The Sulawesi Express

 Was thinking about a fellow I met back in the early nineties. I was on a four year backpacking adventure in Asia, and this guy did the same for about five months every single year. I had only been out about three years by then, but it was rare for me to come across someone who did this more than I. We met up in southern Sulawesi, still one of my favourite islands ever to trek across. I had white hair and a ponytail and stood a head taller than anyone else in sight. My new partner was three years older and about six foot four, so we really stood out. By then I had got pretty fair at the close-up magic tricks and the German, an avid photographer, was constantly over my shoulder shooting the expressions on the native faces when something would disappear.

I came across some old travel diaries the other day, and found this little tale of an excursion we shared from da south of Sulawesi to da north of Sulawesi. We took a bus ride together. It wasn’t maybe the sort of bus ride one might expect ….. but it definitely was a bus ride one was not likely to forget. The name won’t sound that imaginative, but it had to be called ……

                                                                   “The Sulawesi Express”.

In the morning, I walked out to Masamba, where I bought a bus ticket for Manado. I had to go to three different banks to get my money changed, but finally got it all done. Did lots of goodbye tricks for the locals back in Palu, then hopped the bemo to Masamba at the bus terminal, and spent about an hour doing tricks for the folks there until the bus was ready to go. It was about 4:00 p.m. when the bus was scheduled to leave, but there was no bus. “Maybe at 5:30….it will be here,” they told me. Remember, they are on ‘rubber’ time in Indonesia. Around the same time, a German guy named Manfred showed up. He seemed to be a very well seasoned traveler. He was also going up to Manado, and he said he thought that the bus ride would be fifteen hours to Gorantalo and another seven to Manado. I figured it would take about twice that long.

When we finally got underway a little after 5:30 p.m. the bus was mostly empty. One thing that did surprise us was that they had designated seats, so Manfred, who was well over six feet, made sure he had a seat with lots of legroom, and I had a window seat on the other side of the bus. There were three jerks up front as drivers, and shortly after we started they let fly with the stereo. The ‘music’, which was obnoxious in itself, was much too loud for the speakers and totally distorted anything that came out of them. When we told the drivers to “turn it down,” they found it very funny and had a good laugh about it. My bus ticket even included a free meal, which I found quite unusual. When we stopped for supper, I took that opportunity to chat with Manfred. After we ate, he and I thought it would be best to adjust the volume on the speakers. We took out our Swiss Army knives and cut the speaker wire in several places. Neither one of us was a licensed electrician, but our efforts seemed quite successful as we heard nothing more from the speakers around us. Nevertheless, the drivers still had a little speaker on the dash which they kept turned up at a distorting volume all night. The drivers never could figure out what had gone wrong. We continued picking up more passengers along the way, and the bus got quite full.

The following day, being the summer solstice, it was technically the longest day of the year, which turned out to be true in more ways than one. I don’t think anyone on the bus got any sleep. The drivers were totally nuts, partying all the way, with their only two tapes, both of which they kept blasting all night long. By then Manfred and I were chatting quite a bit. He had a great sense of humour about the whole bus ride. Sometime around 3:00 a.m. the bus stopped for about two hours. The drivers went off somewhere, apparently to get good and drunker. It took another seven hours—to 10:30 a.m.—for us to stop for breakfast. We arrived in Gorantalo at 2:00 p.m., in a torrential downpour, some twenty hours after we were supposed to start.

In Gorantalo we were informed that we would have to leave this bus and change to another one for Manado. The expected waiting time was about two hours (rubber time). We were then herded from the bus to a tiny concrete room with no benches to wait for the two odd hours, while the rain poured around us. Some guy came by with our tickets to Manado, but they had different seat assignments from what we had before. They had put the two of us, the only foreigners, at the very back of the bus where there was absolutely no legroom. We objected, and then Manfred just refused to be shoved to “the back of the bus!”

To which the driver retorted sarcastically, “Tough luck!”

Obviously, they didn’t know Manfred.

We decided to wait for the bus—expected at 4:00 p.m. (yeah, right)—and then just muscle our way on. No bus came at 4:00 p.m. or at five or at six or at seven. At about 7:30 p.m. a bus finally showed up. The entire bus terminal had been packed throughout the afternoon, and ours was the very last bus to come in. By then the guys in the terminal were well aware of the fact that Manfred would re-assume his old seat on the new bus. They were all huddled around each other, spending considerable time discussing how they were going to prevent that from happening.

In the meantime, we had drawn a huge crowd in the bus lot, Manfred for his seating assignment, and me for the tricks. All the while we were waiting, I had been flirting with Ending and Fitri, two beautiful young locals, and when the bus came up we exchanged addresses and promised to write. I guess the bus guys figured us being foreigners we couldn’t understand what they were saying, but Manfred was fluent in Bahasan Indonesian, having done a lot of traveling over the years in that country, and my understanding of the language wasn’t bad at that point. When the bus did roll up to our spot, about eight guys were planning and discussing how they would keep us from getting our old seats back. Not paying any heed to what they had planned, as the bus pulled up in front of our crowd, Manfred and I bullied our way in the side door; he got his old seat with the leg room by the side door, and I got my window seat back as the bus started to fill up.

The bus guys, having been duped, ordered everyone off the bus. They then locked the side door and actually took Manfred’s seat right out of the bus, leaving only the bare springs. Then the ‘bus boys’ stood by the rear entrance to block Manfred and I from getting on while all the locals were ushered on to take their assigned seats. This did little good, as Manfred, standing at about 6’3” just pushed everyone aside, including the irate ‘bus boys’ and got on the bus, went to his seat, and sat down on the springs!

Meanwhile, I had made a plan, which I executed with Fitri and Ending and it seemed most of the locals were supporting us in our efforts. I went around behind the bus to the back door and got into a heated argument with the ‘bus boys’ over our seats, which was actually just a diversion to attract their attention. Fitri and Ending grabbed the seat that the boys had removed where Manfred now sat on just springs, and while the ‘bus boys’ were occupied with me, the girls passed the seat in through the window to Manfred, who reinstalled it to the applause of all the folks around the bus and to the chagrin of the ‘bus boys’. Now Manfred had a big seat all to himself. My seat had been taken up by a family who were pretty well sitting on my backpack, which was wedged in front of the seat. At this point, no one was interested in sitting anywhere near Manfred, and I couldn’t blame them. Finally, I got on the bus and sat at the very back in quite an uncomfortable seat.

Eventually the bus headed out and we started picking up people along the way. Still no one wanted to sit beside Manfred, and they were running out of seats. I continued doing tricks for the passengers, and each time we stopped I would do tricks for the locals that gathered around the bus. We were getting quite popular, even with the new drivers. They finally came back to me and asked if I would like to sit up next to Manfred where all the legroom was, because, of course, this would give them several more seats to fill up. As Manfred said, all this could have been done in the first place, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun as the way we ended up doing it.

The best part of this leg of our trip was that the stereo on this bus was actually broken, which didn’t upset us in the least. Manfred and I exchanged a lot of sarcastic remarks and banter, which I found quite funny. We stopped to eat about 10:00 p.m.; it was our first meal in the past twelve hours. Right after supper we boarded the bus and then were ordered off—again. It wouldn’t start! We all got behind it and pushed it for a jump start, and after about a half-an-hour the drivers crawled under it, trying to figure out what was wrong. When they had supposedly repaired the wiring, we were off—again. We got around the first corner and the bus came to a dying halt. We all got out for another half-an-hour while the driver crawled under it—again. A while later, we were off—again.

Very early in the morning, we were racing along (and I mean racing) when everyone up front started yelling madly and screaming at the driver—we were driving along halfway off the road. He was fast asleep at the wheel, and they even had trouble waking him up. They shook him hard and, since they still wouldn’t change drivers, he got back on the road. A bit later he pulled off the road to clear his head and, of course, the bus conked out—again. We went through the thing of repairs for a half-an-hour and we were off—again. A short time later everyone was yelling at the driver—again; he was fast asleep—again while we were headed across some field towards some trees.

We finally got him back on the road and discovered why his relief driver wasn’t driving. He was the one that was lying on a piece of cardboard in the aisle, and he was too drunk to wake up, let alone drive! We couldn’t stop again and let the driver have a nap, for if we did this the bus would stall again, so the people up front kept a constant vigil all night taking turns, keeping the driver awake for the rest of the journey. I remember Manfred saying that the only thing that hadn’t gone wrong on this ride was that we hadn’t had a flat tire. Sure enough a few minutes later, the bus began bumping its way to a stop—we had a flat tire—but we had to keep the bus running while we changed it.

We finally got into Manado about 9:00 a.m., about forty hours of traveling for me, which was nothing compared to Manfred who had come all the way from Poso, so he had an extra whole day of traveling. I think they were waiting for us in Manado, for the terminal people told us 5,000 rupiah for a cab to town, which, of course, was ridiculous. We walked about a hundred meters out to the road and flagged down a cab for 250 rupiah.

I followed Manfred around, looking for a room. My guidebook didn’t really do too well in Northern Sulawesi. However, Manfred found a nice hotel room that was in his German guidebook for half the price of the room advertised in mine. Instead of sleep, which he needed even more than I did, we showered and headed straight for the Pelni office. Manfred obviously wanted to team up with me and get lots done. He wasn’t one for wasting time, and as a photographer he was fascinated by the shots the magic created on the faces of the fans. We got our tickets for the Pelni ship to Irian Jaya, went to the immigration office and the tourist office—a couple of hours of steady walking—changed some money and checked out the local ferry over to the island. Finally, I got a short afternoon nap. Manfred introduced me to some new foods, and taught me how to get the red hot peppers out of it. That night after tons of tricks and a great supper, I finally spent a couple of hours catching up my diary over what had happened in the past few days on the bus.

During that night it rained a lot and it was overcast in the morning. Manfred and I went to the docks and got on a boat for Bunaken. On the ride over, which only took about an hour, we had a big pod of dolphins go across right in front of us. We found a nice little losman on the island and I spent the morning walking around on the sandy beach. After a great lunch, I walked across the island and ended up in the town of Bunaken, walking around like the Pied Piper doing tricks for all the folks and their families. I got totally lost on the way back, which was difficult, given that the island wasn’t really that big. I would hike through the woods on a fairly worn path, then, all of a sudden, the path would just end. Then I would make my way through the dense bush until I found another path and follow it until it ended. Ultimately, I got back to the losman where Manfred had left me his snorkel gear, for which I was grateful. I had planned to go scuba diving there, but with Manfred’s gear I still got to see a lot of wonderful sea life.

The next day I started to learn about the craze I seemed to have started in Bunaken, which we called the “Oh-oh” craze. I went down the beach in the morning and I kept hearing these “Oh-oh’s,” and then some giggling kids. You see, the previous day, when I was hiking through the island, every once in a while I would come across a group of a few school children, usually girls. I would then go “Oh-oh” to which they would go “Oh-oh,” and giggled. Then I would do a trick and walk away. I could usually hear them mimicking the “Oh-oh’s” behind me as they went through the bushes. I thought nothing more of it, but it seemed to be all over town the next day.

I went snorkelling again, and although I would rather scuba, I saw a great array of coral snakes in a spot Manfred suggested. Then I spent most of the day on the beach, with Manfred following, and we kept on coming across the “Oh-oh” girls. Manfred started to call it “Oh-oh Island”. I was surprised when I paid my bill at the losman, as the guy tried to rip me off for about 10,000 rupiah. I just didn’t feel like the hassle, but Manfred did when he heard about it. He went back to the losman and came back with my 10,000 rupiah. He really didn’t like the Indonesians very much, although he did like Indonesia.

The ferry only left in the morning, but some tourists from Jakarta had a boat for the day, so we got a ride back with them. The family had their very pretty young daughter sing for me on the way back, I’m not sure why, but she did have a beautiful voice. I found my command of the local language was coming along very nicely.

Back in Manado, Manfred decided to take a mammoth hike through town, which I never mind, except with him it was a chore for he had such big strides and walked so fast he always wore me out quickly. We ended up in a maze of alleys, and right in the middle of them, a bunch of kids started to yell out “sulap, sulap” (“magic, magic”) and this really impressed Manfred. We had only briefly been in Manado, that one afternoon a few days ago, and already I was known in a secluded alley in a neighbourhood neither of us had ever been to, and which was also several kilometres from our hotel. He also introduced me to some ice fruit, which were truly refreshing in the heat, and then we went back to the Crown Hotel, showered and rested.

That night we were walking through a side street in town and stopped to listen to a local band practicing. Too bad I didn’t have a blues harp in my pocket, but the locals soon had the two of us inside with the band. I had a nice chat with Manfred at supper; he really was an adventure-seeking traveler, going away a few months each year, usually to Southeast Asia. That evening we walked through the night market. I found I was quite sore from all the swimming. We made arrangements to leave very early the next morning for the Pelni docks in Bitung.