so i left you last time with a lot of uncertainties. in fact, i left salatiga on wednesday morning with a lot of uncertainties too. still, the only thing i knew was "get off the train in banjar". so i packed my laptop, 2 cameras, some food, and 3 days worth of clothes appropriate for traveling in muslim territory into one bag and began my 1 km hike to the bus stop at 5:45 am. the trip kind of started on the wrong foot when i realized almost immediately that i had boarded the wrong bus.
and when i say "wrong bus" i don't mean "a bus going in the completely opposite direction". but rather, i mean "a deathtrap on wheels due to a driver who obviously needed to switch to decaf". i saved 35 cents by taking the non AC bus. you get what you pay for. as i was sitting there contemplating my life and the possibility of it ending (ok, so i'm being a LITTLE dramatic. i really do feel pretty safe even with the most insane of bus driver. they've been doing this for years), i began to realize that there was a comraderie among the passengers on the bus and the driver himself. in fact, it felt somewhat equivalent to being the only rational person in a car full of 16 year old boys, one of whom has his license. every time the driver nearly nailed a motorbike or missed a head on collision with a semi by mere inches, all the men on the bus would cheer! loudly! and egg him on further! oh, brother...
long story short, we finally made it to the bus terminal in solo. i didn't know where to go from there, so i asked someone. they said to pay rp5.000 to take a becak (bicycle rickshaw) to the train station. the becak driver tried to charge me 4 times that. i argued him down to twice that. and then when i paid, he tried to make it more again. grrr... the nerve. that's one of the worst things about being white in a foreign country. even a blind and deaf public transportation driver could smell your white skin coming from a kilometer away. of course, i don't recommend getting in a vehicle with a blind and deaf driver. at least not in this traffic. i've learned that one of the most helpful things you can do when traveling in a foreign country is to ask someone beforehand, "and how much will that cost?" you'll almost always end up paying more than that, but at least you've got a ballpark to work with. and honestly, if i'm told that the going rate is 30 cents, i really don't mind paying 50. i know i can afford it. and i know they need it.
so anyways, my train was waiting for me when i got to the station. i hopped on and we took off. there were 2 screaming children sitting in front of me, naturally, so the ipod went on and i passed out pretty quickly. until we got to jogja and my car filled up. (there had been about 6 people previously) a really friendly guy sat next to me and we talked for about the next 3 hours. btw, he was fluent in english! so we switched back and forth between languages. he currently lives in jogja, one year away from earning his masters at a university there, but he's from sumatra. in fact, he was in padang when the earthquake struck last year. his house was destroyed, but only one person in his family was killed. i love meeting people who have lived through things like that. it's probably partly a morbid fascination... but it's also partly that i love to hear people's stories, and natural disasters always make a story more interesting. in the end, though, what this always does for me is remind me how blessed i am...
speaking of blessed, it was an act of God that caused me to get off the train at the right station. they weren't announcing ANY of the stops on the train PA, and i had actually fallen asleep about an hour before we arrived there. i woke up and we were just sitting somewhere with no signs. so i asked the guy next to me where we were. he said, "banjar". WAH! panic... i didn't know how long we had been there already, and the stops are only 7 minutes. so i quickly grabbed my bag, shook hands and said goodbye to my new friend, and walked through about 3 cars before i found someone who actually worked on the train to confirm that this was, in fact, banjar. because it would be a terrible thing to jump off the train at the wrong stop and have to sit there for hours waiting for the next train to come.
as it turns out, i ended up sitting and waiting for hours at the right stop... but i'll save that story for later.
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