Sorry for the Group Email

So here was the problem. Bali took a long time. This is because Bali has all the things you could possibly want from a tourist destination: easily-accessible touristy bits with nice restaurants, out-of-the-way villages that tourists pass through once every blue moon, and nearby islands, such as the Gillis, that offer the kind of tranquility that a European can barely imagine. So it’s small wonder that we were there far, far longer than we meant to be.

But the clock was ticking. Our flight to Sydney left from Jakarta on the 16^th of June; it was already the 12^th by the time we left the Gillis, so although it’s possible to make a pleasant, three-day trip out of the journey from Gilli Trewangen to Mount Bromo on the island of Java, we opted for doing the whole thing in one horrible-sounding go.

We arrived at Mataram (Lombok’s capital) the middle of the morning, having made a deal with a rather peculiar and shifty character to sell us a bus ticket all the way to Bromo. At the bus station we made friends with an equally shady creature who tried to sell us a “Learn Indonesian” book on the grounds that ours was “expired”. As we climbed onto the bus he and a friend followed us, having heaved our bags from the bus’ locker. We were charged 100,000 Rupiah so the bus conductor, who was nowhere to be seen, would “look after” our bags.

100,000 Rupiah is only about US$10, but in Indonesia it’s a fool’s ransom. You could, for instance, stay in a hotel with a beautifully presented pool for less. You could feed two people, including booze, at a decent restaurant. If you ate at roadside stalls (delicious, incidentally), you could feed two people for – literally – a week.

Everything, of course, is relative.

But, since we arrived in Asia, we became accustomed to paying miscellaneous charges without too much of a fuss: making a scene generally only leads to being shouted at in a foreign language, at which point you pay up and calm and smiles are instantly restored.

He took our money and vanished, as it slowly dawned on us that we had, very politely, been robbed.

At this point in my notes for that day I’ve written an extravagantly rude word. I’ll spare you the 18-rated details, but it’s safe to say that we were both in a foul mood. This is a terrible way to start an Asian bus journey, as the entire route is populated by hawkers, sellers and children who sing out of tune and hassle you for money. It’s hard enough keeping a smile and staying polite at the best of times, but on this day we were nakedly hostile.

As the bus pulled out of the station there was a noise that sounded like every cymbal in the world being simultaneously trapped in the same gigantic sliding door. A deep, booming voice, announced:

“And now, ten CONTINUOUS HOURS of DANCE MUSIC.”

The “MUSIC” at the end was treated to an overkill of reverb, and the sound system, such as it was, was turned up so high that the speaker cones rattled against the protective guards. We left the bus station two hours late, with thumping techno music grating against the speakers, with a bass line turned so low it made our stomachs churn.

We arrived at the ferry port 45 minutes later and a trifle deaf. From there we got on the most disturbing-looking ferry I’d ever seen. Small pools of water sat on its decks and the steps to the passenger deck were rusted entirely through, suggesting that anyone foolhardy enough to step on them with their entire weight would find themselves instantaneously transported to the lower decks. The squat toilet was a sight: uncleaned for months and with cockroaches half an inch wide and four inches long scuttled across the floor. The passenger deck was filled with smoke, and we angrily waved our hands at anyone stupid enough to try to sell us anything.

The boat trip took four and a half hours. As we got off we tried to buy a bottle of water from the counter and were promptly charged three-and-a-half times the going rate. I swore under my breath. Just.

“It’s too much.”

We stormed off. It wasn’t the money, which we had and could afford to spend; it was the principal of spending such an extravagant amount compared to what everyone else paid. It is, of course, more than a little precious for a travelling European to complain about overpaying in a country like Indonesia. The per capita GDP of the country is just US$3,700, according to the CIA (who, I guess, would know), and it’s only natural that bewilderingly wealthy tourists pay over the odds. But there are ways of doing it that feel less exploitative, and we’d spent all day – from when we bought our first boat ticket – feeling like walking wallets, to be abused by anyone with a foodstall or bus ticket. As my sister, Rach, says, once you’re in a foreign country you’re effectively illiterate and mute, so you rely very much on the kindness of strangers. If you can’t find any strangers with nothing to sell, you’re in trouble.

Once our bus pulled off the ferry we were back on Bali. The music restarted and we thumped our way across Bali. Nonetheless, it was midnight and we quickly fell asleep, rolling through the blanket of darkness that fell over Bali’s hills.

An hour later a man was urgently tapping me on the shoulder.

“Denpasar!”

Denpasar is the capital of Bali. I mumbled something to the effect that this wasn’t where we were going, and could I be left alone, please, and closed my eyes.

The tapping resumed.

“Denpasar!”

“I know. This isn’t where we’re going!”

He wandered off.

Half an hour we stopped again, this time for a midnight snack.

Finally, we were off, towards Gillimanuk, from which ferries leave every half hour for the Javanese mainland.

The bus, as all Asian buses are, it seems, was freezing. The peculiar habit of leaving the air-conditioning turned as cold as it would go made the bus into a kind of transport-cum-meat-cooler, and although the outside world was warm enough for shorts and flip-flops, on the inside I was soon wrapping my coat around my feet for extra warmth.

Shortly I became aware of more gentle, persistent tapping on my shoulder. I whimpered quietly. The tapping continued. I brushed my shoulder. It was wet.

I was sat directly underneath the air-conditioning unit, which was working so enthusiastically that condensation had formed, and every bump we went over sent a small torrent of drips down onto me. Not only was it freezing on the bus, it was raining as well. Not only that, but the techno music continued unabated, and every time the CD ended I enjoyed a moment of soaring bliss, in which I envisioned the CD changer falling out of the window, or the conductor announcing in a sorry tone that all the other CDs were scratched, and we’d have to continue the rest of the way in silence.

That would have been nice.

I was barely aware of the ferry to Java, and I can’t remember driving off. I do remember sleeping fitfully, waking up every hour or so with a start as the freezing water in the folds of my jacket reached critical mass and spilled with astonishing copiousness into my lap.

We eventually arrived in Probolingo. We fell gratefully from the freezing bus into the early morning Indonesian sunshine. We wiggled our fingers in our ears to try to dispel the tinnitus, and began trying to organise our final transport to Cemoro Lewang, which lies a kilometre from Mount Bromo, reportedly one of Indonesia’s most stunning landscapes and the one of the country’s many active volcanoes.

We were instantly surrounded by touts, each of whom had minibuses, normal buses and trishaws that could take us, variously, to Cemoro Lewang, the bus station, or just about anywhere else. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to read a Lonely Planet map while being shouted at by a crowd of Indonesian men, but it’s not easy, and my bad mood from the day before was instantly restored. Eventually we decided to look purposeful, and ducked into a bizarre but well-stocked French-style patisserie, where we regrouped and developed a plan.

Once outside, we made our way to the bus station, and, after a paltry hour wait, climbed onto a minibus that would make the three-hour trip to Bromo. I say climbed: there were 22 people in the 15-seater minibus including us. There were schoolchildren, old women and everyone in between. For the first few miles a pair of young lads hung off the ladder on the outside, while I nervously checked behind us as we went over every bump to make sure our bags stayed on the roof.

Luckily, our jammed neighbours left the bus swiftly: mostly they were schoolchildren going home, including the hapless kid next to us who so desperately wanted to avoid asking us to move when he got off that he tried to climb out the window. For the last hour and a half we wound our way up the mountain hills as the air became crisper and the mist thicker. As luck would have it, our minibus took us straight to the door of the hotel we had planned to stay in, which promptly offered us a 50 per cent discount on a standard room if we agreed to buy our bus tickets to Yogyakarta from them.

Things were looking up, and that was before we saw the volcano. It had been a 31-hour travelling day. We had been on three boats and three buses, waited for a cumulative total of four hours in two different bus stations, and spent the most outstandingly useless US$10 of the trip so far. We’d travelled a depressing distance: considerably under 1,000km. But the scene that developed in front of us looked like the end of the world. It had, improbably, been worth it.

Dave wants to never see another boat, or bus, or air-conditioning unit for the rest of his life. He also wants people to properly understand and execute the concept of “room temperature”. I’m also painfully aware that few of the pictures in this story have anything to do with the story itself. It’s hard to take good pictures when you’re tired and fuming. For more random photographic sprinklings, visit the Flickr set.