Sumatra & The Orangutangs: LIES, LIES, LIES!

Marilyn and I had just come n from five weeks or so in Thailand, a civilized and honest nation. Where the buses and trains were safe, cool and cheap. Indonesia is none of the above. So it goes!

We never got use to getting on buses or in mini vans where the driver threw his fate into the hands of Allah and set off like a drunken mad man looking for karma.
The first night in, we rented a room with air con... condition. Okay, but it didn’t have a thermostat! If you turned it on, you froze and if you turned it off, you fried. So we crawled under the only sheet, cuddled and shivered it out. The next day after telling a guy I did not need his bicycle rickshaw seven or eight times, I reached out, grabbed his throat and told him in some bad words what he could do. Of course Marilyn was upset. She always claimed, one little push and all you education goes to hell and you’re a football player again! Two weeks later SHE grabbed a guy by his shirt front and told him where he could go. And I didn’t have a chance to tell her I Told You So.

Riding buses were . . . here’s it in a nut shell. A five year old Fin turns to Mom as they board our bus and asks,’ Mom are they going to try and kill us again? So it goes. Also there are no bus stations! When you pull into town you are told the only bus each day etc etc leaves from here. That’s a lie. But how the hell can you prove it?

We were in a very nice cottage by a lovely lake, you could not swim in because of major pollution and vicious snakes. B ut we could ride bikes, off the roads of course. The second morning we had toast and eggs. Marilyn’s toast had butter with mouse turds visible. Ah yes! And in another lovely cottage by a bubbling stream I noticed a large clump in a corner. I thought I was drunk when I noticed it was moving. But once I got close, I guess a clump of ants just move naturally. It really wasn’t any problem. The maid swept the entire pile out the door.

Then we set off for the adventure of our lives, wild Orangutans living deep in the forest. I quote the adventure guide. ‘ We walk along a bubbling stream for a few miles, enjoying the jungle. Then we take trip in a dug out canoe, then traverse a steep climb to the habitat.’ The stream bubbled with human wastes and stunk. The dugout canoe ride was exactly forty-two feet to the far shore. The climb was a real tough one. And the animals came. About ten of them swung in when the keeper beat his machete on an old oil drum, and gobbled up their daily ration of bananas. Seems no ape had been released to the wilds in 33 years. Oh, on the way down one of them tried to steal Marilyn’s back pack and she wouldn’t let go. I was yelling, ‘Let go! It’s an ape!’ The Dwarf wasn’t about to give in and before she was thrown into the thorny brush, the keeper yelled and the beast fled. And let’s not forget the shop in the hotel lobby selling gear to help save the rain forests while the chain saws woke you up at five AM sawing it down to build more bungalows so more folks could come and see the wild apes.

And one last thing. After two close calls, Marilyn made me go out and hire a driver and a very large SUV to take us across Java to Bali where she encountered a nice pale green scorpion nesting in her hat when I picked it up to hand to her. No problem! I stepped on it, kicked it out the door and by the time we got out of there, the army of ants were carrying it off for lunch.
Why she got upset is . . .Well you know how women are about bugs and stuff like that!

One cool thing. We were in an inn on Mount Bromo, the bed was great, the sky too. There was a three full sway earthquake and she never opened her eyes. I told her the earth had moved three times for us. She told me Hemingway wasn’t her cup of tea except for a few stories. So it goes!