The Time I Drove Our Motorbike Into The Hotel Bar

On arrival in Dili, Timor Leste, we were kind of knackered. There’s something about a challenging border crossing followed by an hour-long wait until the bulldozers have finished making the road that does that to you.

So when the lights of our hotel appeared on the road we’d been following for a couple of hundred k, I turned right on in there.

A tricky ascent of the pavement, should, perhaps, have warned me that this really wasn’t a driveway. Yet, despite the howls from behind me — “NOOOOO, Mum, NOOOOO, that’s the bar. Wait! Wait! Let me OFF!” — I persisted, doggedly.

It was, indeed, the bar. “You alright there?” asked an Australian chap, as I reversed around the pot plants, my spawn cringing in the background.

Z’s observation? “I have NEVER been so embarrassed in my LIFE.”

The Time Our Indicators Broke

Z’s embarrassment threshold was further tested when our indicators broke a couple of days later. Timor Leste’s traffic police are remarkably effective, at least within Dili itself, and rather more expensive to bribe than Bali’s more flexible cops.

Which means that, within Dili at least, motorcyclists almost always use their indicators, a phenomenon I have not seen anywhere else in South-East Asia.

Rather than drive around town looking for a place to fix our bike, I approached the problem Indonesian style, and had my passenger do the work. “Turning right! Big wave! BIG wave!”… “Indicate left! NO! LEFT!”…

Given it cost less than three dollars to get them fixed, I’d probably choose that option in future.

The Corner of Doom

You don’t get to beaches this deserted on good roads. And learning to surf in Kuta, Lombok, entailed regularly ascending and descending a particularly tight, steep, scree-strewn corner that we called the Corner of Doom.

On our way back from a restaurant one day, some guys in a pickup truck were making their third attempt at an ascent, machine-gunning rocks as they did. They waved me merrily across the road, to a particularly vertiginous approach.

My anxiety intensified first by the imminent approach of their large, accelerating vehicle and secondly by a particularly curious audience, I panicked. Locked the front brake. And, umm, fell over, EXTREMELY slowly.

The next day I decided that our surf instructors could drive us to the beach instead. Ascending the Corner of Doom on pillion with my eyes tight shut, I heard a clank from behind us.

And, lo! My son’s instructor had tipped HIS bike over, EXTREMELY slowly, precipitating Z onto the scree for the second time in two days.

Corner of Doom 2. Poor Z? Nil.

The Lake of Farts

South-East Asia has some epically bad roads. But the prize for the worst road yet goes to…

The road from Banyuwangi to the Ijen Plateau in Java, where we had to be rescued by a friendly vulture after our bike refused to move.

The “adventure” continued when we were beaten back by beaten back by toxic gas clouds and learnt more than anyone needs to know about the role of engine oil in motorbikes…

The Time I Locked My Keys In The Motorbike

I might have come a long way since my learner driver fiasco in Cat Ba island, Vietnam, but sometimes I surprise even myself.

Locking your keys in a motorbike?

Is that even possible?

Well, yes. As I learnt in Timor Leste.

But All The Same…

Yet, here we are, after all this, about to motorbike around Central Laos, with our BFF, H…

Are we gluttons for punishment? Have we learnt ABSOLUTELY nothing?

Or is there just something about the total freedom of movement you get with a bike, and the dazzling beauty that surrounds you, that makes this option so appealing? Answers on a postcard, please.

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We’ve been meandering across Indonesia and around Timor Leste at a more or less leisurely pace these last few months.

We’ve covered well over 5000k on our not-so-trusty Honda Vario with its skull and crossbones stickers, including some truly atrocious roads.

A testimony to butts of iron and a general resilience that Z feels “has definite bragging rights. Not many ten-year-olds travel 5000k on a motorbike”.

And now, all of a sudden, we have, well, stuff to do.

Z needs to fly to Brisbane to see his father, a process that I sincerely hope will go more smoothly than our last attempt at flying him as an unacccompanied minor.

I’ve booked my ticket out of Bali to Singapore, where, as I did in Sydney, I’ll be bar reviewing and generally earning money. Z will fly in from Oz to meet me there.

Our China mission, perhaps by way of Laos to see friends, arrange visas and generally hang out, and certainly by way of Penang, is beginning to loom on our horizons.

So, for that matter, is Europe. We have tickets booked back to the UK for Christmas, and a loose plan to roadtrip slowly down to Spain in January.

But before any of this, of course, we need to get out of the Ijen plateau and into Bondowoso with ourselves and the bike in one piece.

And feeling the bike’s leaden, dragging resistance every time I try to accelerate sufficiently to get us up the hill, that’s looking increasingly less likely.

My core problem with the bike, I have learnt, is that I basically have no idea how it works.

Each time it complains I parrot to Z what a succession of Indonesian chaps have told me:

“There’s nothing wrong with the engine. The oil just needs to work its way through…”

Even as I say it, I don’t really believe it.

Just outside the village of Sempol, we pull over to rest the bike.

“Look!” says Z, pointing at a small pink pool that is forming in the dirt. “We’ve got a leak.”

“Oh sh*t,” I say. “We’re leaking oil. That isn’t good.”

“I know it’s not good,” he says. “I think you should sell this piece of junk for the most you can get for it the SECOND we get back to Bali.”

“And how do you propose we get around Bali, then?” I say. “Sell this and hire another one?”

“True,” he says. “I’m actually really looking forward to Dad’s ute. You know it has AC?”

Now, Indonesians are lovely people.

And there are few parts of the world where a woman and small boy standing by the side of the road inspecting a stationary vehicle will not spark offers of assistance.

When Z was four, or thereabouts, another lemon I had bought (this one on four wheels, not two) blew a gasket on the motorway in December.

As we sat on the verge awaiting the breakdown truck a guy pulled over, raced back down the hard shoulder, checked we were alright and insisted that we take his blanket.

Anywise…

In due course a guy transporting his family and a hefty load of pig fodder on a motorbike that’s been customized into a sort of impromptu truck comes past. Slowly.

“What’s the problem?” he says.

“That,” I say, pointing. “There’s oil leaking.”

“Not a problem,” he says, confidently. “Can you drive it?’

“Yeah,” I say.

He starts the engine. “There,” he says. “Not a problem. No problem with the engine.”

“Well,” I say to Z. “I guess the guy was right. We just need to allow the oil to work its way through the system. I just thought it would have done that already. We’ve driven 30k.”

A little further along, we stop for — what else? — coffee, at the Arabica plantation, where a shell-shocked looking Dutchman informs me that it took him over three hours to drive the road from Bondowoso in a car and that he wouldn’t recommend it.

“Ah,” I say, cheerfully. “You wait till you get to the road to Banyuwangi! Ha!”

“Yeah,” says Z. “Now, that’s a REALLY bad road.”

We wind up through rubber plantations, coffee plantations, tall avenues of standing trees.

Our progress is, well, stately…

Even with the accelerator maxed, the bike is refusing to do more than 20kph on even the slightest incline, and I don’t want to max the accelerator in case the engine overheats on me.

We reach a sign. 50k to Bondowoso. 24k to the nearest village worth identifying. At our current pace it will take us over three hours to make Bondowoso and there’s not a lot of traffic on the road, which means that if we break down, we’re stranded.

“Z,” I say. “I think we need to get this bike looked at. I’m going to turn round and head back. They’ll have a bengkel in Sempol.”

Freewheeling on a motorbike, if you’re ten, and even, frankly, if you’re not, is almost as fun as freewheeling on a bicycle.

We race down the winding mountain road, the wind on our faces, the bike lunging forwards on the open stretches. We cover the ground that took us so long to ascend in a few adrenaline-fuelled minutes, using the engine precisely once.

Down a dusty side street we find the bengkel, a repair shop where anything that can be fixed is jerry-rigged into functionality for a cost, generally, of around 25,000 rupiah.

It’s a wooden shack tacked onto the front of the mechanic’s home, decked with a dangling array of well-used parts that might come in handy one day and adorned with a selection of small children, richly coated in oil and grime.

I explain the history of the bike. He runs the engine. “No problem with the engine,” he says.

“Oh,” I say.

“You over-filled it,” he says. “Change the oil and it will be fine.”

The road to Bondowoso is pretty chewed up, to do justice to the Dutchman, with swathes of it reduced to the sort of chunky scree that is extraordinarily easy to slew on on a bike.

On one stretch, in fact, a local chap, who has, like all the locals, steamed past us as I painstakingly navigate the scree, comes off his bike.

He looks, well, irritated. Picks up his bike. Checks it for scratches. Dusts off his hands. And gets back in the saddle.

Us? We make it into Bondowoso, and a business hotel with swimming pool and wifi, and alternate between pool, learning and work for the next couple of days.

En route from Bondowoso, we find a rest cafe that has not only a real live flying fox but also (drum roll!) quadbikes.

Z’s driving style on a quadbike, like his karting style, tends to the sedate. He poddles happily and proudly around and around their track… races down the flying fox… scrambles up their assault course…

We spend a night in Kalibaru, at a place with a spice plantation and dairy farm on site, its charms rather mitigated by the presence of a number of tour groups.

We spend another night at the port town of Banyuwangi.

And in the morning we’re ready.

Ready to go back to Bali.

To go back for what feels like our last hurrah in a place that, to both of us, is one that feels like home.

To say goodbye to our bike, to Indonesia, to Bali, to this leg of our adventure, to the places that have such familiarity, the rhythms of life we understand, the language we can cope with…

For me, it’s a wrench.

For Z? He’s just superstoked to be seeing his dad.

“You know, Mum?” he says proudly. “This will be my FOURTH time flying as an unaccompanied minor.”

The post Our Last Hurrah appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Or, as Z puts it, “Civilisation! We’re back in civilization.”

We have a lovely few days. Catch up with friends. Go to Waterbom.

Develop a disturbing addiction to stuffed chilli peppers at what purports to be a Greek restaurant.

Shop for a new smart outfit for Z – black jeans and a black T-shirt, a uniform, which, I figure, could see him all the way through to 40 if he so fancied.

And discover the pleasures of Balian and the wonders of Time Crisis 4.

I’m feeling pretty good about our bike, by now, the effortless way you can change direction with the tiniest shift of bodyweight.

I’ve enjoyed cutting through the queues of bigger vehicles that clog the roads up to the port, just one of a swarm of scooters…

And on the ferry to Java, heading for the volcanoes, coffee plantations and sulphur lake of the Ijen plateau, we are full of the joys of spring.

Especially Z, the proud possessor of a new pair of super-mean shades…

I am, however, a little anxious about the road up to the Ijen volcano lake. Largely since Lonely Planet Indonesia recommends one attempts it on a motorbike.

“So,” I say, to a local chap on the ferry. “This road, then, from Banyuwangi to Ijen. You can do it on a motorbike, right?”

“Ya, ya,” he says. “It’s broken. But you can do it on a bike.”

He casts a wary eye over our bags, which I choose to ignore.

“Can you do it in a car?” I ask.

“Ya, ya,” he says.

Then he adds something about a “ranger”.

Does he mean a national park “ranger”? I wonder. Or a four wheel drive “ranger”?

It’s an important distinction, with which my Indonesian, though past the pidgin stage, cannot cope.

Still, as we cruise from the port through Banyuwangi and up the narrow, winding road into the hills, I’m loving our bike.

“Christ,” says Z, a few k into our ascent to the Ijen Plateau – we have good chats on our motorbike, especially when we’re going as slowly as we are now. “WELCOME TO JAVA!”

It’s not an appealing vista.

I mean, the landscape is stunning. But the road is now steep, loose scree alternating with spiky, chunky rocks, most coated finely with a particularly slippery mud.

It’s the sort of thing that’s actively fun in a 4WD. And would, actually, be quite fun on a trail bike.

Y’know. You work out the piece of road the vehicle will go up. Then you go up it. Sort of like a chess game.

On our little automatic?

Not so much fun. Largely because I am not entirely convinced that the bike will go up this thing.

“Don’t write off Java just yet,” I say, optimistically.

“Wow!” says Z, who’s got off to walk for the n-th time, in a tone of amused, scientific detachment. “Your back wheel is machine-gunning rocks at me!”

“Well, MOVE!” I say. “Get out of the way!!!”

The bike is not enjoying our progress. Nor, to be honest, am I.

There’s a lot of slewing. A lot of revving. A lot of machine-gunning. A lot of attempting to get up onto a rock, getting stuck on it, sliding/walking the bike cautiously back and attempting another approach…

If I were a character in a Victorian novel, I might be enervated by now.

“This is seriously the worst road ever,” says Z.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think it’s worse than that four wheel drive track in Arkaroola.”

We’re juddering painfully slowly up some rocks, alternating nervously between max power and no power, when the bike refuses to go further.

No worries, think I, applying the brakes, and preparing to slither backwards to plot a new ascent. I put my feet down, as you do.

Which is when I realise, in extremely slow motion, that, due to certain vagaries of terrain I should probably have noticed, the ground is now a LONG way below my left foot.

The bike leans, in EXTREMELY slow motion, to the left, pulling my right foot, very slowly, off the ground.

I throw my weight to the right, regain contact with the earth for a few precious nanoseconds, but bike, bag, and Z are now headed relentlessly left.

My mouth opens to shout a warning but I cannot think of what to say.

By the time my left foot is down and stable, the bike’s at a 45 degree angle.

As I lack the ability to crack walnuts between my thighs, I am incapable of beating gravity in this instance.

Z flies, in extremely slow motion, off the back of the bike and into the grass, where he lies, emitting raspberries of suppressed laughter, a couple of feet from our bags.

I let the bike down gently.

“Mum!” Z says. “You are a total spastic.”

I right the bike, and endeavour to push it up over the rocks.

I fail.

A local chap comes bouncing, very slowly, down the slope. He gets off his bike and parks it to render assistance – our circumstances are, I think, not uncommon in these parts.

His bike falls over, VERY slowly.

I attempt to leave our bike to help him with his, but the road’s too rocky for me to balance it on the kickstand.

Our saviour picks his bike up, rebalances it.

“Is it alright?” I ask.

“Ya, ya!” he says. “No problem!”

He takes our bike and shoves it the required 20 metres over the rocks, while I trail behind with the bags and a sniggering spawn.

“Thanks!” I say, and away he bounces.

As Z is walking and I am slewing/skidding/braking my way up and down some particularly undulating scree, which must once upon a time have been a series of extremely deep potholes, I pull over to let a tourist van, the only four-wheeled vehicle we have seen so far, past.

“Go back!” yells the driver. “The road’s broken.”

I know the road is f*cking broken.

I can SEE that.

I’ve been UP the bl**dy thing for god’s sake.

That is also precisely why I don’t particularly fancy our chances of going back DOWN it in one piece.

Plus, we’ve met the odd local going down it, albeit VERY slowly, on bikes, albeit BIGGER bikes than ours, and they’ve all told us it’s doable on a bike.

I am quixotically determined that I WILL get us up this sodding road. We’ve done almost 5000k on this bike, more of it than I would like on extremely bad roads, and as our Indonesian motorbike odyssey nears its end, I WILL NOT be beaten by a few rocks and some scree.

I mean, how much worse can it get?

“Why can I smell diesel?” asks Z, a little later.

“Because the engine’s over-heating,” I say.

Now, I’m not the most mechanically ept of people, but, after our disaster in Flores, I know that our bike is atypically thirsty when it comes to oil. So I got our oil checked before we left Bali.

(Rather pathetically, I am physically incapable of opening the dipstick myself. Mechanics always open and close it with pliers, but every Indonesian man I’ve met seems to be able to open it, no problem.)

“Let’s check the coolant,” says Z.

We check it. It looks fine.

“I think we just need to rest it for a few minutes,” I say, optimistically. “Give the engine a chance to cool down after all the revving.”

Bike cooled, we re-embark.

We’ve been told we only have 8k more of bad road before it improves, and even at our current glacial speed I’m confident we’ll make the base of the volcano before nightfall.

Some way up, a chap pulls his bike over in front of ours.

I park, assuming he’s blocking me because he has something of importance to impart.

“Hello,” I say, in true British fashion.

“Piss,” he says, in Indonesian, gesturing at his crotch.

Nothing to see here, I figure. Move along.

We move along. Rather slowly.

He pulls over again. I stop.

“You know what you need?” he asks in Indonesian. “You need my bike, and an ojek, someone like me. To take the kid and the bags. Because your bike will not manage this road.”

“No thank you,” I say in Indonesian. “We’re fine.”

Because, sure, we’re doing just bloody dandy.

As we machine-gun, slew and skid our way up the road, he cruises behind us on his better-powered manual bike like a two-wheeled vulture.

Ignore, I think. Ignore.

Ahead of us, I see tarmac. Quite a substantial length of tarmac, which covers quite a bit of the width of the road.

O mirabile visu!

It is, however, an, umm, interesting gradient. Definitely worse than one in two.

I max the accelerator.

The bike screams and groans.

It does not, however, move.

I switch off the engine, put the kickstand down and light a cigarette. Our vulture pulls over.

“Ya,” I say, defensively. “Just a little bit hot, ya? The engine’s a little bit hot, ya?”

Z and I inspect the coolant levels. He hangs there, silent, vulturesque.

I put some more coolant in, just for the hell of it. It runs down the slope.

I panic.

“Not a problem,” says the vulture helpfully. “There’s no problem with the engine.”

Z, I and our vulture-saviour wait.

I start the bike.

I accelerate.

I haul as hard as I can on the accelerator.

The bike doesn’t move.

It’s not going up this slope. At least, not with me, Z and the bags.

I’m also pretty sure it’s wellied through our remaining oil.

“Ya,” I say to our vulture, as if picking up the conversation he began half an hour before. “So how much to get us to the mountain refuge? You can take the kid and the bags, right?”

“Ya,” he says. “Your bike will be OK with just you.”

“OK,” I say. “How much?”

“50,000,” he says. (That’s just over $5.)

“That’s fine,” I say. He’s a nice guy, with the patience of, well, either a saint or a vulture, plus I’m not really in a negotiating position. “Z – you’re going to go with this guy, while I take our bike up.”

We load up his bike. I start mine. It goes like a charm. When I get stuck on a couple of rocky patches, our saviour hops off and gives me a shove.

We cover what remains of our journey in no time flat.

The pink and green clapboard huts of the mountain refuge cluster at the base of the Ijen volcano, silhouetted like an old man’s broken gums against the fading sky, the setting sun gilding the landscape.

It’s stunning.

Golden savannah grasses wave in the wind; tall conifers tremble; the road, now pristine tarmac, stretches into the long grass like something out of a road movie.

It’s chilly, up here. Must be well below 20 degrees. And, after more than 18 months in Australasia, that feels cold.

I pay our vulture-saviour and thank him profusely.

We get a room, plus extra blankets, head over to one of their simple warungs, and sit on logs beside their cooking fire.

The family fuss over Z, and, as we eat their food and the sun fades to black, we chat about our plans for tomorrow: to climb Mount Ijen, enjoy the dazzling views, and, of course, inspect the sulphur lake we childishly call the Lake of Farts…

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