Blog 8 – Hatyai (Thailand), Penang, Melaka (Malaysia), Pekanbaru, Jambi, Palembang, Bandar Lampung, Bandung (Indonesia)

Blog 8 – Hatyai (Thailand), Penang, Melaka (Malaysia), Pekanbaru, Jambi, Palembang, Bandar Lampung, Bandung (Indonesia)


Well, it’s been a while! I am currently on a ferry which is travelling between Sumatra and Java in Indonesia and have escaped to the lounge to do a bit of writing for as long as the battery in the laptop lasts. The last time I updated this blog was from Koh Samui about ten days ago and as you can see from the locations above, we’ve been to lots and lots of places. Believe me when I tell you that my love affair with the bus has well and truly come to an end. In fact, I think that so much damage has been done to our relationship that there is no chance of any type of reconciliation … EVER … we’re finished! And I’m afraid, as I write this, there’s quite a lot of bitterness between us! I’ve had several enquiring emails over the last few days as to why there’s been a delay with Blog 8 …… and the simple answer is that the long long days on the bus has allowed me time for nothing other than eating (always a priority), washing and sleeping. Even the ‘washing’ element of the equation has only stretched as far as washing myself and not any of my clothes. If there’s any consolation, it’s that all of the Oz Bus passengers are in the same boat (pardon the pun), as tonight is our 8th night on the trot in a different location and logistics doesn’t allow for us to be able to do laundry before the bus departs in the morning. Most of our days of late have consisted of at least twelve hours in the bus, with Tuesday hitting fifteen hours. To-day I’m told it will again be over fifteen hours before we arrive at our hotel.

We were always aware that travelling through Indonesia was going to be very tough but believe me, it’s become a real test of endurance and stamina. I’ve noticed that people are easily irritated, we’re becoming increasingly more tired, our diet is so unhealthy and we’re simply trying to survive until we get a few days to relax in one place and to build our energy up again. But in saying that, it’s all part of what we bought into and I’m continually thankful that I have remained healthy throughout this trip – lots of other passengers haven’t been as fortunate. I’ll probably arrive home at Christmas and not leave the bed ‘til July – riddled with malaria, Japanese encephalitis, rabies and Hepatitis A (am still convinced that skimping on those inoculations will come back to haunt me).

Anyway, just so that I’ve set the scene for you, that’s been what I’ve been at for the last ten days. Just days and days of 6.00 a.m. departures and 8.00 p.m. arrivals into hotels in cities that Lonely Planet advises us to avoid. Like battery hens, we’ve been cooped up on an uncomfortable bus, with the highlight of the day being service stations toilet stops every two or three hours. And even sitting down here today to write, what’s going through my head is what in God’s name will I write about that won’t bore you to tears?



Well, why not start at my one good laugh this week (which could also be called my ‘only’ laugh). About three days ago, we had left Jambi very early in the morning and were travelling to Palembang. Conscious that this journey would take fifteen hours, we had all stocked up on snacks and drinks and had charged our appliances etc. – it was a case of “Fail to prepare; Prepare to Fail”. The bus stopped around 9.00 a.m. and we filed off and used bathrooms etc. and then climbed back on. I then fell fast asleep and the next thing I awoke to find to the bus had stopped again in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, and the people were getting off the bus. I groggily looked down at my watch and it was only 10.00 a.m. – a mere one hour after the last stop which is unprecedented. Afraid to let any opportunity for a toilet stop pass, I retrieved my own personal roll of toilet paper and my hand sanitizer from my bag, wiped the sleep from my eyes and I too got off the bus. I noticed that directly outside, the passengers had all congregated together with their cameras in their hands ‘hmmmm, strange that they’re not rushing to join the toilet queue’, I thought, but continued on my way, towards an old concrete building about 100 metres away from the bus. About 60 metres from the ‘toilet’ I heard someone calling my name and I turned around. The girl who called my name, walked towards me, handed me her camera saying ‘If you take me, I’ll take you’. Taking her camera in my hand that wasn’t holding my toilet roll, I looked at her blankly and said ‘The toilet? You want me to take a picture of you in the toilet?’ Very confused, she looked at me and said ‘No, at The Equator Monument’. “The Equator Monument?’ I repeated, equally as confused. She looked at me, threw her eyes to heaven, grabbed the camera out of my hand and said ‘Never mind, I’ll get someone else to do it’ and she turned and stomped away. AND THEN IT DAWNED ON ME! We weren’t on a toilet stop, we had stopped at the ACTUAL Equator Monument, a huge 50 foot structure in the sky that I had walked past in my blinkered state. Well, I climbed back onto the bus to retrieve my camera, with my toilet roll and hand sanitizer under my auxter and I really had the best laugh at myself and my stupidity. One of the most famous and renowned landmarks in the world, the zero point of the equator line, and all that was on my mind was how lucky I was to be getting to the front of the toilet queue while the other eejits dilly dallied outside the bus. The only comfort was that when I climbed onboard the bus, there too was Laura putting away her toilet roll and retrieving her own camera from its case. She too had made the same mistake so I didn’t feel quiet as much of an ass. But God, did we laugh at ourselves. We had this vision of a cartoonist drawing the scene – the Oz Bus parked on the side of the road, 28 people taking photographs from every angle of the actual point of division between the northern and southern hemisphere …. and Laura and myself scurrying past them all with our rolls of toilet paper under our arms, oblivious to everything, with our only care in the world being whether the toilets would be clean or dirty. For those who have travelled with me before, I know you won’t be too surprised, as I too have seen the photographs of Debbie asleep at the Pyramids, Debbie asleep at the Grand Canyon, Debbie asleep at the Niagara Falls, Debbie asleep at the Colosseum and Debbie asleep at the Acropolis (I think it’s the Wonders of the World and their ilk that generally are at the root of my doziness). Anyway, for what its worth, whenever I think of that day at the Equator, it never fails to make me smile, and it’s the perfect indicator of how simple my basic needs and requirements have become throughout the last couple of months.



It’s strange really to think that I haven’t used a hair straightener since the end of August, rarely (if ever) put any make-up on my face, worn the same few clothes that’s in my rucksack, survived all the freezing cold showers and shared a room with a different person every night. I also notice that I have become completely tolerant of the varying levels of cleanliness in the hostels and hotels and having spent the first three weeks of the trip spending hours inspecting and fumigating each bed for insects and whatever else, I now find myself falling into the bed without even checking what the conditions the sheets are in or what flora and fauna they may contain. I think it was in Agra in India that I realized that I had changed. We stayed in a particularly awful dive of a hotel and I was room-sharing with Vicki. On entering the room, without even taking out my inspection kit, I was met by the sight of several species of wildlife walking across my bed. My rule of thumb was that I could tolerate any beast with two legs, but anything with more legs than myself wasn’t good.

Vicki kindly labelled each of the ‘Walkers’ … ‘there’s a bed bug Debbie’, ‘oh, that’s a flea, in fact there’s three fleas’ and ‘that’s a lesser spotted highly dangerous hard-backed beetle’ and as she rummaged at the bottom of the sheets, ‘that HAS to be a death-inducing poisonous and paralyzing red-backed spider’. Now bear in mind that whilst she was being so helpful with her recognition and classification and cataloguing skills, all her findings and detections were on MY bed and not her own. I gazed over at the pristine and lily-white sheets on her bed and kicked myself for ‘not baggsing’ that side of the room when I had walked through the doorway. With the inspection still ongoing and Vicki still on all fours on top of my bed …., I stood in a state of shock and paralysis …. and that was even before I had even succumbed to a bite by the red-backed spider. As the pillow visibly moved up and down the bed with the power and force of the creatures that lay both underneath and within it, I reckoned that I’d have been safer sleeping naked in the Amazonian jungle or indeed in the Crocodile enclosure in Dublin Zoo than on the bed in front of me.



Now I admit, that first night I spent many hours jack-knifing bolt upright in the bed … to maim or murder whatever crawled, flew, hopped, slid, or trampled across my leg, or my arm, or my foot or my face. But, on the second night, perhaps it was fatigue or simply a resignation to the fact that I hadn’t died the first night, I climbed into my little single bed and slept as well as if I was in a five star hotel with 250 thread Egyptian cotton sheets and rose petals sprinkled on my bedcovers. Since then, regardless of what’s thrown at me in the manner of species in hotel rooms, I’ve risen to the task. I’ve killed cockroaches, earwigs, ants of all colours and sizes and crushed bed-bugs (incidentally, they make a squelching sound). Although having to be persuaded by the wildlife experts of the Oz Bus that gravity does not come into play with certain creatures, I’ve slept with several lizards sleeping on the ceiling directly over me. If those experts are incorrect and if one or all of them lose their balance and fall during the night, I have been proactive and Googled ‘Steps to follow if you swallow a lizard’ and bookmarked it and saved it in under my Favourites folder. That’s where you’ll find it when doctors all over the world are bamboozled as to why their patient’s tongue keeps darting in and out and why her skin has turned to scales. Anyway, I think that all of this is the proof that you might need that I most certainly have changed over the last few months and the Debbie that appears in Renvyle on the 15th December may be considerably different than the one who left on the 4th of September. In fact, how comfortable are you with dreadlocks, hairy legs and arm-pits, Jesus type sandals, body tattoos and a few piercings and nose rings? (I think in that sentence, I might have mixed the new-age travellers with the hippies with the punks and the religious freaks ….. but you get my drift!).



Anyway, we all can’t believe that in less than ten days we will leave Bali to fly to Australia. And on the 5th of December (in just over three weeks time) we arrive in Sydney. Although really looking forward to going home for Christmas and seeing family and friends, all of a sudden, I am starting to feel real pangs of sadness and can’t believe that my Oz Bus dream is almost over. When I think back to the initial few weeks of this trip and to things that happened, it seems like a year ago, so I can’t say that the time has absolutely flown. But I will say that other than on the very first night in Bruges, (when I sat with my head in my hands on my bunk bed in the cramped eight person dorm), not once have I thought that I made a mistake in coming on this trip. And despite what I said about the excruciatingly long bus journeys, even on the longest and most miserable of those days, I have never wished that I was in any other place or doing anything different with my life than exactly what I was doing. So for all of you out there who are pitying me (and I know you are through your ‘wouldn’t wish what you’re doing on my worst enemy’ type of comments), I can guarantee you that I’m not to be afforded sympathy of any description. However, in January 2011 when I’m in jobless, moneyless and suffering from Seasonal Adjustment Disorder, your most powerful sympathy pangs can be directed my way and will be gratefully received at that time.



That’s of course if I haven’t moved to my Palace in Varanasi! Time for me to explain again. Whilst our group were in Varanasi in India, we went on a tour around the city – lots of golden Buddhas if my memory serves me right. I mustn’t have been as Buddha’d out at that stage as I am now. Anyway, the Indian Tour Guide took a bit of a shine to me and kept sitting down beside me on the bus and walking by my side when visiting any of the attractions. He named me Princess Varanasi, which you could imagine was the cause of much amusement and mirth amongst my fellow Oz Bussers. Now, being labelled ‘Princess Varanasi’ sounds like a wonderful honour to bestow on a person, but bear in mind that Varanasi is renowned far and wide as being the dirtiest city in the world. So I can assure you that the Princess Varanasi title does not have the same connotations as being labelled Princess Bahrain, Princess Dubai or Princess Monaco. In fact, when he said it to me first, and when my mind started wandering (as it invariably does), instead of envisaging myself on a diamond throne, wearing a sparkly tiara, ball gown and delicate golden pumps, I could see myself wading through the sewage covered streets in Varanasi in my black wellingtons, two corgis under my auxters, my waterproof oilers, a Michael Jackson style facemask and my tiara a dull grey from the traffic fumes. But since that day, I have been nicknamed Princess Varanasi and believe me, most often it is used in a less than complimentary tone. I’ll give you an example.



When we were en route between Chitwan and Pokhara in Nepal, we were fortunate enough to be invited into a typical Nepalese family home (I think it was the Nepalese Tour Guide who had organized it with his family). You can imagine thirty of us disembarking the bus in the middle of the countryside and traipsing into this small and simple family home. The very extended family (about twelve of them) had gone to great lengths to make our visit enjoyable and despite their obvious lack of wealth, had bought a lot of drinks and food for us. As they had no knowledge of English and our Nepalese was …hmmm, limited …. communication between us consisted of a lot of smiling and showing of teeth. Their smiles and our smiles, their teeth and our teeth! They were adamant that before any of the hors d’oeuvres could be served, every one of the thirty of us should have a seat in the small room. Although we were more than happy to stand, the family members insisted on giving up their own seats and there were chairs brought from every other room in the house. Eventually someone amongst the family spotted that 93 year old Granny who was minding her own business knitting booties in the bedroom had the audacity to still be sitting on a chair, and that too was whipped out from under her and given to one of our group. Now, this whole seating process had taken about twenty minutes and it was becoming more and more awkward as even when you got a chair, there was nowhere left to put it as we were like sardines in a tin. Also, we were all getting lock jaw from the smiling and nodding. At the end, there were 29 of us sitting and I was the only one left standing but was very comfortably leaning against the wall trying not to be noticed. But, from way down the corridor, Granny’s 77 year old son caught my eye and did a bit of ‘tsshhing’ and nodding and gesticulations with his finger to someone in a kitchen off an adjoining room. I beseeching looked at him and mouthed ‘I really want to stand, no chair, I’m fine … PLEASE’. And then I saw it ….. A FULL-SIZED RED SEQUINNED GOLD-TRIMMED ARMCHAIR still wrapped in its plastic covering, being lifted aloft in the air and like a food parcel convoy, being carried over heads and up the corridor. It arrived into our room and because of all the bodies and chairs, had to be passed in overhead to find a space. Curiosity had got the better of four foot six inch Granny, who being left chair-less, had left down her needles and had made a little space for herself to watch the proceedings. But her standing space was allocated as the exact point where the arm-chair should be placed and Granny had to move at speed before she herself became a part of the pattern in the carpet. With the ‘throne’ in the middle of the floor, Uncle beckoned me and insisted that I come and sit in the arm-chair in the middle of the room. The roars of ‘Nothing but the best for Princess Varanasi’ echoed around the room as I sat into the chair which not alone had never been sat in, but had never been taken out of ‘the good room’. I can tell you, that I almost died of embarrassment and I blushed to a degree that I never thought possible. After ten minutes of clicks and flashes of cameras (at me in the throne, as opposed to at the typical Nepalese family!), the food and drink was served. Then Great Granddad who was the oldest male member in the house gave us individually a blessing which consisted of a red flower dye paste and red petals – which he placed on our foreheads and said some prayer. When he approached my throne and was giving my blessing, instead of relishing in the moment, all I could think of was ‘I hope it doesn’t stain my white shirt ‘cos it’s the only thing I have that’s clean’. But all in all, it was a memorable day and Princess Varanasi survived it – I was going to say ‘with her reputation intact’ but that really is debatable.



So, another blog almost completed. I generally reckon that about 3,000 words is as much as I can inflict on you in one go. Anything over that and you’d be skipping paragraphs and pages and that wouldn’t be good. I just had a read back on it and even with 3,000 words it’s not really clear that I’m in Indonesia is it ….. I’d better put it into the title of this blog. I’m sure Michael Palin is not having sleepless nights over me wiping his eye and being offered his travel programme. In fact I could do my own programme and it would be called – ‘Read 3000 words of her travel experiences and guess which country she is in’. We head to Yogyakarta tomorrow, home of Mount Merapi volcano. In fact we have had to change hotels as our appointed hotel was within the exclusion zone which is about 30kms from the volcano. I read yesterday that lava travels at a speed of 100kms an hour. I’m on the treadmill since.

The boat has docked and after one night in Bandung, we’re staying in a fabulous hotel for the next night in a place called Pangandaran in Java … and after a few days, we move onto the island of Bali. You see, that’s why I don’t use names in my blogs, it’s even boring for me and goes in one ear and out the other. I’ve decided to not inflict you with menial trivia like location names, so really, you should be thankful that I’ve chosen to spare you all! Anyway, where we are now the beaches are beautiful – sort of like the Bounty Ad and instead of frolicking by the aqua-blue waves like the rest of the group, I am sitting on my bed in an air-conditioned room updating this blog. Shows how much you all mean to me, that’s all I say. Please keep in touch, I love to read your comments and get your emails. Until next time, love to you all. Deb x