Our trip to Jogja

We departed Bali aboard another of those ubiquitous dilapidated tour buses of long faded luxury; worn upholstery, warped, uncomfortable seat frames, and the floor covered with ants. The other passengers joked with each other in Indonesian. One started playing a pop tune from his cell phone speaker for communal enjoyment. Looking around it struck us that the other tourists had apparently opted to fly.

We faded in and out of sleep for the first hour, with brief flashes of passing rice paddies, roadside food stalls, and young families commuting on motor-bikes. By sunset, our bus had queued with its aging brethren at the harbor to board the cargo ferry that would take us across to Java. A constant stream of food vendors flowed fore to aft with cardboard boxes filled with small packets of chicken-rice wrapped neatly in banana leaves, or fried tofu cubes with small raw chilies and a smear tamarind sauce.

We exited the bus with the flush of other passengers and climbed the steep, metal ladder stairway to the third floor passenger room of the ferry. Rows of plastic bus-terminal-style seating faced a television blaring Hindi music videos at full volume, entirely neglected by the packed room of Indonesians who variously joked, ate instant pop mie noodles from styrofoam cups, and smoked clove cigarettes. We continued our ascent to the brisk observation deck above to let the stiff ocean wind blow us clean.

Almost as soon as the ferry docked in Java, our bus shut both its doors and accelerated quickly into the dark. We slept fitfully for several hours, as our bus careened along a 2-lane road, frequently passing slower-moving trucks, or, just as frequently, fainting back before quickly oncoming headlights, as the road snaked through jungle.

Suddenly, it seemed, we emerged from night and pulled into a brightly lit restaurant parking lot filled with other buses. For a second time, our fellow passengers poured from the bus, queuing to left and right lines feeding symmetric buffets and emptying into a large, crowded room with bright plastic tables, affixed chairs, and a cacophany of voices mixing with the thin hanging cloud of cigarette smoke. It was 10 pm. We queued to the left as our bus driver forced food tickets into our lost hands, which were immediately collected again by an agent of the restaurant.

The buffet was, as buffets are, standard Indonesian fare of somewhat substandard quality: steamed rice to start, adding thin slices of nutty fried tempe, a watery curry bobbing with the ends of eggplant halves, the forbidding remains of some small, dessicated fish, and a tray of hardboiled eggs, concluding with a ladel of curry sauce over everything and a handful of the puffed, airy kroepoek prawn crackers. We sat at one of the few empty tables, and were quickly asked by a richly dressed and broadly smiling man if he could join us. He spoke halting English, but seemed very interested in where we were from, what we had done, and where we were going. Short on time and shared vocabulary, we bid each other a smiling goodbye after covering only the basics. After washing at the line of sinks along the back wall, we re-boarded the bus, and dropped off to sleep again.

And, once again, we were woken after what seemed a short time by another well-light restaurant parking lot. It was 4 am, and time for a pre-dawn breakfast so the Muslim travelers wouldn't have to break the Ramadan fast. This time, the large dining hall was almost empty, and only one of the handful of separate kitchens set up around the perimeter seemed to be operating. Still groggy and confused, we truly awakened only after ordering omelets and fresh pineapple juice which we realized we weren't actually hungry for. Most of the other passengers elected to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot for their breakfasts, maybe because there were no vouchers for this stop.

After re-boarding the bus, we fell asleep for the 4th time and didn't wake again until we arrived in Yogyakarta around 9am.

At the station, six uniformed taxi drivers quickly surrounded us with smiling assurances of "cheap price", "indonesia price", "where you go?". Smiling back as usual, we tried to wave them off so we could sit and consult the photocopied pages of travel information we'd brought along. A few drivers left, but most of them elected to sit or lay down in a semi-circle a few feet away from us, apparently biding their time until we decided to try and move again. I left Jen with the bags, and sought out a food vendor to question. After some confusing consultation in a combination of broken Indonesian (me) and broken English (him), I established where the public bus was, and we were off. I never found out what the tourists' "indonesian price" for a taxi was, but I'm sure it was going to be more than 5000 rupia (50 cents) the bus cost.

As soon as we began driving, it was quite apparent the bus had no shocks at all, and we regularly slowed to a crawl to traverse some near-invisible bumps in the road, as a steady stream of scooters and motorcycles flowed around us. Lacking side mirrors, the bus driver had an assistant on the other side who would scream at regular intervals in short barks. We weren't sure if they signaled "all clear" or "alert! danger!", but we floated through lane changes and turns with the river of motorcycles miraculously parting around us. The bus zigzagged up and down small roads and large ones for 40 minutes, all teaming with people going about their business. After the small, sleepy towns in Bali the scale and energy was a little overwhelming.

Finally we arrived at Jalan Malioboro--Malioboro street--the city center, main tourist hub and batik district; named after the cigarette company. Feeling disoriented and unclean after the bus rides, we loaded ourselves with our bags and began walking the long, swealtering street, in the hopes of finding an internet cafe we could use to find accomodation; the becak drivers on every corner offering to take us wherever we might want to go, offering "cheap room", and "batik show! only today!"

We slowly traversed the length of Malioboro, threading between the rows of batik stalls lining both sides of the sidewalk as less heavily laden pedestrians flowed around us like the bus. At the end of Malioboro we found the train station with many hotels across the street. The mounting suffering of our walk had done its work, cleansing us of any reservations about price or quality, and we fell into the first one we saw without visible bugs.

Having made it without saying uncouth things to friendly becak drivers, we felt the journey a great success.