21/7/10 part two: The bus ride

So, you know how the bus thing seemed too good to be true? We got picked up at 7pm and I spent the 10 minutes before the bus came quizzing the hotel manager about the liklihood of getting to Bondowoso (our concern was that Bondowoso is not on the main road and is also not near much else). He assured me all was in order. When the bus arrived, I told the bus driver we were going to Bondowoso. He said, “You go to Bromo?”. I said, “No, Bondowoso”. He said, “Bondowoso... followed by something in Indonesian...” but his tone seemed right. Maybe the hotel manager's last words of, “Be safe and good luck” (to Jeff...after I walked away) should have been a tip off...

For the first 4 hours, it seemed really good. The bus was nice, it had air conditioning, we got little sponge cake snacks, and the ferry was big enough for the bus to drive right onto (not like that ferry in Tonga).

Unfortunately, about 4.5 hours into the trip, the driver's helper came back and informed us that the bus was not in fact going to Bondowoso and politely suggested another city (hundreds of kilometres from where we want to be) that they might drop us off in at 2am-ish or perhaps just an intersection in the middle of nowhere (I'm paraphrasing a bit here).

Producing the ticket that said Bondowoso on it and using a demanding voice to insist that we be taken to Bondowoso just ended with him looking at me like “suit yourself, you'll end up wherever we drop you off” and going back up front. (BTW...i'm not even going to go into the numerous 'roadblocks' that we'd been passing through that the local devients had set up as a way to hopefully extract cash from wayward travlers...). Out comes the phrase book.

We picked a town and learned the words 'please', 'hotel' and 'open' and crossed our fingers. For better or worse, it worked. The bus stopped at a hotel that was very local and we were on our own. Thankfully, they were open and gave us a room with lots of dripping pipes and an authentic Indonesian toilet. Living like a local means staying up late and getting up at the crack of dawn (I'm pretty sure people on Java don't sleep). We checked in at 1am and they woke us at 6 to bring us coffee, which was lovely but a bit keen.

After the coffee, we asked how to get to the bus with hand signals and butchered Indonesian. We must have looked pathetic since they finally just piled us into their car and took us to the bus. Now we're at the bus station and everyone there (and there are LOTS of people) is staring at us but as soon as a smile is offered, they break into a smile too.