(an as-yet unpublished book....Copyright L. Shuttleworth)
Flooded rice fields on Samosir Island, the heart of Batak culture.
Definitions
.......After arriving at the bus station of Parapat, a resort town on Lake Toba in North Sumatra, I got on a bemo to go down to the harbour. I became embroiled in a brawl with the conductor, who insisted the fare was 2,000 rupiah.
"It's 200!" I yelled. "Stop!" The bemo screeched to a halt, and I jumped out. When I reached for my pack, the conductor yanked it away. I grabbed one end, and we began struggling. A crowd gathered. He'd pull it one way, I'd pull it back. This would have gone on forever if I hadn't finally wrenched it away from him.
"Okay, okay, 200," he said.
"Forget it!" I said, and walked all the way down to the harbour.
I got on an old wooden boat bound for Tuk Tuk, a tourist village on Samosir Island, and sat on the top deck. We steamed off across the lake to the heart of the land inhabited by the formerly ferocious Batak tribe. I took a room in the same tiny guesthouse where I'd stayed before.
Go native
In the restaurant, I met Jerry, a 61-year-old Dutch man who had taken up permanent residence on the island. He'd dropped out of society and was trying to go native and live just like the Bataks. He walked barefoot to stimulate the accupressure points in his feet, and he even drank tap water.
"I'm in perfectly good health," he said, standing up and swaying dangerously. "Well, I'm going back to my room now. I just come here to drink beer."
A Canadian couple from Toronto sat with me. He'd been a drummer in a heavy metal band; she'd been a nurse. They'd quit their jobs to travel, and didn't miss anything from home.
"Do you?" the woman asked me.
"No," I said. "I can't think of a single thing I miss." We looked at each other in amazement.
"Has anything exciting happened in Canada?" I asked.
"The Prime Minister has resigned," said the guy.
"No way!" I said.
"Way!" said the woman.
I went for a swim. The deep green water was choppy, and I swam far out, bouncing up and down on the waves, and wondering whether the snake I'd seen in the lake before had been poisonous.
Back in the restaurant, the owner's nephew, Holland, sat with me.
"I've never had a girlfriend," he said. "Why don't you find someone for me and bring her back here?"
"I'll see what I can do," I said.
Banana pancake
I rushed out of bed in the morning, gobbled down a huge banana pancake, and dashed onto the 7:30 boat to Parapat. I had to leave the country for a couple of days, as my visa was about to expire. As soon as I stepped off the boat, I was dragged onto a decrepit old bus that looked like it had been welded together from several road wrecks. My pack was tossed onto the roof. I sat in the back row, and every time the bus roared around a hairpin bend, I'd check the road behind to make sure my pack hadn't fallen off.
We stopped at the junky-looking town of Sentral for a long, unexplained break in the bus terminal. Vendors and guys with nothing better to do boarded the bus and crowded around me. One sat on either side, both of them gradually edging closer and closer, smiling charmingly as if to hypnotize me.
They asked where my husband was, offered to marry me, and inquired about the price of a plane ticket to Canada.
A vendor selling thin paperback books displayed his favourite - "Sexual Problems in Marriage."
"I don't have any of those problems," I said.
He opened the book and pointed to graphic illustrations of sexual intercourse.
I screamed and slammed the book shut. Everybody began laughing hysterically.
"I'm a police officer," said one lout sitting beside me.
"Where's your ID card?" I demanded.
He whipped out his wallet, and opened it to blank pages.
We fell over laughing.
"Do you want to buy cocaine?" asked the "police officer."
"Sure," I said. "Let's see it."
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and handed me one.
"Cocaine cigarettes," he said.
Everybody laughed harder.
Merriment ends
But the merriment had to end, as passengers began boarding the bus. Mothers and children sat squashed with me in the back. We roared out of town and descended through endless oil palm plantations down to the coastal city of Medan, Sumatra's largest metropolis, a sweltering, chaotic heap of humanity.
I got off on a main road near the Grand Mosque and walked around in the hot sun looking for a cheap hotel, eluding becak drivers who kept following me with offers of cheap rides.
"My legs are working perfectly well," I told them in English.
Dazed by the heat, I finally found a hotel room. Then I went wandering all over downtown Medan. Walking over the river I saw below the bridge tiny, wooden shacks clinging to the muddy banks. Women were washing their clothes in the filthy brown water. Just above them was a shiny, new Pizza Hut. I walked through the wealthy section of town past big stucco houses surrounded by steel fences, long, wide tree-lined boulevards, and well-dressed residents driving shiny new cars.
As soon as I stepped out of the port building in Georgetown, Malaysia the next day, I noticed a difference in the way Malaysia smelt. I didn't like it. It smelt completely different from Indonesia. I wondered if I liked Indonesia a lot more than Malaysia simply because of the smell. In fact, I hadn't liked the way Thailand had smelt, and I hadn't liked it there, either. I suspected that in a previous life I had been a blood hound, and that's why I had such a keen and often disturbing sense of smell. I'd always identified very strongly with dogs, especially big, goofy ones.
Card-playing men
I walked to the New China Hotel. There were a lot of old Malaysian men sitting around playing cards.They looked up at me and smiled with interest.
I walked over to the tourist strip and went into a restaurant to buy Malaysian dollars. An old English man with a big, bushy grey beard hailed me drunkenly.
"How are ya?" he said. "Come over here and sit with me and have a beer."
Then, while I was sitting eating Indian food at an outdoor cafe, an old Malaysian man came over and began talking to me. He said he was a "former seaman" and had been "everywhere."
"But now I live in Malaysia," he said. "This is a good country. We have three languages, and three religions here, but no-one fights. We all get along. Not like Jugoslavia. This is a very tolerant country. May I join you?"
"No," I said.
"Enjoy your meal," he said, bowing out with grave dignity.
Guide to tropical diseases
I lingered in used bookstores, and bought the Economist and a detailed guide to tropical diseases. Leafing through it, I concluded that I had most of the diseases.
The "former seaman" was sitting in the lounge at my hotel.
"We're both staying here!" he said happily. "Let's have a drink!"
"No thanks," I said. "I don't drink."
In the lineup to get on the ferry the next morning I met Kina, a beautiful blond Swedish girl. We snoozed through the American and Chinese action movie videos. I felt immensely glad when we arrived in Indonesia. It smelt like home.
At the bus terminal, Kina and I were dragged onto another wreck of a bus. We sat in the back row so we'd have leg room, but soon there were about 150 people squashed against our legs. I had never seen so many people packed onto one bus. The bus would stop for a group of people, the conductors would frantically wave them on, they'd hesitate, then climb on, the last ones hanging in the doorway. At one point, a teenaged boy was sitting in my lap, crushing my thighs.
We painfully unfolded our bodies and got off the bus at Parapat. We marched downhill to the harbour and boarded a ferry.
"Hey you," said a skinny kid with slicked-back hair and an eye patch. It was Romeo, a local teenager I'd met there before.
"What have you done to your hair?" I said. It used to fall rakishly over his eyes.
Rakish hair
"Don't you like it?"
"No, I liked it better the other way. What's wrong with your eye?"
"Infected. Who's your friend?"
"This is Kina. She's married."
"Are you Dutch?" he asked her.
"No, Swedish," she replied.
"Good. I don't like Dutch people. My grandfather was killed by the Dutch in the war. I don't like Muslims, either. Do you?"
"Some Muslims are nice," I said. "I have Muslim friends."
"You're much fatter now."
"I'm not fat. I had Dengue Fever the last time you saw me."
Whispering in his ear
I watched a chubby German girl sit down near us with a dark-skinned, long-haired Indonesian guy. He looked a lot like the Balinese guys who hung around the Kuta Beach clubs. He was holding hands with the girl, and she was whispering in his ear.
"Do you know him?" I asked Romeo.
He nodded.
"Is he a gigolo?"
"Yes! He has many girlfriends."
The boat coasted over the water to the island.
Kina and I took a big room for only 2,000 rupiah.
"That's so cheap it's like pissing in the sea," said Kina happily.
I immediately changed into my bathing suit and walked out to the end of the pier. A kid fishing off another pier shouted excitedly, but then suddenly reeled in a flip flop.
Poisonous snakes
I dove into the lake and swam out as far as I could without stopping. I wondered where the snake was. I knew if the poisonous snakes didn't get me, the diseases would.
I sat in the restaurant for the evening, slowly eating gado gado and babbling to everyone. Holland gazed incredulously at Kina, this gorgeous blond vision whom he assumed I'd brought for him.
"She's already married!" I said. "It's too late!"
"When you meet a single Western girl, send her to me," he pleaded. He patted my leg under the table.
"Okay, Holland," I said. "What age?"
"It doesn't matter. As long as she has a good heart. Like you."
A very drunk Finnish guy sat across the table from me.
"I've been drunk every day for 40 days," he bragged. "And I've tried every drug you can try!"
Local whisky
He poured me a large glass of local whisky which tasted like fruit-flavoured gasoline. After drinking it, I felt loose and deranged. Romeo arrived and sat on my other side. The Finn continued drinking, offering me more whisky. I said no, as I could hardly see after only one drink.
"Tell me," I said to Romeo, "Are there any gigolos on Samosir?"
"We all are," he replied, gesturing at Holland. "I'm the youngest."
"You're only 17!"
"Yes, but I have a strong engine."
"I'm not taking any medicine," the Finn was telling Jerry, who'd just sat down with a large beer. "No malaria pills, no shots. I don't need that junk."
"Just whisky," I filled in.
Someone dropped a music tape into the ghetto blaster on the top shelf. It was an obnoxious death metal band that created an aggressive, depressive atmosphere.
Rock and rolls makes me want to scream
"I hate rock and roll," said Jerry. "It just makes me want to scream."
"Will you buy me a coke?" Romeo asked me.
"No," I said.
"Okay, see you." He got up and left the restaurant.
"I hate that little bastard," Jerry said. "He only likes people who give him things."
The Finn abruptly slid off his chair onto the floor, as if someone invisible had bonked him on the head. His Swedish friends, who'd been sitting at another table with Kina, rushed over and dragged him off to bed. He looked like something dead found at the bottom of the lake.
"Typical Finn," said Kina, "They always drink too much."
"Imagine the stories his liver could tell," I said.
Leaving Kina behind, I went reeling up and down the street looking for a small souvenir wooden Batak totemic head with hair. But all I saw were five-foot-tall models that I'd be unable to carry around -- though I briefly considered getting one and telling people it was my husband so they'd stop pestering me about why I was single.
A Batak totem pole in a traditional village. Small versions are available as souvenirs, or husband substitutes...