Pushing on a String

Copyright © 2018 Ron Hope. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-5437-4705-8 (sc)

978-1-5437-4706-5 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

07/24/2018

CONTENTS

Indonesia

Tanjung Karang Village

Looking Across The Bay

View Across To The Mountains

Tanjung Karang Beach

Tanjung Karang

The Upmarket Beach Umbrellas

The Bungalows With A New Roof

The Bungalows

The Full Moon Coming Up

The Sun Setting

The Main Road Into Tanjung Karang

The Barges Constantly Travel Between Borneo And Sulawesi

A Rather Windy Morning

New Dining Area

Ron Being An Idiot As Per Normal

The Clear Water Of Tanjung Karang

Obviously A Lot Of Time Was Spent Drinking Beer On The Beach

The Morning Markets In Dongalla

Local Fish Markets

The Village Markets

A House We Built In The Village

This Was Never In My Plans. But Somehow This Lass Became My Wife

Iwan’s New Glasses

Who Knows Why This Was Cleared?

The New Glasses

Ron’s Fun Memories With These Pals:

I

t was more by mistake than anything else that ended in me living on a tropical island, sleeping in a thatched bamboo hut under swaying coconut palms. Plus having the daily chore of swimming amongst magnificent schools of colourful fish and beautiful garden beds of coral. This had all happened to me in an unplanned way.

Of course like any bed of roses there were a few thorns in there as well. They attempted to murder me on a few occasions. I got married and also assisted in digging up the bodies of a few murder victims. I am not sure if those events are listed in the correct order but let us not worry about that at this early stage. Obviously I came through it all or this would not have been written.

I had endured a particularly nasty relationship separation from a complete harridan, and as such was at a complete loss with myself. So in conjunction with a friend of mine, Jackson from Bunbury in Western Australia .We decided to set off back packing. (I think that it is prudent to point out at this early stage that this guy is not completely normal). Firstly we planned to travel through Sulawesi, one of the more northern Indonesian islands with aims of later heading onto Borneo. On one stage of this trip we had decided to travel from Ujung Pandang in the south of Sulawesi to Manado in the north, going via the beautiful tropical Togian islands.

However as we neared the stopover in the Togians we were informed that an earthquake and a subsequent landslide had made the road impassable. Upon receiving this news we were forced to change our plans. Having no idea of what was there we then decided to travel to Palu (the capital of Central Sulawesi). This was an immediate debacle. We were very soon at another landslide with about 200 people sitting around, waiting for the road to be cleared. These people happily informed us that numerous other landslides had blocked the whole mountain pass. Jackson has a very warped sense of perceptive, so he looked at me and suggested that we walk over the mountains, straight past the landslides to the ocean on the other side. My response upon consulting the map and informing him that it was over 40 kilometres in a straight line and as we were trying to cross on a winding mountain road it would have to be a lot more, was met with derision .He came back with his informed opinion that as there were two of us, this equated to only 20 kilometres each and that half of that would have to be downhill. So bewildered by such absolutely outstanding logic, I had no choice but to agree. We therefore set off on foot over these mountains. Jackson was not even slightly deterred by the fact that these mountains were higher than anything in our native Australia. (Please remember that I did earlier warn you that this guy is not completely normal. So as such he has a different view of things from absolutely normal people like you and myself.)

Do not fall into the impression that we were any great explorers; this was in the tropics, yes, in amongst jungle, yes, on a very high mountain, yes. But we were on a partially sealed track only blocked by landslides here and there. Sir Edmund Hillary or Marco Polo had nothing to fear from us. I do not think that our names will appear in the same history books as those guys. Despite the fact that we were right on the equator, the altitude of the mountains that we were crossing kept the temperature down to a pleasant level. The heavy traffic that normally traversed this road had long ago frightened away the majority of animal life. We were however kept quite happy just viewing the diversity of plants growing beside and above us.

At various stages of this journey we would walk around a bend in the road and come across 100 or more people sitting patiently under the trees. These folk had been trapped between the landslides, therefore their vehicles could not go forward or backward. Their solution to this problem was to sit and wait until the road was eventually cleared. This being just another classic case of the Indonesian people’s laid back situation to most problems that arise in their lives. As we walked past them they all smiled and called out friendly greetings. Later when I had learnt to speak the Indonesian language, I discovered that these friendly greetings were actually things such as,

Look at that fat man he has no hair.

Or

Look at the stupid white man walking in the sun.

Being oblivious to this we waived, smiled and kept walking in the sun. At one stage we came upon a man with his motorbike firmly trapped in the mud, broken trees and slush from a small landslide. We helped him to free his motorbike whereupon an onlooker declared in a reasonable standard of English.

Thank you for International assistance.

This brought on a lot of cheering and hand shaking. And still happily unaware of what was being said we proceeded on in ignorant bliss. Eventually (as Jackson had predicted) we ended up going downhill to the ocean on the other side of the mountains. At what we found to be the last landslide we found a friendly guy who had enough of the waiting and had decided to return home. Luckily for us he had enough space for two foreigners and we clambered in. Thus we arrived in the large but clean Indonesian city of Palu. I mentioned large and clean, I forgot to mention boring. After one evening in this place we were ready to leave. (Having now lived in the area for a number of years, I must mention that it still is a very boring clean city) Luckily our guide book told us of a beach only 40 kilometres to the north of Palu. The name of this beach is Tanjung Karang. This is translated as peninsula of coral.

It was on this beach that a major transformation would occur in my life. It was here that the opportunity was offered to me to take over the running of a small beach resort consisting of 11 bungalows. Each of these having its own toilets and having the capacity to sleep two people. Jackson and I continued on our journey constantly discussing the prospect of me taking over the control of these bungalows. As the time neared for the conclusion of our trip my mind was made up. Jackson departed to Australia and I returned to the beach at Tanjung Karang.

Having had no background whatsoever in running such an establishment and having no ability to speak Indonesian nor either of the local dialects of Bugas and Kaili, I thought

Yes this seems like something to have a shot at; I should be able to mess this up no end.

Spurred on by this blissful ignorance I (happily) entered into an agreement, where upon at the end of every two-year period I would pay money to the previous owner / operator (which I happily did) and he would help me with my visa and residency problems (which he happily did not). In fact I think that he went as far as to actually forget my name and the terms of our contract. The poor guy was actually so forgetful that he absent-mindedly tried to double the agreed sum after the end of the first two-year period.

Armed as such with good will and bonhomie I blundered forward, taking complete but misguided control of the situation. The first thing I decided to address was the loyal and faithful staff. This actually numbered one regular member. The remainder of the staff had walked away due to never having been paid. This one regular staff member was named Jose. (Actually he still is named Jose.) This guy was a rotund Indonesian of about 50 years of age. I quizzed him about his role in the running of the place. He happily told me,

I am the manager; I sit here and organize the other members of the staff.

I reminded him that there were no other staff members to organize. It was then that I learnt a lot more about the laid back attitude of the majority of Indonesian people.

We have no tourists coming here anymore so therefore we do not need other staff members. You just do not seem to understand Mister Ron.

Once again my low intelligence level waylaid me, as I was obliged to comment that,

If we had staff members here they could clean the bungalows, repair broken stairs and generally make the place look attractive to tourists. Then maybe tourists would want to stay in the place instead of walking in, taking one look and walking away again.

Jose just looked at me, with a complete show of disbelief on his face.

Mister Ron you just do not understand. If we had tourists here we would have to have food and drinks for them. We would have to wash the sheets and work. It is better this way; we have a tourist resort with no tourists. Now we can sit on the beach all day and we do not have to work. My life is very easy.

He did actually have a good point in what he said but it was not really a good money earning exercise.

Thus began my attempts to establish a clean and friendly tourist refuge. A place of retreat for the backpackers who have already done the hard miles and who were ready for a comfortable bed and a cold beer. My aim was to provide food other than the usual fish and boiled rice. This is the staple diet of Indonesia and therefore happily provided in most backpacker locations. A meal of fish and rice is okay for a while but the novelty does tend to wear off after a few weeks of it. You start to check your own body just in case scales are starting to sprout up somewhere. Having been through this myself I planned to establish a place that differed a little from the normal routine.

The actual location of these bungalows is on a white sandy beach, slightly south of the equator. This in turn is right on the end of a peninsula, pointing towards the north. This peninsula forms the western side of a large natural harbour, this being 7 kilometres across to the eastern shore and the whole bay going 40 kilometres down to the south. As such there is over 280 square kilometres of naturally sheltered waters. Mountains rise steeply on either side of the bay. I have since flown into this area many times I and am always amazed and thrilled at the beauty of it all.

INDONESIA

W hen I mention that I have flown into the area, I mean that I am travelling by aeroplane. Please do not get some crazy notion of me up they’re flapping away madly with wings strapped onto my arms. Now that I have got you all cleared up on that little fact it might be time to return to the original story.

Realizing that Jose was not really going to be of a great help to me, I left him sitting under the shade of his favourite coconut tree and started work by myself .My first target was to fill up an ice box with beer and ice. The next being to repair the bungalows, and thus began a number of weeks with me cleaning, repairing and generally pottering about. From time to time Jose would move from his shady coconut tree to observe me. After 2 or 3 minutes of observation he would become tired, and remark to himself, Gila

I later learnt that this meant stupid.

Sometimes he would mutter, Bodoh

I later learnt that this also meant stupid. (At least he was consistent in this regard.)

After this strenuous effort he would return to the shade of his tree. The major task still remained of removing rocks, debris and large dead trees from the beach. My staff by this stage had overwhelmingly increased to two, with the arrival of Thelma. He was a 17 year old, originally from Java. The fact that he was the brother of Jose’s wife was just a coincidence. Jose had figured out that someone had to fetch the beer for me. He knew that it was not going to be him, so he had hired Thelma. It might well be worth mentioning at this stage that fetching cold beer for me is pretty well a full time job. After all we are almost right on the equator and it has been known to get a tad hot there. Jose now had someone to sit beside him under the shade of the coconut trees. He could even play the role of manager by ordering Thelma to fetch me another beer.

So I sweated and toiled alone, cleaning what once was a very untidy stretch of beach and slowly turning it into a pristine white stretch of tropical paradise. This solo task was only 9 weeks into its infancy when my first major triumph occurred. Jose moved from under the shade of his coconut tree, walked up to me and complained,

It may look clean and neat now Mister Ron, but we no longer have anywhere to sit. Now we will have to sit on the sand. You really do not seem to understand anything.

(A lot of these earlier interchanges were carried on in a very rudimentary manner. Jose’s English was bad and my Indonesian was pretty rough).

Buoyed on by such positive input and knowing that my toil was greatly appreciated, I moved relentlessly on. I was spurred on by comments from my helpers under the coconut trees. Helpful input such as;

For sure the man is mad.

The tree trunks will only come back.

My eyes are getting tired watching him, can you watch him while I have a sleep?

With my team backing me so readily it was easy to press on.

Into month four I was on the verge of quitting. I was still working alone while Jose and Thelma lounged in the shade. I glanced up to see a slight Indonesian woman in her early thirties approaching me. I was about to learn another lesson from Indonesian culture. Her opening remark completely staggered me.

Hello, I am Ernie, can I help you?

I happily invited her to join me in my toils. Meanwhile thinking to myself,

What the hell is this all about?

I have since learnt that if you want something done in Indonesia, ask a female and the odds are that it will happen. But at that early stage I was not aware of this fact of life. We worked side by side for some hours; during this time she informed me that her husband was a taxi driver and that they had 4 children. This was done with a combination of her bad version of English and my very bad understanding of Indonesian. After being there for 4 months I had managed to learn a small vocabulary of different useful words. You might have guessed that my favourite words were cold and beer. Ernie further informed me that she was coming to work for me as my cook and best help. This turned out to be a very accurate statement on her behalf. At the time of writing this she is still cooking the food and looking after our continuous stream of tourists.

Thus began a strange working relationship. We had Ernie and myself working to develop the place to a standard good enough to attract tourists and at the other end of the scale we had Jose who had slowly let the place deteriorate. Day by day Jose would become increasingly less happy. At this point we still had not had any tourists stay with us. The place had previously been so badly run that the word had been spread around it was a good place to avoid.

You just do not understand Mister Ron. Before we never had to clean the beach and now you want us to clean it every day. Why do we have to do all of this hard work?

Once again I gently reminded him that,

I was the one actually doing the work. I was doing the cleaning. He was only sitting under the trees and watching.

As usual his mouth was moving faster than his body and he had a response ready.

You just do not understand Mister Ron, soon you will get tired of working. Then Thelma and I will have to do all of the work that you are now doing. It is not fair of you to expect us to do so much work.

So with this well-balanced working relationship under complete control we blundered onward.

One particular afternoon I was digging holes to plant Frangipani trees when a very strange sensation came over me. I looked up and there they were. Four of them. Tourists. Waking Jose from his usual horizontal working position, I sent him to capture our first real, live, paying customers. It was at that moment I found out why Jose had been chosen by my predecessor for his role in the running of the bungalows .My lazy, fat, slow moving manager turned on the charm in an unbelievable and incredible display.

In no time at all he had these folks happily settled back in two of the bungalows. One young couple was happily sipping coconut milk from a fresh young coconut. Meanwhile the other two were making short work of an icy cold beer. Being an avid fan of beer drinking I had always made sure that a good supply of icy cold beer was on hand.

An interesting fact in Sulawesi is that the local people believe cold drinks will give you influenza. So while warm beer is readily available, when you ask for cold beer they look at you in a strange manner. Mind you they look at me in a strange manner no matter what I ask for. Actually this happens to me everywhere in the world. (Sorry I have digressed a little there.)

So there we were with actual, real live tourists. Ernie arose to the occasion and from the small kitchen produced a brilliant smorgasbord of food. Jose entertained our new guests with his amusing stories in his broken English. Thelma even came out of the shade to join in the fun. It was a magnificent five days that these people spent with us. Everything ran so smoothly it was unbelievable. When they finally departed there was a lot of handshaking and tears everywhere. They happily paid the bill presented by Jose, even leaving a small tip. These four people were very impressed. Everyone was happy.

We then sat down to tally up costs and see how much profit we had actually made. It was then discovered that we had made a loss of 100,000 rupiah during their stay. On further investigation it was revealed that Jose had omitted to bill them for the beer that they had been drinking over the five days.

But Mister Ron, you never pay for the beer that you take out of the icebox. I had to gently explain to him that I had already bought the beer in the market, so it was pointless paying myself for it as I consumed it. The four happy tourists that had left us made their way made their way east to Poso, then south to Pendolo and Rantepao. As they made their way southwards they came across other backpackers travelling in the opposite direction. Backpackers have a natural rapport with fellow tourists and place a lot of trust in each other. It is an unwritten code. If a fellow backpacker recommends a place to you it means it is normally worth visiting. By the same token if a place is mentioned as no good it is quickly given a miss. Maybe it was the free beer given to the first four tourists that made the difference, anyway they happily passed on the news about their great stay at our beach. Very quickly a string of tourists started turning up and mentioning that they had been told about the place by other backpackers. In no time at all each of the bungalows were full. I must mention here that being full this is a seasonal thing with the busier times being April through to September.

Although Jose was a hit with the tourists he got steadily sadder and gloomier.

You just do not understand Ron by now the mister had been done away with.

Before you came here I could sit or sleep all day. Now I must stay awake and sometimes work for three or four hours a day. It is not as good here anymore.

As always I tried to reason with him, emphasizing the facts that,

Ernie does the cooking. Thelma is cleaning out the bungalows and I am cleaning the beach. You do not actually do very much.

All I expected from Jose was for him to sit talking to the tourists and for him to smoke non-stop. (I had actually realized by this stage that this was all he was going to do anyway) This was met with another look of annoyance, followed by a lot of muttering and head shaking. Obviously he felt that he was being overworked in a big way. Thelma meanwhile had decided that the workload was a bit too much for him and had organized the arrival of his best mate from Java. He had decided that there was no point in informing me of this event. I have since realised that most things happen here without anyone feeling the need to inform me.

One morning this five-foot tall ball of muscle was just suddenly there, sweeping up the Frangipani flowers. When he saw me, he put down his broom walked over to me and shook my hand. He informed me that his name is Baba. At that he turned, picked up his broom and returned