"Me, having fun."
Sometimes, being with someone for a long time is good, sometimes it’s bad. And sometimes it’s just scary.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked Anita for the third time. It was the morning after our horrendous meal, and with Rolling Stones’ covers ringing in our ears we were in the minibus, on our way to… somewhere.
‘Never mind, lah. You find out when we get there.’
I didn’t like it. We’ve been together five years, and the only time she withholds information like this is if she knows it is truly going to frighten the living crap out of me. I decided to try and get help elsewhere.
‘Dennis?’
Cherry’s husband turned round, his mouth full of what looked like bagel with cream cheese topping. And walnuts. ‘Mmmmphhhfffll?’
Anita slapped me on the leg. ‘You don’t tell him Dennis. Even you finish bagel, you don’t tell him. It will be disaster.’
‘Mmmpphh-kay,’ said Dennis, and went back to finishing his breakfast.
‘Look.’ I looked my wife in the eye and put on my serious voice, the one reserved for explaining why a PS3 game is really a rather sound investment, rather than a waste of money, time and TV. ‘I want to know where we’re going. I’m not going to freak out or anything – I’m more mature than that. Come on, you’ve known me for five years for crying out loud.’
‘That is not good argument,’ she said. ‘In five years, you freak out…’ She started to do a calculation with her fingers, but then gave up when she ran out of hands. ‘All the time.’
‘Well, yes. But not anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because… well just because. I’m not that person who freaks out at everything anymore. Anything is fine with me.’
‘Really?’ She cocked her head to one side and smiled. ‘Wow.’
‘Yeah.’ I was getting into my stride now. ‘When we get back to Taipei, you’ll see a different me completely. I’m going to be calm, reasonable and unexpectedly polite with everyone. Really.’
She nodded. ‘Okay, that’s great.’ She considered for a moment, and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Today we’re going for white-water rafting.’
‘Holy mother of Jesus, woman! Are you expletive deleted insane?!’
Filed under: Uncategorized
‘Shoppiiiiiiiing!’ said Anita as she led the tour group on an assault of ‘Kuta Discovery Mall’. I was left outside with Santoso.
‘You been here before?’ I said.
‘Every week for last fucking six months,’ he said, and lit a cigarette. ‘You wants one?’
‘No, I don’t smoke.’
He gave me a puzzled look, shrugged his shoulders and took a long drag. ‘You should to try. It will give you happy.’
‘Yes, but it will also give me cancer.’
‘Who?’
‘Can-cer. You know, the disease that kills almost everyone in the world who doesn’t die of a heart attack?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Nooo, I don’ts know that one.’
I wondered for a moment about trying to explain, and possibly save him from an uncomfortable, tumour-based death, but just as I was about to open my mouth, I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
‘Hang on – what does this mall sell?’
‘Oh, you knows – usual lady things, like soap and perfumes and thing for
house.’
‘And pirate DVDs?’
‘Johnny Depp?’
‘No – I mean DVDs, illegal DVDs of movies.’
‘Oh yah – just there.’ He pointed inside, to the supermarket-sized shop that had caught my attention. In the window was a poster for the TV series ‘True Blood’, which I didn’t think had even been made yet.
‘Right… well I’ll be back in…’ I thought about how long it might take me to trawl through a supermarket’s worth of DVDs. ‘Actually, I have no idea – if Anita comes looking for me, please tell her where I am.’
‘And if Arthur come looking for you?’
I shudder. ‘Then please tell him I’m…’ I looked around, and spotted a few flashing lights far, far in the distance. ‘Over there, wherever that is.’
‘Disappointed,’ said Anita as we sat down to eat at the mall’s Mexican restaurant.
‘Why?’
‘Nothing interesting to buy.’
‘Au contraire,’ I said and showed her my enormous shopping bag full of movies, tv series and unlikely-to-work PS3 games.
‘What that?’
‘Erm… just some things. You will enjoy them.’
‘Son of Rambow?’
‘Don’t worry, Sylvester Stallone’s not in it.’
‘Hamlet 2? Ah… Shakespeare.’
‘Not quite, I…’
‘Planet of the Rapes?’
‘Oops, you weren’t supposed to see th-, well.’ I closed the bag and shoved it under the table. ‘What shall we have for dinner?’
The Mexican restaurant at Kuta Discovery Mall is to the rear of the mall, and looks out onto the beach. I’m sure it’s a very romantic place when they aren’t re-laying the floor tiles, re-decorating the walls and doing something ominous outside with a bulldozer. Unfortunately, though, as the night wore on, the noise became louder and louder to the point where it was difficult to communicate at all.
‘How’s your chicken!’ I attempted, once she had started up on her meal.
‘Noisy!’ she shouted.
‘You’re chicken is noisy?!’
‘I said LOUSY! And your beef?!’
‘This is the beef?! I thought this was a starter – some kind of fish!’
At which point the waiter, miraculously having heard us through the roar of the bulldozer, came over.
‘Everything is okay?’
Anita had been with me long enough to have absorbed some of my British reserve. Coming from the North of England, and having lived in Eastern Europe, I have endured some of the disasterous so-called meals known to man, and said thank-you.
‘Oh it’s lovely!’ I told him, and Anita nodded her agreement, smiling, though it looked like she was finding it difficult to keep something down.
‘Not to worry about the noise,’ our waiter said. ‘It stops in a moment.’
Thankfully, just as we were both coming to our separate conclusions that the food really was inedible, the noise did stop. And was immediately replaced by:
‘Guntanamera! Guajira Guantanamera!’
Three Balinese men dressed ridiculously as Mexicans, and holding an array of hideous sounding instruments had materialized at the table next to ours.
‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘And after this we’ve got to go back to the Hard Rock Hotel – life is just NOISE.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Anita, reaching over to pat me on the hand. ‘Tomorrow we move to Four Seasons resort. That will be much nicer.’
‘That’s true.’ I tried to calm down.
‘But baby…’
‘Yes?’
‘Why is Arthur smiling and staring at you all the time?’
‘Erm, I think he… fancies a bit of my beef.’
She frowned, and I thought about trying to explain the joke. But then the Mariachi triplets arrived, and it was much too late for anything but the sour taste of lost hope.
"Hello, I'm Mei Lanfang."
From the director of ‘Farewell, My Concubine’, this tells the story of Mei Lanfang, China’s greatest opera singer, who came to prominence in the 1920’s. He played mainly female roles and had a voice like a cartoon giraffe, but despite these shortcomings, was well received in both China and the US.
Mei, as I affectionately call him, started his rise to fame by daring to add ‘a bit of movement’ to a performance by his Master. This scene was reminiscent of Bob Dylan going electric in the 1960’s, and I half expected to hear someone shouting out ‘我不相信你, 你是個騙子.’ But they didn’t. There was then a thrilling competition between Mei and his Master, which was not really reminiscent of the rivalry between Oasis and Blur in the late 1980’s, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.
Later on, the Japanese turned up and, as usual, got a bit upset about things because Mei refused to sing for them. It’s a pity he wasn’t friends with Ip Man, because Ip Man didn’t mind and would probably have sung in Mei’s place.
In any case, I thought the film was very moving and I thoroughly enjoyed it – but then I had just finished watching ‘Bride Wars’ and was open to just about anything that didn’t have Anne ‘For Crying out Loud’ Hathaway or Kate ‘Oh Look, Just F*** Off’ Hudson in it.
Filed under: Cultural Experiences
"Comparisons would be inappropriate at this time."
‘And which massage oil would you prefer?’ said a really rather attractive Balinese girl, pointing to a table full of ornate looking glass receptacles.
‘Erm… is there an anti-caffeine oil?’
‘Ha, ha, ha, ha!’ that was Anita, still high from the coffee.
‘No anti-caffeine oil available… how is it about bergamot, mint and cherry tree sapling bark pulp for you today?’
‘Right… I’m not sure I…’
‘Sample smell for you?’
‘Well, okay.’
She wafted one of the bottles under my nose, and I was immediately transported to an 18th Century Parisian lady’s boudoir. A boudoir with an open window looking onto the sewer, and an 18th century lady who didn’t have the requisite plumbing to take consistent care of her armpits.
‘Ak,’ I retched. ‘Ak, help me – ak!’
She retreated the bottle before I could introduce another ingredient into it, and I took a moment to catch my breath.
‘Would it be possible to just have oil?’
‘Yes sir, plenty of oils here.’
‘No, I mean just oil – simple oil, sunflower oil – cooking oil, anything.’
‘Ahm.’ She looked slightly panicked, especially as the rest of our tour group were now stood around her, arms folded in the by-now familiar gesture of please deal with this strange, scary foreigner as quickly as possible so we can get on with our day.
‘Okay, okay – I check the kitchen for you.’ She pointed to all the men in the group. ‘Sirs please go that way for your pre-massage sauna and dip. Ladies you go the other way for pre-massage sauna and dip also.’
Myself, Dennis and the five other men from our group descended the stairs into a damp, steamy room with a sauna in one corner and a swimming pool in the centre.
‘We take off clothes and put on towel first,’ said Dennis. After two days he had become aware that without instruction I was incapable of working anything out and, left to my own devices, would probably try to wash my clothes in the pool and use the sauna to dry them off. ‘Then we take sauna. After that, we take off towel and get into pool.’
‘Take off towel… and put our underpants back on?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No, take off towel and get in pool.’
‘But…’ There seemed to be something missing in this equation. ‘If I take off the towel and don’t put back on my underpants, then I’ll be…’
‘Naked,’ interrupted another of the men, a rather chunky looking fellow. He put out his hand. ‘Hello, my name Arthur.’
‘Hello Arthur,’ I said, uncomfortable that he had introduced himself in the midst of my potential nudity.
‘You can be naked with us, we don’t mind,’ he laughed, and the others joined in. This was not good. I had long basked in the stereotype of Asian men having relatively small undercarriage and didn’t want my little fellow coming out to puncture such a comforting illusion.
‘Ha, ha,’ I joined in, and while they were distracted with their own hilarity, managed to slip out of my shorts and t-shirt, into a towel and ensconce myself in a steam-shrouded corner of the sauna.
I’ve never been a fan of saunas. The idea of being closing into a hot, steam filled room that then gets hotter and more filled with steam feels too much like something that would make a good set-piece in an Indiana Jones movie. This sauna, however, was just disappointing.
‘This isn’t hot at all,’ I said after we’d all been crammed in there for a few minutes, waiting for something that clearly wasn’t going to happen. ‘Should we say something?’
‘Good idea,’ said Arthur, who I suspected was just trying to win me over so as to get a peek at my manhood later on. He stood up and went over to the glass. ‘Hey! Hey! Not hot! Not hot!’
A dark face appeared on the other side, nodded and was gone again.
A few moments later, things started to happen.
After five minutes I was in trouble. With images of Harrison Ford and a small Asian boy in my mind, I burst out of the sweltering death-box, ripped off my towel and plunged into the pool.
‘Ha, ha, ha! Lady Hartley! Lady Hartley!’
"Yes! yes!!!!!!"
The guided tour at the museum is a work of twisted genius.
‘And this is a machine that can change the beans towards coffee,’ said the woman twenty minutes in.
‘Mumble mumble groan,’ answered everyone, as they shuffled along on the world’s most boring journey from raw material to finished product.
‘Shall we have another taster?’
‘Yes!’ everyone answered and once again she passed out the tiny cups of potent happy juice. This was the third time she’d let us taste some of the coffee, and once again, seconds later we were transformed.
‘Ha, ha! This tour is amazing!’ said Anita.
‘Hurrah!’ said Cherry. ‘Hurrah for everything!’
‘Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeeeeeeeeeee!’ said Cherry’s husband, Dennis.
The whole group now resembled an outing of Children’s TV presenters as we bounced along with the tour guide, hanging on her every word.
‘This machine takes the nearly already turned into coffee beans and makes them even closer to being nearly already the finished coffee product.’
‘Yes!’ shouted a man at the front, punching the air. ‘Amazing!’
‘Fucking hell,’ said Dennis, shaking his head, a tear in his eye. ‘So beautiful. So beautiful.’
‘Baby!’ Anita confided in me, ‘this tour is great, isn’t it? Huh? Hmm? Aren’t you glad you came here? Yes?’
‘Well… I only took a small sip of the coffee.’
‘Why, why? Why? Eh? It’s so…wonderful!’
‘Well, because what goes up must come-‘
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Cherry, suddenly slumping into a convenient chair. ‘Oh Jesus, I want to kill myself.’
Forty minutes later we shuffled despondently into a room and were all seated around a small stage.
‘Life,’ said a large, up-until-today rather cheerful looking woman called Sally. ‘Oh, life.’
Everyone nodded and murmured their agreement. Over half an hour since the last coffee fix and the monotonous of futility of existence had taken hold.
A tall, handsome man walked in, smiled and took his position the stage. ‘Are you all here for the demonstration?’
‘Coffee?’ said Cherry hopefully.
‘Of course – I will tell you about coffee.’
‘I mean, can we have some coffee? I think some of us are dying.’
‘Well… first let me show you…’ He produced a coffee bean from his pocket. ‘This type of bean is called a peaberry….’
‘I think I can smell them from here,’ said Anita. ‘Ahhhh…’
The group leaned forward, noses twitching like rabbits.
‘The peaberry bean is the one we use to make…’
‘Excuse me!’ Dennis’s hand shot up. ‘Excuse me!’
‘Yes? Do you have a question about the peaberry bean?’
‘Yes – can I eat it?’
‘It is edible, yes.’
‘No, I mean that one – now – can I eat that one, now?’
The presenter shook his head, Dennis looked like he was about to cry and we suffered through another fifteen minutes of explanation, none of much made any sense to a group of people who for the most part were fairly convinced that Starbucks had invented coffee in a laboratory.
‘… most expensive coffee in the world, even though it comes out of the anus of a civet. Any questions?’
I looked around me and realized that everyone else was asleep. Feeling rather embarrassed, I raised my hand.
‘Yes – you, the awake one.’
‘Does this always happen?’
‘Oh no, no.’ He shook his head. ‘This is a very nice group. Usually people just leave.’
‘Shit,’ I said under my breath. ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’
‘Now for the tasting session!’ he exclaimed and three women came in holding trays of coffee flavoured ice-cream, coffee looking snacks and cups filled with what looked suspiciously like… coffee.
‘Ah!’ said someone, starting awake. ‘Everyone, it’s here – it’s here!’
People shook themselves into wakefulness, sat up and started to contemplate the spread in front of them.
The presenter walked off the stage. ‘Now make sure you don’t have too much of that – the human body can only take so much coff-‘
‘Ha, ha, ha, ha!’ exclaimed Anita, cramming a cinnamon coloured cake into her mouth, ‘ha, ha ha ha ha ha!’
Filed under: Museums and Tourist Attractions
"9/10 is not an option."
One advantage of being on a package tour is that there is always a bus waiting for you, ready to transport everyone to the next item on the itinerary. One disadvantage of being on a package tour is that they stick you in the cataclysmically noisy Hard Rock Hotel, and then wake you up at seven in the morning, twenty minutes after you’ve finally managed to get to sleep, to take you somewhere you probably don’t want to go.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked Anita as we herded onto the bus.
‘What?’
‘Where are we going?’ Surely her English hadn’t suddenly descended to the point where she couldn’t understand simple questions anymore.
‘Huh? I can’t hear you. I can only hear na… na… na… nananana. ’
This was either a brilliant ploy on her part to never have to listen to any of my crap again, or a true reflection of the fact we’d been up half the night trying to ignore repeated requests for ‘Hey Jude’.
‘Where are we going!?’ I shouted. This woke up the bus driver, which could only be a good thing.
‘Coffee museum.’
‘We’re going for coffee and then to a museum.’
‘No. We’re going to coffee museum.’
‘But coffee doesn’t need a museum, it’s just coffee. That’s like having a banana exhibition, or a muesli memorial.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘The banana museum is the other package tour.’
‘Bloody hell. And the muesli memorial?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Go to sleep Hartley.’
‘Okay.’
By the time I woke up we were in a non-descript parking lot, and everyone else was getting off. Anita was slouched over, completely dead to the world and making the kind of noise normally only heard on building sites.
‘We’re there!’
‘Take a sad song and make it better!’ she exclaimed and jerked up to a sitting position.
We exited and tried to make our legs do some running so we could catch up with the group. I couldn’t help noticing that the building next to the Coffee Museum was the ‘Centre of Russian Language Teaching in Bali’ and they had gone with the slogan: ‘We Make you Speak Russian’. Initially this was a bit off-putting, but as we caught up to the rest of our tour, and entered the museum I thought back on all the feckless toss-pots I’d tried and failed to teach English by being a nice person and giving them the opportunity to be the best that they could be. Perhaps, with this more aggressive approach, the ‘Centre for Russian Language Teaching in Bali’ had hit the nail on the head.
And driven it deep into the skull of some non-compliant student.
Filed under: Movies
"Hello, I'm Ip Man."
I was desperately scrabbling round the video shop trying to decide whether it really was time to give up on life and just rent ‘Bolt’ or if there was something better out there. As usual, Anita – my Taiwanese wife – went straight to the counter to see what the number one was, then tried to force me to rent that.
‘Ip Man?’ I said. ‘It sounds like some kind of crap super hero.’
‘No! He was Bruce Lee’s teacher.’
‘Ooh! Action!’ I grabbed it off her and rented it, without even checking whether it had subtitles.
Luckily, it does have subtitles, and what’s more
it’s pretty damned good. It’s visually stunning, with a vibrant depiction of 1930′s China, the fight scenes are plentiful, violent, gory and – at times – mystifyingly well put together (SLIGHT SPOILER watch out for 10 on 1 scene which ends with the bunch of assailants twitching on the floor like sprayed cockroaches SLIGHT SPOILER)
It made my wife cry, and not because it was gut-wrenchingly awful (as was the case with ‘Seven Pounds’), but because of what he does with a sweet potato.
All in all, then, this gets a rating of four Hartleys. Anita will give it ten out of ten, because with her it’s always either zero or ten, there’s no middle ground. Which can be tough on a guy.
Filed under: Hotels
Hard Rock Hotel, Satisfying Deaf People Since 1998
Hard Rock Hotel, in the centre of Kuta Beach, is not the kind of place you want to be if you feel at all ill, or are in fact interested in any kind of relaxing activities whatsoever. For example, sleep. This is not because of any noise from Kuta Beach itself – the hotel is well guarded and relatively remote, with a security gate and long driveway. No, all the noise and distraction at the Hard Rock Hotel, Bali is completely self-generated.
If, as we did, you check in during the evening, the first thing you see as you walk through the front entrance is a bar where a Filipino rock band on a raised stage play noisy covers to a packed crowd. Well, you might think to yourself, this is all quite nice and vibrant. Perhaps tomorrow night I’ll join in with some of this revelry, but I’m a bit tired, having just arrived, so tonight I’ll just pass out on my bed.
‘Help,’ I moaned when I realized that closing the door to our reggae themed room made no difference whatsoever to the level of noise. I could still hear a fairly competent, but no less irritating for that version of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Honky Tonk Woman’.
‘Baby,’ said Anita, once she had re-appeared from doing something distinctly un-lady-like in the bathroom, ‘maybe if we put TV on, it can cover the noise.’
I put the TV on, only to find it displaying a live feed of the action downstairs.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.
‘This is a very rock hotel.’
‘You mean noisy.’
‘Yes. Noisy rock. Everywhere.’
‘I’m going to complain.’
This was perfect, it would be a great chance to try out one of the techniques from my book. I picked up the phone with a tingle of anticipation.
‘I’m going to try the ‘broken record’,’ I confided to Anita.
‘I think I’ve heard that one before.’
The other end picked up and I was suddenly hearing the bar band in 3D stereo, as a louder version poured through the phone.
‘Is that reception?’
‘Huh?’
‘Hello, is that reception?’
‘Hello! This is reception speaking to you!’
‘I’d like to complain about the noise. I want to change rooms.’
‘Hello! I can’t hear you! Please speak more loudly please!’
‘I want to change rooms!’
‘You want a changing room?!’
‘No – I want to change rooms – I demand to change rooms!’
‘What!?’
‘I’m not putting the phone down until you agree to my changing rooms!’
‘I can’t hear you!’
‘It’s too noisy!!’
‘Yes, it is!’
With that, reception put the phone down.
Anita smiled and took her fingers out of her ears. ‘Did you win?’
‘Well… he agreed with me about the noise.’
‘Do we change rooms now?’
‘Erm… not really. Anyway, some of the other rooms are much closer to the bar than ours. Much noisier.’
‘Humph,’ said Anita, which would have been affectionate if my name was Humphrey. It was true though, some of those rooms were so close to the noise I could only imagine they put old, terminally ill people there, in the hope that it would piss them off so much they’d get better.
Filed under: Food
"Yay, this is gonna be great!"
The restaurant that evening was a beautiful local place with low lighting, long tables and a central area looking out onto a lawn. At some point during the evening we were promised a traditional Balinese dancing show, which everyone was getting quite excited about.
‘Hurrah!’ said Anita as we sat down to a table festooned with dozens of traditional Indonesian dishes. The variety of yellows, reds – and even a couple of blues – was astonishing, and after a few seconds so was the sound of Taiwanese disappointment echoing round the table.
‘Disgusting,’ whispered my wife, shoving another stick of satay into her mouth. ‘Indonesian food really terrible.’
I looked around our group. The pale faces and stiff grimaces said it all, but everyone was still to be piling their plates like this was the best thing that had ever happened to them.
‘Why is everyone still eating if they don’t like it?’
‘Because,’ said the fat-faced man opposite me, ‘this is package tour, so no more food tonight. And we paid for this.’ Just then, his wife – whose name was Cherry – made a sound like she’d just thrown up in her mouth, grimaced even more tightly than before, looked at me, gave a slight bow, did a heroically big swallow and then passed out on the table.
‘Oh my God – is she okay?’ I started to get up, intending to go for a doctor, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was Santoso.
‘Is okay,’ he said to me quietly. ‘This happen to someones every time. She will be okay. It is good for her.’
‘Good for her?’
Cherry’s husband agreed, nodding his head. ‘He is right. Now she don’t have to eat any more, and she too unconscious to feel hungry.’
Mercifully, the traditional dancing began before anyone else could pass out. The lawn suddenly lit up spectacularly, Balinese music started and two gamelan dancers, with tiaras, gold dresses and baskets of flowers started doing various swishing, swaying and sashaying movements backwards and forward.
‘Oh dear,’ said Anita after a few seconds. ‘This is not good.’
‘It’s not that bad. It’s a bit like two peacocks performing a mating ritual, but I can think of worse things to sit and watch.’
‘No, I mean the backwards and forwards, up and down, it make me feel…’
And she was off to the lavatory. Over the next few minutes, about half of our group disappeared in the same direction. Their stomachs had been battling hard to accommodate the unusual food and the motion sickness–inspiring dance was just too much for them.
Half an hour later, Santoso appeared again, smiling. ‘Time to go to hotel now.’ He announced.
We hobbled out towards the bus amid much groaning and the odd whimper, some of us supporting the less able members of our group.
‘I’ll bet you send tour groups here on the first night so they’ll be sick for the remaining four days and not cause any trouble,’ I joked to Santoso.
He put his finger to his lips. ‘Shhhhhh.’ And then he winked.
Filed under: Arrivals
"And that was another house, lived in by local people..."
As we walked out of Bali airport and into the parking lot, we were instantly assaulted by a wave of money changers, taxi drivers and blind, mono-toothed beggars.
‘Welcome to Bali,’ I said to Anita.
‘Thanks!’ she said, still high on expectation, and so completely missing the sarcasm.
Luckily I remembered a few tricks from previous trips to the island, and took out my wallet.
‘What are you doing?’ said Anita.
‘Don’t worry.’ I patted her on the shoulder and gave a confidence-inspiring smile. ‘I’ve been here before, remember? If we give them one US Dollar to share, they’ll all go away.’
‘Oh…’ she nodded and for once it looked like she was going to trust me.
I opened up the wallet and took out the note, flourishing it like the world’s only million-dollar bill.
‘Here it is,’ I said. ‘Who wants to hold it first?’
‘Is it a fifty?’ said one of the taxi drivers in surprisingly good English.
‘A fucking one dollar,’ said a money changer.
‘Smells cheap,’ said the nearest beggar after giving a derisory sniff.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘When was the last time you were here?’ whispered Anita, as the crowd of angry scroungers closed in.
‘Ten years ago. I think things might have changed.’
‘Are we in trouble?’
‘That depends.’
‘Depends on what?’
At that moment the filthiest of them reached up and touched my elbow, and without giving it any thought whatsoever I reacted with the first thing that came into my head:
‘Berita Jam!’ I shouted.
There was a ripple of consternation.
‘Selamat pagi, apa kabar terima kasih!’ I continued.
Anita grabbed hold of my wrist in confusion and panic.
‘Berapa! Berapa! Air minum!!’
The crowd started to back away, some of them moving a little too quickly and stumbling.
‘Berita minggu!! Berita minggu!’
That was enough to give us the space to move forward. I gave a final snort of ‘Dimana hari!!’ and we hustled towards our waiting bus.
‘What did we do?’ Anita asked as we reached the safety of our coach, and the waiting tour guide.
‘Not sure,’ I said. ‘I just shouted out all the Indonesian words I’ve ever heard, seen or said in my life to try and make them think I’m insane and little bit dangerous.’
But she was no longer listening. Instead her head was cocked towards the local tour guide as he whispered in her ear. Once he was finished, she backed away from me a little, a dawning look of something in her eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Santoso say you are very noisy.’
‘Well yes, but-‘
‘He say you are insane and a little bit dangerous.’
‘Obviously not really, I was just-’
The guide whispered something to her again, and she held out her hand to stop me speaking.
‘He say you can come on the bus, because we already paid for package tour and next flight back Taiwan not until tomorrow. But we must sit in back. And let him check you for weapons.’
**********************************************************************
‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,’ tried everybody as Santoso drilled us on the Indonesian rolling ‘r’. I was absolutely the only one who could do it properly, but he wasn’t giving me any appreciation whatsoever. I almost felt like putting my hand up. I did, in fact, put my hand up.
‘Ye-es?’ he said uncertainly.
‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!’
He put out a hand to stop me and retreated even further to the front of the bus, a look in his eyes that bordered on panic.
‘Baby, you should not talk to him. You make him feel scary.’
‘But I’m doing a brilliant Indonesian rolling ‘r’!’
‘No, you are not. You are doing a retarded tiger.’
I didn’t know what to say to that; except perhaps to do it again, but with added fang baring. I decided that probably wouldn’t go down very well, so I settled for staring out of the window and trying to forget that our twenty-strong tour group already thought I was a dangerous weirdo, and they’d only just met me.
It usually took people at least a couple of hours.
In the spirit of tour guides the world over, but especially in Guilin, Santoso had started talking the moment the bus left the airport, and seemed intent on going until either we reached out destination or the universe collapsed.
‘Is he on a respirator?’ I asked Anita at one point.
‘Huh?’
‘There’s no space for breathing, it’s just words going on forever. He must have some machine that does all his breathing for him.’
‘Huh? Shhh – listening.’
I went back to staring out of the window, and wondering how it was that every roadside food stand I saw was advertising chicken, yet any live chickens that I saw running around were scrawny little things that Colonel Sanders would have been hard pressed to turn into a nugget.
‘Perhaps they shave bits off them!’ I suggested, ingeniously. ‘That would kill two birds with one stone! Or, should I say, wound several chickens with a rusty old knife!’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Even I don’t think that’s as funny as it was when it was just in my head.’
‘Shhh.’
The chickens weren’t the only animals I kept seeing. We’d been on the bus for over half an hour, and I’d seen a great number of dogs. Except either there was only one type of dog on Bali – a medium-sized, black furred friendly looking guy – or somehow the same dog was popping up all over the place.
‘Perhaps it’s like the Prisoners of War in Colditz. When they would pop up in different parts of the roll call to cover for friends who were trying to escape through a tunnel.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well – if it’s the same dog, then maybe Balinese people have become sick of chicken nuggets and eaten all the dogs. So now there’s a local guy – let’s call him the ‘Bali really does love dogs, honest’ representative, charged with transporting the one remaining dog around the island and making sure the tourists see it and don’t get suspicious.’
‘您已經瘋狂,’ she said, and immediately there was a murmur of agreement from the others. I decided it might be best to keep my thoughts to myself for a little while.
