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Though I figured I was the only guest in this terrible hovel, and there were probably scores of vacant rooms, I just gave up and didn't feel like making the acquaintance of the rest of the tiny inhabitants and settled for the first room with the lesser wildlife. I had a 'trick' that worked before in India, Afghanistan, South America and other places when the nights were cool and the beds had things crawling about: I put on my raincoat, tucked my trousers into my socks, wore my other socks (only ever carry two pairs - one pair wearing, one pair drying as they hang off my pack) as gloves, pulled my own (emergency) pillowcase over my head tied with an elastic band around my neck and flopped onto the bed among the local creatures. And I slept well!
BUSES: I've experienced of some notorious busses in Central & South Ameraica but one of the longest bus trips, through Sulawesi (only beaten by the 21 hours in Borneo) was 14 hours over the worst roads imaginable. The biggest problem for me was the Karoake style music that was blasting out of a speaker above my head - a speaker U2 would have been proud of. My ear-plugs made no difference to the brain shattering thumping and the most played tape (of the two) was a techno version of 'Happy Birthday to You'. The other tape was that typical female singer with the shaky voice who seems to be following me about the world (and she's there in every Supermarket and shopping mall too) singing my 'My Legs Will Go On' (Titanic?) or some such mind-numbing screech. The Eurovision Song Contest has a lot to answer for!
After trying unsuccessfully to get the driver to turn the volume down (even pleaded in Indonesian using such words as 'menyakerti' (torture) I took drastic action after it got dark, reaching up to snip the wire with my trusty Swiss Army knife. I soon realized it may have been a big mistake as for the next 10 minutes the driver (thinking a loose connection) relaxed his concentration on the dangerous mountain road as he slapped, banged, thumped and kicked the dashboard until he sent shards of plastic flying and we ran off the road and BOGGED THE BUS!
Just a brief diversion here but it's important to the end of this story:
One of the most common causes of death in Indonesia is Tuberculosis - probably caused by spitting, the only sound to mask the hawking up, men and women, though the women are more inclined to the 'nose blow' al fresco, is the Karaoke so when you're on a long trip you can be sure you're in for one or the other. I met a doctor doing his first year out with a small island community in Northeast Borneo and we talked about the various bad habits of the locals, particularly the spitting and when I suggested he write to the health minister and suggest the possibility of the occasional announcement on TV or radio discouraging spitting he agreed it was a good idea but he looked a little puzzled. I remarked that spitting was common in the west a hundred years ago but the masses had been 'educated'. Then he nearly knocked me down with this question
"So, where do you spit?"
and when I answered
"I don't spit"
he asked
"Then where do other people spit?"
I answered
"Nobody spits!"
and it suddenly occurred to me that this qualified doctor did not know any better and it was only then it dawned on him and he said it
"So spitting is just a habit?".
We were also talking about the amount of rubbish all over the place, not just the usual millions of plastic bags but the rags, bedding and clothing snagged on the rocks and trees as well as the coral reefs. People just laughed at me when they saw me picking up the rubbish and depositing it up beyond the waterline. As I did it I would just shake my head and mutter 'kotor' (dirty). He said it was a local custom that whenever you got something new it was the custom to throw your old shirt, bedding, whatever into the sea to get rid of the bad spirits. Guess that explained the submerged mattresses sitting on the once beautiful coral close to the (now empty) diving resort.
We talked about the possibility of having a competition and give a prize to the kid who collected the biggest pile of rubbish. But there is such ignorance and superstition: he told me of a boy who fell out of a tree and broke his femur and his father a wealthy but uneducated fisherman (makes his living selling lobster to the Chinese) would not allow him to treat the boy. He called in the island's shaman or witch-doctor and when there was no improvement he arranged to take the child to the far off city of Tarakan on the mainland, not to the big, modern hospital there but to another shaman. This was in North East Kalimantan and the boy, after many weeks, is still lying in a relative's house, still in agony and with no improvement.
And so, the bus: I took a bus north from Balikpapan via Samarinda to Bontang in Borneo hoping to break the estimated 17/18 hour trip by stopping overnight. However, the ongoing bus didn't arrive till 12.30 next day and then began a 21 hour journey that was meant to take 11 hours over high mountains and through torrential rain, thunder and lightening and easily the worst track (not really a road) I've ever
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