TRAIN JOURNEY TO YOGJAKARTA

After a few Bintangs with Sirkip while we became masters at each other’s country’s interpretation of Pool (or Billiard in Jawa) we slept and woke up at 05:30hrs. Under cover of darkness, those two fuckers crept to McDonalds, fake Muslims that they are… I’m guessing they don’t eat pork, but Islam alright?

Bloody farang !

At the train station we three stared at the floor and our cigarettes to avoid making contact with the mad woman that clearly thought she and I were old friends. Perhaps she was sane and correct, I wouldn’t like to say. She eventually disappeared and I turned to the newspaper vendor, apologetically explaining “Wanita gila” he smiled and nodded in agreement. It amuses me (as Rob also stated) that the first few words of any new language you learn are (in this order) Thank you, Hello, Please, Yes, No, two beers please and crazy.

This country looks like one big rice field. I thought I left the paddies in Chewang.
Most of this part of Asia looks the same. Maybe slightly cynical of me but one country’s red-rooved, dilapidated housing next to burnt fields, surrounded by green hills, palm trees and punctuated by electricity pylons soon merge into the next… not that its not idyllic, I suppose one just gets used to it. That said, I’d take this over London any day.

Drop the one from a British InterCity 125 and you’ve calculated our top speed, which explains how children can run alongside the train as it pootles through the greenery. You can always, always tell the good kids from bad no matter what continent you’re on. The good smile sweetly beneath their school caps and headscarves sometimes waving their miniature hands while the little terrors throw bloody great rocks at the windows as we pass. The giant spider-web cracks in the windows proof of their accuracy.

Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler’s The Tears provide the soundtrack for the seven hour ride from Bandung to Yogjakarta. God I love that album, its amazing how one’s interpretation of lyrics can bend so far from what they used to mean to you. Favourite songs and shared words once reserved for one girl quickly belong to another. Well, not all of them, but one has to replace the sentiments of
“I tried to move on but the ghost of you stayed” with
“We’ll fly over the endless ocean… You and me; we’re just two creatures on the run” and
“I want your language to be appalling, I want you to play with my hair in the morning”
and most fitting of all “In Asia we can mend our breakdown”
I also tried to work out who the lyrics of 10CC’s most famous song applied more to. Definitely me.

Question. Answers on a postcard please; why does God always put the beautiful but betrothed girls near me on public transport? I tested this long-held, but previously unchallenged belief by walking up and down the next few carriages; well there was fuck all else to do on a seven hour train ride…

Yup, just as I anticipated, my hypothesis was correct - no pretty girls.
In conclusion: God was fucking with me.

Rickshaw ride to our hotel, gym, swim, internet (if ze frigging Germans would goosestep away from the computer) and dinner later on. It’s a dirty job, volcano climbing, but someone’s gotta do it. No, honestly you do get filthy, I’ve never spent so much time removing dirt from under my fingernails and scrubbing my feet with Krakatoan pummice.