While the local people gave us a genteel welcome, the local sea water gently lapped 200mm above the surface of the wharf!!!; requiring a longer than usual walk-way to avoid a rusting of the wheels of the Zimmer frame.
A youthful dance troupe added to the anticipation of a day in our first Indonesian port-of-call. And quickly finding our driver displaying our name on a stick, meant our ordered Toyota Kijang (google it) would fulfil our hopes of a trip to the famed Borubudur temple.
The journey, (we will never again complain of the Perth traffic volumes), was a nightmarish 0 to 15 km an hour for the first half until I spied an overtaking police car with sirens blaring followed by 3 big tourist coaches. “That’s the folk from the ship…..quick, follow them” I blurted out and our driver Mr Suderman (we called him Mr Superman) responded with great alacrity.
In a flash we went from dead-stop to 90 km an hour for the final 20kms of our journey, all on the wrong side of the road. A cop car, 3 big buses and a limpet hanger-on
The skies opened up as we arrived at Borubudur and covered by superman’s umbrella made a dash through the plethora of 300 stalls to get at least a picture of the mighty temple, beiged as it was by about 10,000 or more locals for a Sunday festival, a quick toilet stop and back on the road again.
The scenery was quite breath-taking, wall to wall villages of the very poor to the well off, rice paddies, an endless ribbon of roadside stalls, gentle people and 4 million motorbikes.
Upon our return to the ship (we beat the cop car and the buses by a couple of hours) the charge was sixty bucks instead of the quoted $90 and so we gave superman the $30.
“When are you coming back to Semarang?” beamed a happy Mr Suderman.
lauranceblog.com 