Amongst the other foul smells that intrude upon one’s olfactory senses whilst traversing the waste disposal area that calls itself Medan is a particularly unpleasant one which at times threatens to physically invade your body. When I first arrived I put it down to the open drainage system if such a term does not give it too much authority. As my nostrils became accustomed to the myriad of foul odours, sweetened occasionally by the wafts of incense from the many temples populating the city, I began to realise that the smell did not coincide with the sewers or even heaps of rotting rubbish as I swept by. The odious aroma intensified as I passed by whatever the source was, but all I ever saw were stalls selling fruit. After several weeks my powerful sense of deduction pinned the smell down to these fruit stalls and even more specifically, stalls which sold durian fruit.
This fruit, which is widely eaten in South-East Asia is roughly the size and shape of a rugby ball but is green and spiked. When sliced in half it reveals a centre which resembles several avocado stones wrapped in soggy blancmange, the colour of jaundiced flesh. The smell is so powerful that it is banned from many hotels, where diagrams with a bold cross stamped decisively upon it are displayed throughout.
I had not been brave enough to try it until tonight; I had convinced myself that there was plenty of time and that I was waiting for the right moment, the right environment, the right company etc. I was basically frightened by the smell but I knew that I was going to have to try it sooner or later; later, though, being the important word. Unfortunately I had mentioned my virginity in the matters of durian to a friend of who took it upon herself to bring me some this evening. I had called in to see her on the way home and purchase some cake from the bakery she works at. She was very busy and had only time to rush off to the back of the shop and retrieve a Tupperware container full of the fruit before resuming her duties. I wandered disconsolately out of the place, holding my gift at arm’s length and peering warily at it.
This was not a taste test that I wished to undertake alone and was pleased that Al was up and about when I returned home. He hadn’t tried any of this infamous delicacy either and was as reluctantly curious as myself; he watched from a safe distance as I peeled back the lid. The force of the escaping stench was much like taking a vigorous inhalation of ammonia; my head was knocked back exactly as though somebody had taken an upward undercut at my chin. Not wishing Al to miss out, I rammed it under his unsuspecting nose to much the same effect; I’m fairly sure he suppressed an urge to take a swing at me.
Neither of us managed more than two nibbles, and if a second tasting leads you to believe that it was in any way palatable then I assure you that it was not. The first taste was horrendously bad, so bad that you or your taste buds could not quite piece together what had happened and it is while your brain and relevant senses are sorting out what to do about the incident that has just occurred that you unwittingly take another curious bite. By this time your faculties have issued a red alert to your body and that’s when the nausea takes hold. We both spent the next few minutes drinking and eating whatever was at hand to take the taste away: water, beer, washing powder, decaying rats etc. The taste is quite unique and slithers between rancid organic matter, essence of rotting cabbage, eau de rubbish tip, perfumed sweets, marzipan and something dark and distantly evil. The texture resembles globulous snot with a smidgen of gelatine and a pich of cornflour. It appears to be in mid-drip from its stone and it is how I imagine the decaying flesh from a zombie would look.
I don’t believe I have ever described a food quite as extensively before and I apologise if I’ve bored you but I had to get it off my chest. I ate it almost two hours ago and it is still repeating on me now; they say that the stench takes a couple of days to disperse and I am hoping that the same isn’t true of the taste.
It tastes even worse than sheep’s head. In fact sheep’s head sorbet would be an ideal dish to clear the palatte after durian.
Since buying a moped I have thought it prudent to study the traffic laws in order to get a better understanding of the roads and their occupants. Since I have now of course almost mastered the language I thought I would translate some of the Indonesian highway code for your perusal.
Drive on the left unless you are at least thirty percent sure that it is safe to drive anywhere else.
Pavements, where they exist, are purely for overtaking. Pedestrians are expendable.
If taking any risks, make sure that they are likely to be fatal. Medan has a rapidly expanding population but a very poor health service.
Indicating is optional.
When joining a main road from a side street, do not look in any direction other than the one you are intending to go. You are not going to slow down or stop anyway, so why bother.
Overtake at all times under any circumstance.
Any maneouvre undertaken which is likely to be a danger to yourself or to anyone else is entirely acceptable if it is accompanied by a persistent friendly tooting on the horn to alert people that you are doing so.
Cutting up and swerving in front of oncoming traffic is compulsory.
Never, repeat, never become irritated, upset or angry at the imbecilic actions of your fellow drivers. Road-rage is not acceptable and is considered the height of bad manners. Maintain a friendly and understanding smile at all times.
Red lights are for pussies.
If you see somebody attempting a dangerous and life-threatening maneouvre, follow them, they obviously know what they are doing and there’s power in numbers.
The police officers directing the traffic are purely cosmetic and it is perfectly acceptable to ignore them.
Moped riders MUST wear a crash helmet if they feel so inclined.
Remember, the traffic laws apply to everybody but yourself.
My home is a large three story house; spacious, white marble-effect floor tiles, sparsely furnished and with a roof terrace. My room is huge with a double door balcony full of the plants and flowers that I have purchased or been given since I have been here. It’s lovely, but the thing that really made this house for me when I first arrived was the presence of a resident kitten. He was a stray who the previous Director of Studies had rescued from the cruel streets of Medan along with another kitten who we shall come back to later. This Director of Studies’ mother was taken ill back in her home country of Australia, (although what right an Australian has to be teaching English, I have no idea) and she quit her job to go home and take care of her.
Tom, (who is Very Serious for a twenty four year old and has dark eyebrows that are perennially furrowed. He does not drink and I cannot help but think that these matters are related) the other member of our household, had been living and working here for approximately two months before he was saddled with two loud and hungry mouths to fill. Taking into account that cat-food here costs more than it does in England but the wages that we earn are but a fraction, Tom came to the conclusion that since he was the only person in the house (at the time) and could not share the cost, he could not afford to keep both cats and decided he would have to return one of them to its previous status of stray. Not a decision I would have made and I am very curious as to how he decided on which to keep and which to discard now that I think about it; it brings a whole new meaning to heads or tails. Anyway, this is the decision that he came to.
The kitten that remained had been named Jet but I called him Crook, for not only was his tail bent almost at 180 degrees at the very tip, but he was sly, mischevious and audacious. He had evolved a miaow so loud, relentless and grating that the first thing that you had to do on waking in the morning or coming home in the evening was to feed him or throw him over the edge of the roof garden to alleviate the noise; most mornings I managed the feeding option. He had an almost uncanny ability to be wherever your feet wanted to be and despite the best efforts to make your room kitten-proof could bring any plant, drink or precious item crashing to the floor within seconds of arriving. Anything which moved, such as your toes while sleeping or your clothes whilst drying in a breeze were fair game for a mauling. He was great, and of course he went missing a couple of days ago.
It was terrible. All of those things that he did to drive you crazy were violently absent. I began to say things to myself like “If only he was here to shinny up that beautiful luscious fern and eat the leaves, I’d never shout at him again.” etc. Well to put you out of your agony, he came back tonight. Yowling despearately, I found him huddled under a car by our front gate when I returned home. He was accompanied by a ginger cat who brazenly attempted to gain access to our feline refuge as though he belonged there but I shooed it out when I took Crook gratefully in.
Oh how we huddled around the little fella. We listened delightedly as he regaled us with his travelling tales over a bowl of sardines. We cooed at his braided and beaded fur and admired his tattoos and tried our best to ignore the heavy aroma of patchouli. And then a thought occurred to me as I looked down into our yard from the roof terrace, my attention distracted by the anxious miaowing from the ginger cat down there.
“Tom,” I said “Crook’s best mate who you so cruelly cast out into the streets without a care for its safety and only for the lining of your own pockets, what did it look like?”
“Ginger.” He replied.
I couldn’t believe it, the little fella had gone out looking for his old buddy. He’d scoured the dark and dangerous, and somewhat smelly streets of Medan looking for his best mate. Not only had he done that, but he’d found him and brought him back home. It was a Disney film in the making. We rushed down to let the poor outcast back in to the family home.
If only it had been him.
“Ha Hah! Mister! What are you doing here!?” It was fairly obvious what I was doing, I was riding my motorbike through, around and occasionally up against the thick Medan traffic in order to escape it’s clutches for the weekend. A more important question might have been why this gentleman on his motorbike had slowed down to my already brisk pace to ask me such a question. Still, he seemed so enthused that I couldn’t help but respond to his curiosity. His tone had been astonishment, as if I were an old friend who had just turned up on his doorstep from the other side of the world. I glanced quickly at him just to make sure he wasn’t an old friend and then returned my much needed concentration to the rabid traffic.
“I work here!” I yelled above the cacophony of horns and un-muffled engines.
“Oh Ho!” He cried delightedly. “What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher!” I managed while narrowly avoiding a crazily parked bus.
“Not a spy?!” We parted to overtake a mini-bus that should have gone to the Great Scrapheap in the sky many years before.
“OK! You got me, I’m CIA!”
“CIA!?” He yelled, sounding most shocked and not, presumably, due to the car we’d almost hit. “Not Mossad?!”
“I work for whoever pays the most!”
“Ahh!” He acknowledged as if I had just divulged a deep and previously unknown truth. “Excellent my friend. Well goodbye!” And he was gone.
The surreal conversation cheered me so much that I blew kisses at some gawping and fascinated schoolgirls that were staring at me from the back of a bus, and grinned at their screams as I sped off past them to Berastagi.
Berastagi or Brastagi depending upon which sign post you read is a small town situated up in the mountains, approximately seventy kilometres South West of Medan. It became popular with the Dutch in the early 1900s and turned into a resort town, attracting planters and traders from the East Coast and British Malaya. Almost all of the old colonial buildings were unfortunately burnt down by the Japanese during the war, leaving the town looking these days not much different to Medan. Ramshackle buildings aside, the place is a welcome relief to the hot bustle of that polluted city. Nestled amongst a few steaming volcanoes, with a comparatively cool climate and sweet mountain air, it’s easy to see why those colonialists headed here for relaxation and retirement. Things aren’t too different now except the white folk have been replaced by the natives and the odd English teacher absconding from the sweaty grime for the weekend.
I had stayed here before on a previous escape act from Medan; that time I had relinquished any semblance of control over my safety to lunatic bus drivers who appeared to think nothing of overtaking at breakneck speeds on blind bends that jutted out over vertiginous precipices. On the way back, the erratic changes of speed and direction were enough to have almost half of the bus vomiting, quite neatly, into plastic bags; all except for one poor fellow who had to get out and spend his lunch in a nearby bush. He forcibly inserted himself into the front seat on return, marinated in perspiration and looking whiter than myself. This time I had decided to battle it out with those drivers on my own terms and with my own transport.
It was Chinese New Year and so the school was shut for an extra couple of days after the weekend. I had decided to head out to Lake Toba on the scenic route with an overnight stay in Berastagi. After having dropped my bag off in the hotel I went for a wander around and ended up in a dark and dingy café, open to the street. The front table, which had crept quite noticeably onto the pavement, was occupied by a group of oldish guys passing the time away with coffee and cigarettes and I received the usual fascinated stares as I pulled up a chair on the empty table behind them. There were a couple of amazed grins and a few nods and then we all slipped into a comfortable reverie. Usually I pull out a book or my journal on these occasions but this time I just sat; happily quiet and possibly a little dazed after running the gauntlet to get here. Some time passed and I saw the guys in front of me hand some money to the proprietor who was a youngish chap with an open and friendly face, he then ran across the road and returned a few minutes later with a half bottle of brandy and two plastic bags of coke, this being the common receptacle for beverages in these parts; usually with a straw sticking out through the tied neck of the bag. They then proceeded to pour themselves some glasses of brandy and coke. My tongue must have been lolling out of my mouth and making desperate longing noises because one of them turned around and asked if I would like some.
My enthusiastic nodding was not just because I have an unquenchable thirst for alcohol, although it played a significant part, no doubt. But it was also that I was suddenly in the company of several people who were aiming to get drunk and talk shit. I’ve been living with a teetotaler (although I will have more to say on this subject at a later date) and The Porcelain Kid in a Muslim country with fewer bars than you’d get in a train station in England. Suddenly I was in the company of piss-heads like myself. I was very happy. With barely a handful of shared words between us we were soon the best of friends; laughing, arguing and back slapping as though we had the faintest idea what each other were saying. Of course the international language of football always helps:
“Man United?”
Big raspberry, facial features contorted into derisive expression, much shaking of head. “Pah!”
“Ah! Rooney,” offered in tone which suggests no argument is possible.
Waggling of head in a ‘well, you’ve got me there, he is a great player and when on form is fantastic and a definite asset to our national team but he plays for Man United which is a much derided team in my own country but thanks to their corporate merchandising and marketing have gained an unfathomable worldwide following which pains me because I hate them. And they’re owned by Americans,’ kind of manner.
Acquiescing but reluctant acknowledgement of an argument well put, voiced by a grunt. “Chelsea?”
Etc.
Having sent the barman off for another bottle and having finished it, I zig-zagged back to my hotel, the heartfelt and utterly incomprehensible farewells from my new best friends in the whole world ringing in my ears; I hadn’t been allowed to pay for anything. Even in the morning when I returned for some well-needed coffee and found them all in the same places, they would not let me pay for either their or my drinks. I mounted my bike hungover but happy and set out on the road to Lake Toba.
Sipisopiso is a waterfall approximately an hour’s ride southeast of Berastagi, with a name which should not be attempted after more than two beers. Its waters crash 120m down the side of a cliff and spill into the northern end of Lake Toba; it is a truly arresting site. There is an area where you can park and picnic, looking one way across a valley towards this magnificent aquatic marvel and then turn your head and see Lake Toba shimmering in the near distance. My guidebook complains about the obligatory hawkers and stalls selling their wares at this idyllic spot but whoever wrote the book had obviously not spent several months in Medan; it was as serene as it comes as far as I was concerned.
There is a path which plunges over the cliff here and delivers you a little sweatier at the bottom of the falls, and since it was around midday in the searing heat, and because I was either a mad dog or an Englishman, I headed on down. It was the kind of path that in England would be littered with signs warning you of its precariousness and the need to wear sensible footwear, but was being ably managed by old ladies in flip-flops, quite unconcernedly slithering down gravelly inclines where the path had disintegrated. As you descend, the roar of the falls steadily increases, as does the spray, until by the bottom you are engulfed in a stentorian drenching. I stayed long enough to gauge that I would not be able to stand anywhere near the waterfall without doing the equivalent of throwing my camera into a bath, and so headed back up the path, much to the surprise of the sprite old ladies that I had made it my dogged resolve to pass on the way down.
The blistering heat gave way to precipitous clouds minutes after I departed Sipisopiso and a flashback to a snippet of a conversation with the proprietor of my hotel the previous evening replayed itself in my mind.
“Here to Lake Toba? Eight hours,” he had announced with relish.
“Nonsense, my good man,” I had parried with scant regard for the man’s local knowledge, only the certainty of my own map reading abilities, “no more than three.”
This conversation seemed a little more stark now that the rain had begun to fall in larger and larger drops. Still, with a stubborness that has been my downfall on more than several occasions, I pulled out my waterproof poncho and battoned it down over myself. The rain did not really turn torrential until I had reached the halfway point (or ‘the point of no return’ as I believe it is often named) on my journey to Parapas, the nearest town with any hotels. The poncho was doing a sterling job of keeping everything it covered dry but unfortunately it left my shins, feet, arms and face exposed. I began to get chilly, a rare experience in the past few months, and my eyes were narrow slits against the increasing deluge. I stopped several times, usually whenever I could no longer see and the road had become a river.
Eventually I was greeted with a most welcoming sign: “Siantar Hotel”. I turned abruptly up a steep path to follow the sign’s directions and found a beautiful, colonial-style hotel with an imposing view over the lake. Having abandoned any further thought of getting to Parapas on seeing this antithesis to an oasis in the desert, I stiffly dismounted and squelched my way to reception. Cocking my head at the downpour outside, gesturing at my own drenched state and tutting in a ‘still, can’t be helped, eh?’ sort of manner at the receptionist, I asked her if they had any rooms available.
“Rooms?” She repeated, looking a little surprised, as if I had asked if they sold spanners. “No rooms here. This restaurant.” She gave me one last curious glance, as if to remind herself what idiots looked like and returned to her conversation with a waitress.
There seemed to be little point in arguing with her, despite all of the indications that this was a hotel: the name, the hotel-style reception, the expansive staircase leading up to what could only be luxurious, four-poster bedrooms. I trudged diconsolately back out into the rain and stared up at the upstairs bay windows with their ornate balconies, then around at the beautifully maintained gardens, the glorious view, and lastly the sign which read “Siantar Hotel” and mournfully mounted my bike. I took one last longing look back at the hotel-like front door and then rode off into the rain.
The rain finally cleared by the time I was about an hour or so from Parapat and I was able to enjoy the scenic road which soars, plummets and curls around the cliffs and shores of Lake Toba. It really is a beautiful ride with lush jungle nudged up against the sparkling lake water. Toba is the largest body of inland water in South East Asia apparently, formed by an enormous volcanic explosion which may have been responsible for the last ice-age if you believe some of the scientists. The volcano is supposed to be inert but the unnaturally warm waters of the lake would lead you to believe that there has to be something going on below the surface.
I stopped in a café in Parapat and shivered for a while in my damp clothes as I waited for the next ferry over to Samosir Island. For some reason Parapat is the main destination for tourists and has a few large hotel complexes to cater for the influx of visitors during the holidays and weekends, but the place is fairly ugly and busy if you exclude the beautiful lake that forms its backdrop. Samosir Island, which is really a peninsula, is far prettier and decidedly more relaxed. It has cheaper, funkier hotels and less people; it doesn’t make any sense. I had visited once before on my motorbike, to see how long it would take to get here; it’s about a four and a half hour journey and so not a destination for a two day weekend. That time I had met up with several girls from work, and being the only male in the group I had a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days, but this time I was determined to relax and enjoy the place by myself.
“Hello,” said Al as I stepped on to the ferry.
“Hello,” said Tom.
Al and Tom were staying at “Lakjon” the same hotel that I’d been in previously, but it was already full. I was secretly pleased that I had an excuse to find somewhere else where I could be anonymous, drink beer and read; but on the other hand it didn’t bode well since it meant everywhere else might be full. As we docked I made some vague plans to meet up with them later and headed off to find an abode for the weekend. I’d heard about a nice sounding place further around the bay called “Bagus Bay Hotel” and went directly for that. It was lovely: a wood and bamboo bar and restaurant with clean rooms just a stone’s throw from the edge of the lake. I haggled the price of a double down to less than I would have paid for a shabbier single at the other place and settled down to beer, dinner and a book.
After a couple of hours I was feeling pretty tired and so sleepily blinked my way back to the room where I discovered that I’d locked the key inside. Tutting at my own stupidity I went to reception to ask for their spare. The explanation as to what I had done, to the young guy behind the bar, seemed to take far more effort than it should have done and after I felt I had finally conveyed my dilemma to him he wandered off. I had assumed that he had gone off to find the key but he had actually just wandered off. I soon discovered the reason. A long several minutes later he returned to the general bar vicinity in a manner which he was hoping conveyed purposeful ferreting for a key but in fact came across as furtive helplessness. A friend of his arrived and there was a brisk exchange in Indonesian which I had hoped was in connection with the quest for my bed but in fact was a different matter altogether; a few swift glances around the bar and the friend handed over a bag of grass to the barman. Of course! The bugger wasn’t a feckless idiot, he was just stoned. A grin of realisation seeped across my face which was picked up on by the dealer.
“You want?” He grinned back cheekily.
“I want to go to bed,” I told him and explained the situation. This guy was one of these people who need pot to counteract their hyperactivity, and he hadn’t smoked enough to dampen it this evening. He leapt into action and was soon exchanging important sounding words with the barman followed by furious rummaging around all of the same places the barman had previously poked; only with more enthusiasm. I watched interestedly as his initial inertia turned to fuggy befuddlement and then to downright uselessness, but like his friend he was not prepared to admit defeat; he was just hoping that I would eventually go away and sleep under a bush or something.
“Fetch me a hammer,” I commanded. Stoned people in a crisis need direction; they don’t care what you tell them to do as long as you assume an air of purpose. They both scurried off to find me the necessary implement and then the barman’s friend accompanied me like an eager Igor as I strode across the lawn to my room. I stood in front of the padlocked door and gestured imperiously towards the offending article. Acting more and more like my hapless servant as time went on, he loyally began to scratch uselessly at the lock with the hammer.
“Stand back, man,” I said impatiently after a minute or so of watching him ineffectually attack the lock. I pushed him away and grasped the hammer.
“Yessir, yessir, anything you say sir,” he said, tugging at his forelock and holding his cap to his chest with both hands.
A swift wrench with the claw of the hammer and I was holding a mangled padlock in my hand. My manservant was in awe and suggested that I have a bit of a smoke with him to celebrate. “Not now, Igor,” I replied, handing him the hammer and padlock. “I must rest. I shall breakfast at nine; bring me toast, coffee and a new padlock. Have my shirts pressed and saddle the horses, a brisk ride around the island should banish the cobwebs, what? Now begone.” And away he lurched, his hunchback illuminated by the moon.
In the morning I had coffee while gazing across the garden to the lake. Not being able to put it off any longer I pulled on a pair of trunks and marched down to the water’s edge. Very often when one contemplates one’s own imminent immersion in water, one has several seconds to get used to the idea and brace oneself. On this occasion however there was no such luxury as my foot slipped and I tumbled comically in, taking a mouthful of water as I went. I spluttered to the surface and checked for witnesses; two lads fishing in a nearby canoe elected to not notice and I could spy no other tittering spectators. Content that I had got away with it I swam manfully and gracefully through the warm waters as though nothing had happened.
The rest of the weekend was without incident other than getting horrendously drunk with the obligatory Scotsman, (and his Indonesian wife) on the local grog: Arak. Hungover on my final morning and about to leave, I discovered that Al and Tom had been staying there for the last two nights. They had asked at reception if I was staying there but were told by the red-eyed barman that I had left several nights before. G’aw bless the stoners.
