Ferry scary
This was a couple of months ago, I had just spent three days driving across the windiest roads in Indonesia to get to Kelimutu at the end of Flores. Afterwards my friends were in a hurry to get to Australia so they got the plane back to Bali.
For the first time on my travels I was on my own. I was in no hurry and my budget was low so I wasn't getting the plane but there was no way in hell I was doing the three day drive, floowed by another four or five day drive just to get back to bali. Then I saw a sign for a ferry office, I investgigated, the price was reasonable, accomodaton was in dorms but even third class looked pretty decent. That would be ideal a nice little two day cruise back to civilistion.
I spent a few days in a town called Ende dodging dead goats on the beach then on Saturday I get up at six in the morning, pack my gear and head to the terminal. The bemo I chartered didn't show up on time so I grab another. I get very impatient as he stops every ten feet to hawk for passengers. We arrive at the terminal and the place is empty apart from a few hawkers so I ask about to make sure it's the right place. According to the people at the office the boat is due at eight, so I wait.

At about eight Max shows up, he's the German guy I met while buying my ticket. We ask about word is the boat will arrive at nine so we wait.

Max has a very abrupt bargaining style, the lady says five, he throws her three and gets stuck into the food he's just bought. I try to get some kip and fail. Word is the boat will arrive at eleven, so we wait.

Some kids come over to say 'hello miss'. I explain the difference between miss and mister, they seem to get it. I try to talk with them using THE BOOK and max' s hilariously inaccurate dictionary but that doesn't work too well so I teach them how to play snap which works a little better but it degenerates into a fight anyway. Word is the boat will arrive at one so we wait.

A jeep turns up with a dozen cops and they start showing a photo about, remembering the half ounce of weed in my pocket and the "DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS" stamped in my passport I panic a little, but then I figure if they were looking for me they wouldn't need to show a photo in these parts. Then I see a cop in a black raincoat making a pitiful attempt at going undercover so I stash the weed just in case. After a bit the cops drive off so I retrieve the gear. Word is the boat will arrive at four so we wait.

By now the kids are getting a bit tiresome, I'm knackered, it' fucking hot, frying eggs on the pavement hot. I try to get some kip and the kids keep staring. Word is the boat will arrive at six so we wait.

The sun's going down a bit and there's a few clouds so it's safe to move out of the shade, me and Max elect to move to the end of the pier for a change of scenery and to get away from the kids. We sit at the end of the pier and then a couple of cops walk up blowing their whistles, I've been here ten hours, I'm strung out and these guys are making me nervous so I did a bad thing and ditched the weed. I didn't want to but it relaxed me more than smoking it would have. When I get back from stashing the hash Max tells me we can get on a boat. I don't see a ferry but I follow max through the crowd to the steps down the pier. As soon as I get onto the steps I feel this hand on my shoulder. I turn and find the hand is attached to a cop.

'uhhh' I say.

the cops asks what's my name and where I'm from, I tell him I'm Jeff from Holland (both lies), he says that's great and helps me onto this little wooden launch, fifteen foot long and four wide. I realise this thing has near twenty people on board, I sit my ass down on a sack of rice.
There are more people clamoring to get onto this floating piece of crap and somebody pushes us away from the pier before we be sunk by excess humans. Scanning about I see twenty, thirty other similar boats, loaded with people clutching suitcases or cardboard boxes tied with string and paddling between them in little canoes are the hawkers trying to sell them mutliflavoured monosodium glutamate. In front of me is a dark skinned meatloaf lookalike with no eyebrows and behind me is big Ali who insists I take his picture, I get the feeling he could break me into toothpicks so I take his picture.
Then this guy in an arsenal shirt moves my foot so he can lift up a couple of planks, then he starts bailing out the boat. Well thank fuck somebody remembered to do that. Then he started getting wired into the motor and it coughs into life, phut phut, like your grandmas tractor that smokes eighty Bensons a day. We go around in wheezing circles and then somebody tells us we need to pay 5000 bongos for speed but A they've already taken part of our tickets so they must be getting some kind of kickback from the ferry company, and B we didn't see any of the locals handing out cash, we try to explain this but due to the language barrier we eventually settle for 'nah mate'. And then joy of fucking joys, at Ten to fucking Six, an actual ship appears on the horizon.

I begin to wonder how we're supposed to get from the small boat to the big boat. It's starting to get dark by the time it drops anchor and we power towards it, well I say power, I actually mean we drag our sorry wooden diesel fuelled ass across the water like a dying goat wearing a lead corset.
Despite that we're the first boat to arrive under the steps that have been lowered from the side of the ferry, a bunch of people scramble over and up the steps. Me, I'm waiting for the boat to stop rocking a bit due to the seriously heavy load of a pack strapped to my back, just when I'm thinking now's the time to go, I move to the front, grab onto the rope at the side of the steps and then an empty boat rams in and shoves us out of the way and people start climbing off the ferry onto the empty boat. Then a third fucking boat comes along and people start climbing off that, onto the second boat and onto the fucking ferry. Before I know it there's half a dozen boats around us, people scrambling this way and that trying to get somewhere they ain't. I'm kneeling there (standing had become too risky) waiting for them to calm the fuck down and let me on the boat, I'm staring up at what seems like a hundred feet of rusty steel wall, people swarming all around me and I know I'm going to die, I know that if I stand up the boat will tip just enough to send me over the edge, my vision goes dark and I see myself sinking into the blackness at the bottom of the bay, struggling to remove my backpack and the last of my breath escaping from me as I become a corpse. I see all this happening. I've never really feared for my life until now, and now I'm fucking scared

Suddenly I'm back in the real world when this old geezer gives me a shove and points towards the steps I think fuckit and jump on to the formerly empty boat and flatten this Chinese lady. I apologise jsut enough to ensure she's not dead and grab the rope and haul myself onto the bottom step just as the ship tips to the side and the steps lift about five or six feet above the boat. I shove myself past a load of people trying to get down the steps, I shove past all the people waiting in the lobby with bicycles and chickens and shove my way to the front of the boat so I can get some breathing space.

I was alive at least, what happened on the boat was a whole other story but in summary; I spent two days sleeping on a couple of planks in a cockroach infested metal box with screaming babies eating overpriced stodgy boiled rice. I couldn't go to the bathroom as merely going in was enough to make me vomit, I was introduced to dead families and accused of being australian and the only thing that kept me from going completley bonkers was my bottle of arak which was about 70% proof, god bless than nameless Indonesian who let us buy from his illegal still when we turned up at his door one dark night.


Length? waiting twelve hours for a fuckign boat is just too long. In lubunbajo they started rioting after six hours waiting on a ferry, but I got to watch that from the safety of a restaurant up a hill
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Fri 23 Feb 2007, 10:22, Reply)