boatilicious
the first thing i realised when i arrived at lembar port to catch my ferry was that it was going to be late, and there was no way of knowing how late. the second thing i realised was that i was the sole non-indonesian around. brown skin gets me out of this scrape occasionally, but my huge backpack always endeavours to drop me right back in it. for the first half hour people slowly walked past me, peering in that peculiarly unsubtle asian way (we call it staring) and trying to work me, and my bag, out. as soon as one chap finally came up and hallo mistered me, the floodgates opened. once he'd used his five minutes of english vocab up he strolled off, only to be replaced immediately by another grinning indo, armed with identical questions, and identical disbelief. i'm not quite sure how to answer 'where you from' anymore: if i say england they don't believe me, and if i say india they, er, still don't believe me, so i think i'm going to get a bit more imaginative and try mars, or something like that. either way, i have come to accept the fact that, in bahasa at least, my name is beckham.this indonesian inquisition continued for the four hours we were waiting. the girls used to just walk past but never actually approach me, the guys worked on a rota system, coming and sitting down whenever the seat next to me was free (rarely), and young children just gaped at me, like i was some kind of sideshow freak. still, it certainly wasn't dull, although, when combined with the worry of when my ferry was going to arrive, it was exhausting.
when it finally turned up it was that happy south east asian hybrid: a relatively solid, modern looking vehicle, reduced to an appearance of shambolic perilousness by the sheer number of people crammed onto it. camped on decks, in cabins, in the information booth, wherever there was space basically, would be hordes of happy indos, all bedecked with their standard accoutrements of travel: reed mattresses, live chickens, stinking jackfruit, and everything else in between.
still, my forty hours was quite good fun. as well as all my friends from the port, i ran into, yet more, lovely swiss germans (hey moritz, sam und anna), and whiled away the time with them until they departed at waingapu. it was my first experience of a boat trip that long, and i saw some amazing things: outcrops of volcanic rock jutting out of the sea, a couple of schools of dolphins cavorting right by the boat, a shooting star, and, most surreally, an ethereal night rainbow. arcing in and out of the sabu sea, faintly visible against the night sky, this ghost of a rainbow was presumably caused by the moonlight, and was a phenomenon i'd never even heard of, let alone seen.
so i was in quite good spirits when i arrived in ende, on flores, early in the morning. it didn't take long to work out that i wasn't in kansas anymore.
posted by bicrom @ 3:24 am
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