s just a smile and encouragement to enjoy our time in Sumatra.

This act of kindness touches me. As we wind along those choked streets of Bukittinggi the place doesn’t seem quite so bad. The sun shines and in the light of day the shadows cast over my feelings the night before disappear. In fact Bukittinggi reveals a certain charm, an aspect I had failed to appreciate.

LAST YEAR AT MEDAN-BAD

Medan, Northern Sumatra

…scultured portals, ranks of doors, galleries, transverse corridors leading to deserted salons encrusted with the ornamentation of another age. Silent rooms where footsteps are absorbed by carpets so heavy, so thick that one hears no step as if the very ear were far away, far away from the numb, barren decor, far from this frieze beneath the cornice with its branches and garlands like dead leaves … (L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, Alain Resnais/ Alain Robbe Grillet 1961)



An empty hotel. A hotel from another century. A hotel in the international style of the late 1950s. Hotel Danau Toba Internasional, Medan —- and not another guest in sight. They’re here of course. We’ve heard them in their rooms. A sudden, galloping snatch of Bahasa. Muffled, fragments of English from behind thick walls. But no physical evidence of their existences.



In the lobby - sparkling rippled marble and shimmering, cheap glass chandeliers everywhere. There’s a smiling, neatly dressed concierge. Two smiling, neatly dressed staff at Reception. and a smiling, neatly dressed doorman. They perform their functions adequately. They move through their paces. The only sign of the “Duty Manager” is the one which sits on a heavy mahogony desk designating human absence.



The Japanese restaurant, the Old English Tavern, the Family Karoke Lounge and the Gift Shop with its handicrafts and souvenirs, all are “tutup”, all are “closed” —- I suspect they have been for some time.



You look out on lush, perfectly clipped lawns, a garden brimming with bourganvillea and palms. Stillness. There are forlorn islands of plastic garden furniture under blue, canvas umbrellas —- all without people.



And the waters of the “free form” pool with its kidney-shaped curves, cascading waterfall and slippery slide shimmers without a single swimmer.



this posting inspired by an old favourite of mine …