*spoilers herein*

So let me begin my admiting my bias and sharing a story that has amused parts of my family for decades. I am solidly Gen X, and in 1982, when I as 11 years old, with my Dad and little sister, then 6, on one of the weekends he had custody by the divorce decree, killing time as we often did in a movie cineplex, we slipped into a screening of the original Conan. It had already started, the scene where Conan’s mom is decapitated. And we only made it as far as when, as a grown barbarian he meets the woman who is to turn into a lycanthrope during their intercourse, when my sister piped up, audible throughout the mostly empty theater, “Dad, we aren’t allowed to see full frontal nudity!”. Classic hilarity. Soon after of course I saw the entire thing, and would say over the years I have done so at least a dozen times. Friends and I at various times have described it as pehaps the the ultimate fantasy film. For those too young to remember, let me point out there were many in that era, some, like Beast Master, blantantly trying to cash in on Conan’s success, others from Krull, Dragonslayer, Excalibur, and LadyHawke taking things in other directions. So one must ask why one would want to fuck with a classic… But alas, we live
in an era of remakes. And after James Bond, Batman, Star Trek etc. I guess Conan the Barabrian was about due. And it doesn’t completely fail, but there are a few points I must harp on.

Schwarzenegger vs Jason Mamoa

At first look at least, the new guy measures up. I’m no huge Arnold fan, despite seeing him time and again in classic roles of my adolescence. But I would argue he was BORN to play Conan. His Austrian accent adds to the plausibility of his barbarism, as does the stoicism that might be the reult of inferior acting ability. It’s not completely Mamoa’s fault: the writers gyped him trying to add romantic dimensions to the character. After some inital cliche chauvanism, he has a tender “make love” scene with the heroine. Barbarians don’t make love: they fuck. True, old Conan had real emotion going for his thief woman, but only because she was so outlaw, 3/4 masculine and still hot. A barbarian knows when he wants something, and will definitly open case after case of vengence when it is taken from him. But he lacks a certain emotional vocabulary. If he is tender it is almost accidental because has has unintentionally crushed fragile things in his past. Hell, Momoa is a better barbarian in Game of Thrones, where all he does is glower, kill, eat and butt fuck! (Ok so it was most likely only “doggie style”, but I’m taking license for the sake of a comedic line.)

The soundtrack is complete shit, I assume Tyler Bates is a hack, though he did do Matt Dillion’s City of Ghosts which I think is underrated. One cliche “action movie” melody and musical attack after another. You can hear a sample from Basil Poledouris’ superior soundtrack here.

Stephen Lang is completey played out as a villian. The scenes of his scrawny frame fighting Conan without the use of magic or minons are absurd. That having been said – the mask of evil power as a device was superior to the James Earl Jones in a Betty Page mullet snake cult motif. And I liked the idea of the wanna be incestuous witch daughter character, and Rose McGowan seemed to be having fun, though by the end she came up short. The Freddy Cruger nails were just stupid.

What’s with Papa Smurf on the hookah lording over the Tai Chi madiens? He added nothing. Nor did Conan’s black pirate buddy. The character comes off as token pandering. And while I’m on that – there is nothing essentially wrong with Conan doing time on a pirate ship, but the way they did it just seemed like the writers going “Ok, we need a little Pirates of the Carribean vibe here”. As did the fight in the court yard feel “we need a little Prince of Persia/Scorpion King vibe here.”
Also, the only time magic is used. The theif buddy is also a throw away. A quasi-middle eastern guy with a ring of skeleton keys, nothing plausible about him as a theif.

AND WHERE IS CROM? You cannot have Elric without Arioch, and you cannot have Conan without his “God by default” Crom. Conan’s tribe is described as specifically atheistic. Perhaps he mutters “Crom” a few times in moments of surprise, but there is nothing of his shaky faith in the war god who mostly delivers for him.

The sets started out Ok, but eventually had to do the LOLR CG fest, the most absurd being the skull mountain, or I should say the crumbling of the skull mountain as they ride away, straight out of King Kong. Have some rocks fall maybe, not the entire thing crumble.

I don’t want to hate on Ron Pearlman, who does as best he can as Conan’s father, but since when does Conan have a father? I see him as the child of rape, or maybe an absent father off fighting with the horde and ghost writing half-assed lyrics for Robert Plant. Conan’s mother dying here, right at the beginning, and his ersatz cesarian birth are laughable. I’m not sure how Robert E. Howard laid out Conan’s father originally, but see now from IMDB, ’82 Conan did have a dad – but I didn’t find him memorable.

Evil Henchmen

And there are many here. “No nose” is fairly original, as is his demise. But none of the henchmen carry the heft of “Molly Hatchet” and the other dude from the original. The one guy, far too orchish for my tastes, with the face tattoos being sent back as a message on a giant boulder which lands perfectly in the middle of giant ship which is inexplicably being hauled everywhere is cartoonish. Thank Crom they didn’t get too “Burning Man” with the costuming which I could have seen happening. I didn’t appreciate the snarling snow Mohicans in the beginning either, though the concept of the race around the mountain with the eggs was a nice touch. I thought it would have been more bad ass if Conan had showed up with the three heads but had acted penitant because his egg had broken, truely feeling his father might think he didn’t measure up.

What else did this version get right? There was a respectible amount of breast footage (lots of eastern europeans if you look it up…), essential I feel for the genre, though somehow it could have been sexier. And despite my earlier complaints about the scene, I did appreciate seeing Rachel Nichols’, or her body double’s. It’s not that the film is a complete failure. They have to make everything so over the top for modern autistic audiences. But you should understand downtime when you’re trying to make something epic. The plot continues to move forward, but write in scenes where the characters have a chance to grow, or reveal themselves in subtle ways. Scenes for example of characters wandering around a foreign city unsure of the next step, until eventually a camel is punched in the mouth for comic relief. Or a crucifixion. In the new version, Conan rushes from “Slave Island” to “Theif City” to “Skull Mountain” and none of it is really cool, none of it has true ambience.

And more magic. When she started to turn into the dead wife they were trying to summmon, I thought “OK maybe now we’ll see something worth those absurd acrobatics on the wedged wheel we just had to endure”. But no, he falls into the lava and she’s back to normal with no ill effect. The word necromancy was absurdly overused here, with no serious extraction of essenses, animation or the canal violation of corpses I equate with a heavy term like necromany. Either only say it once, or go ahead and show, or at least infer, corpse fucking and fight it out with the censors.

There were no classic lines here. “Conan! What is best in life?” Followed by his O SO METAL answer. Here we actually have the head villian saying, “Conan, I don’t think I like you any more.”

And sadly, not knowing what the box office has taken in so far or ultimately will, I sense this film might go on record as solid for this generation. They will mock the bad Snake metamorphasis of the original and consider the battle won. But just maybe, some teenager will read these words, watch both versions again in his mature years and think “gee, that crotchity old glory days fucker was right.” Maybe not…

My parting complaint: whomever came up with that “omnipus” monster of whatever the fuck that tentecled mess was supposed to be should never be allowed to work in film again.

So I have a ticket to Darwin from Denpasar on Feb. 3, and despite some of the impressions afforded by the Bingtang sleeveless clad Aussie masses swarming around Kuta, I’m going. My general plan is to possibly take The Ghan down the middle of the country to Adelaide, then with gumtree.com/au rideshare make my way east, hitting Melbourne, and most likely fly back to the US from Sydney later that month.

Sometimes, with this blog, I don’t know… I’m proud I keep it up, and it’s rewarding in it’s own right, but I wish I got more meaningful response. From strangers I mean, the kind of strangers I’d like to meet. Of course I appreciate the old friends who follow along. That having been said, I have had two pleasant comment encounters in the last few months. Once from an old friend of Patrik Keim who found me via his small image archive here; and another, a reader who put me back in touch with an amazing woman I met in southern China in 2010. He claimed instantly to know who I was talking about and had no doubt from my description. Now, much of that is a testimony to the power of her personality, but it was also “good to blog” validation for me.

So as I try and build my itinerary for AU, I’ll go ahead and put this out there: where do you think I should go? Unfortunately the West is out on this trip. I will have a finite amount of time, and some financial resource, but as I’ve been earning RI Rupiah for the last year…not THAT much. And their economy is doing well compared to the rest of the world, in part because they seem intent on mining up all that China will buy. Beers are $10 each at the moment, ouch!

All I know are Grinderman dates don’t currently extend past Dec.; I’d like to have some bizarre, quasi-Star Wars via Tatooine experience in Cooper Pedy; I must go to Melbourne; and might try and swing Tasmania. So give me all other recommendations for the Central and SE areas, oh Darwin too, though I don’t plan to linger. Band dates, film festivals etc that might overlap the time I’m there – essentially February 2012.

I summon thee, o dark and mystical forces of the Interweb! Speak! Er, I mean… Comment!

Back West

I stopped to gas up at another shack. I was most of the way up in the mountains but could see the thick gray rainclouds up ahead. They’d held off so far but I’d known this was coming. In retrospect, I should have stayed at the shack. They were an especially curious bunch of kids, so I pulled out my lame little Indonesian atlas, showed them roughly were we were on Flores, then turned to the US page and showed them Atlanta. I seem to remeber more kids than are in the picture, maybe the others hadn’t come out of the shack yet, which had a lower level. As I saddled up to head out, I pointed at the gathering clouds and made a clownish sound of fear. They laughed appreciatively.

Within 10 minutes of starting up, it was on me. Rain at first, but as it became a deluge, I pulled into some sort of abandoned building on the side of the road to wait it out. There was a big covered porch area and I watched. Other motorbikes were making it, as were trucks going in the other direction. But it sucks trying to ride with the visor down, essential at the drops pound into your face. So I just waited. Another rider came eventually and found space near mine. He was soaked, and stripped down to somehow try and dry clothing.
Eventually I headed back out. Things were down to a drizzle and I saw some road monkeys already out foraging. I guess they just have to tuff it out when this happens, unless they know about hollow logs or caves somewhere. Heading down the other side of the mountain, lots of rocks had washed into the road at the many corners. When a mini-river forms on the asphault, then there is a sharp turn, the water just continues in the gavitational path, leaving behind anything it was carrying as it subsides. And I’m not just talking gravel, there were basketball sized stones that had washed into the road. And now there was a nice fog on everything. Coming down to one turn, I could see another rider off to the side, and many large stones. I couldn’t have been going 5 KM an hour, just riding the brakes really, but I hit something funny and over the handle bars I went. It was such an absurd wreck at that slow speed, but there I was in the road, right on a blind corner, scrambling to get up as a truck appraoched and would have squashed me before it had known I was there. The first rider and some others came out to help, I assured them I was OK. “Bad road”, one guy said to me as he passed. Thanks jackass, ya think? But he was clearly trying to be helpful, just didn’t have much language skill. I rode on, realizing the back of my foot was bleeding. Foolishly I was in flipflops. And the brake handle was bent. I dreaded a confrontation with Ali I’d rented from back in Labuanbajo. Which was still many hours away. I needed to know the bike was in good enough shape to make it. There was very little speed involved, but I went down hard. A bit later I stopped, put some anticeptic gel and bandage on the foot and put my boots on. I’d scraped my feet and banged my knee also, but they seemed OK. The cut on my heel wasn’t deep, I was just shaken.
It turned out I was quite close to Ruteng, but had to wait about an hour, along with many other cars and bikes while a road crew that had already been working before the storm cleared out a major landslide. We watched trees and boulders come down from above. Luckily a backho and bulldozer were already there but it took a while. We could see the crowd wanting to come the other way several turns across the hillside. Finally a guy waved us through, motorbikes first, but everyone was looking up the hill and yelling. The hill had clearly loosened and there was no guarantee more wouldn’t pour down, or that the road beneithe us would hold. Everything had taken on sinister and apocalyptic tones. I couldn’t believe I’d been one-handed speeding along and filming earlier that day…

I finally made it to Ruteng and checked back into the Kongressi Santa Maria. Then I went to a mechanic to have the bike checked. They spoke only Bahasa, but seeing the guy’s wife was very Chinese looking I tried a little Mandarin, which she spoke. So between the three languages, we were able to pigeon communicate, but it was far more her skills than mine. They said in addition to the bent hand brake, the chain was too tight and the front wheel was warped, but this could be adjusted through the spokes. They wanted 150K to fix everything. I figured the chain problem was due to the kid who’d fixed my flat that morning, but agreed. Afterall, I’d agreed with Ali to pay for all damages. I would do so, but then neglect to mention to him the incident. There were some minor scrapes on the plastic, but the thing was well used and I doubted he would notice. It took a while for the repairs and the shop was trying to close up for the evening. After fixing the wheel, it seemed that tire was going flat too (which made sense) so I also had to pay to fix my second flat of the day, which wasn’t much. Satisfied the thing would get me safely back to Labuanbajo the next day, I swung back by the room, then out for dinner.
I went back to Merlin to check in on my buddy learning Spanish and saw another Dutch couple there I’d seen on the road. While we talked a bit, I heard a commotion outside. A grown man was whimpering and his hand was a bloody mess. Apparently he’d been in a fight but didn’t want to involve the police. I thought he’d been stabbed through the hand it was bleeding so much, but apparently most of it had come from his nose. Eventually a guy put him on the back of his motorbike and they sped off. A day of total chaos.
When I’d been lost in Ruteng on that previous night, I’d seen a pizza place, which must have just opened because the Chinese woman didn’t know anything about it. I went there to eat myself, had a calzone and it was a decent approximation of an Indonesian made calzone. I turned in early and read.
By noon the next day I was back in Labuanbajo. Ali and I chatted and he was oblivious to the repaired damage. I was very concerned about money at this point and thought I needed to get out to Rinca that night to see the dragons. Someone had quote me a price that involved sleeping on the deck of the ship for what I had on me. But the price seemed to be more now. Ali cut me a deal that would have been a great price if I could find two more passengers, leaving the next day. Just out to Rinca, where the dragons also live, and some snorkeling on the way back – no meal. Meanwhile I had the afternoon to kill and as I’d essentially filled the bike with gas, convinced him to let me take it until six (after all, I’d paid for the day) to go on a wild goose chase to find some beach he mentioned with supposed snorkeling. I spent the afternoon going up and down terrible roads, got rained on again, got in the water four different places, but it was shit each time. I saw like six fish and no proper corral the entire time.

Rinca – dragons

That night I went about asking every foreigner I met if they’d go in on the boat with me. Many had come by ship from other islands which stopped off at Kimono or Rinca en route, so had already seen the dragons. Their general demeanor was rude, as if I were trying to scam them. Most people don’t travel here alone. I was generally ostricized for doing so. Fuckers. I’d checked back into my 30k a night shithole and was resolved I’d have to put my remaining 500K on a solo boat. I’d have just enough for a cab to the airport, pay the airport tax and would have to go to an ATM at the Denpasar airport to get my motorbike out of parking.
So I was at Ali’s office early the next morning, sad to admit I couldn’t find another two for the split price. Then he told me about the park fee on the actual island, and a fucking camera fee. I flipped out. I’d assumed the previous high price had included everything. “Well I can’t go. Damn it!” I said and walked out. It would be an additional 150K. Realizing I’d left my mask and snorkel in the office I returned and they urged me to sit down. My frustration had been genuine, but my minor tantrum ended up working in my favor. They spoke in Indonesian for a while, one guy pulled a 50 from his wallet and gave it to me. “Give the boat 400k”, Ali said. “Then with this you will have enough for the park fees”. I thanked them and Ali’s partner took me down to the dock. I was soon my own small, private boat. I’d thought the price was largely a tourist scam, but it turned out to be a two hour boatride each way. We saw a dolphin en route, playing briefly in the wake of the boat.
Out on Rinca, I could see monkeys in the trees as we pulled ashore. There were another couple I’d met previously, he Irish and she English, both currently working in Australia. They’d said they didn’t want to split the boat because he was ill, but they’d changed their plans. So we’d all paid more than we needed to getting here. But at least we split the Guide fee. Ogie was our guide.

The couple turned out to be hilariously frightened by the entire thing. The guy especailly seemed he was about to wet himself. You can hear him starting to freak out in the film and me trying to calm them when one of the dragons slowly moved. There is also some good “dragon hiss” at minute 1.5 and 2, then again 2:15. Those ones by the kitchen aren’t fed but hang out their all day due to the smell of food. Then we saw another smaller one on our hike. Also monkeys, megapod (just looked like a black chicken…) and a water buffalo, but my pics weren’t so great. The dragons on Kimodo are bigger but I got what I came for. It would have been nice to see two males fight, just for the drama, but Irish would have completely shat himself.

On the way back, the snorkelling was OK, but not as great as I would have thought from what I’ve heard. I’ve been a bit spoiled by my spot in Amed on Bali. But it was an OK day, and in the end I had enough to get back AND get my bike out of the lot, even pick up laundry, before having to hit an ATM. I felt bad that Ali had done me so right, under the circumstances which he did not entirely know, and offered them another 50k that afternoon. But like a gentleman, he refused. May Allah grant him his. And like I said I would, I paid for damage caused to the bike. So may Allah not dis me either.

The first part of the week went better than the later, and I hadn’t gone nearly as far as I’d naively wanted to, but in all it was a great vacation.

I headed back up the hill to get some more gas. While refulling, I had the guys also look into a clicking sound I had been hearing at times. It turned out my kickstand (all bikes here have two: one a lean style and one that sits both tires up off the ground) was rubbing the chain. They adjusted this and put some more air in my tire. At first they refused payment, but eventually one said “For cigarettes”. It wasn’t much, but would buy some smokes, which are cheap and still very much enjoyed here. Then I headed back down to find another hot springs I heard about below Bena.

I passed some folks getting ready for some sort of ceremony, asked about the direction, and continued on my way. They said it was about 5 KM, but soon the road was in terrible shape, by far the worst road I’d been on so far. Absolute rubble, climbing up. And I wasn’t sure I was going the right way. Screw it, I thought, even if it is in this direction I’ll blow a tire. I turned back around and tried to get some lunch at the shack where the people had gathered. I got some bread balls, sort of like low sugar donut holes and a water. Soon I was invited over to drink some palm wine and check out the music. The video more or less explains.

Soon, a French guy and his guide showed up and we all watched for a bit. The guide assured me the hot springs were in the direction I’d gone and the bike would make it. They were two after all on one motorbike, neither exactly thin, so I followed them, knowing if they could make it so could I, glad I’d done so. The hot spings were amazing! A piping hot river mixing with a cold one in a pool where you could move about for the perfect temperature. Like before, the hot water wore you out, but here you could move over to the cold side to wake up. I still have questions about thermodynamics though… After the quake I felt last month, what happens if you’re in one of these pools and the earth belches, sending super heated water up for a bit? Couldn’t you instantly be scalded? Anyway, it didn’t happen, it was just enjoyable. Eventually I rode back up the hill and was caught in rain getting back to Bajawa around four.

That night, we met up with some other folks the girls had come over to the island with on a boat. So we had a large group, now including Irish and Spanish, another American guy, and the Frenchman I’d met earlier at the springs. Budget dictated I wasn’t drinking at that point, but they were and we talked long into the night.

The next morning, I had my my free breakfast and headed out to my first bit of bad luck – I had punctured a tire on that crap road. So I walked the bike up the hill to have it fixed. But then I was on the road and making good time. Had lunch again at the Dahlia cafe in Barong, this time heading back west. I shot more video of rice fields I’ll put in the next post, along with a rather foolish attempt to caputre the road feel by filming with my non-throttle hand. The footage isn’t as shaky as I thought it might have been, but the situation was far from safe. Turns out that wasn’t what I needed to worry about…

Bajawa Region

I had lunch that day in Barong and got back on the road. I was making good time, at least at that point. Passing through Aimee, I asked some guys I on another bike how far until the next gas station, sort of pointing at my gague. In retospect, I misunderstood their comment of “2 KM” to mean Aimere itself, gas bought from the roadside via water bottles. I never saw a Pertamina station and kept going, soon realizing I was climbing massive mountains on low fuel. I kept going slower and slower, wondering when it would run out. There were a few houses by the road but none seemed to be selling gas. Whenever I stopped and asked how far to the next station, I kept getting mixed answers: 8 Km, 5 KM, 15 KM. In any event it was obviously uphill the entire way. I finally lucked out and got some from a roadside shack. Not too much longer I was up the hill in Bajawa.

I’d only done another 4 hour day, but again wasn’t too motivated to go much further that day. But my outdated guidebook showed bungalow accomodation near the hot springs in Soa. So I passed though town and went for that. I had to wait out a downpour in front of a church and lost about 20 minutes. I was quite high in the mountains and put on another shirt and long pants in addition to my raincoat. Soon, decending a bit, I’d found Soa but the hotsprings seemed still some way off. I turned in what seemed the right direction. Everyone I stopped to ask, I would show my photocopy with Paradise Bungalows listed on it, but no one ever seemed to have heard of it. Finally one guy, with some passable English, said “You must mean Alan and David, the Australians…” Sure. The place was supposed to be Australian owned. He pointed me on. It seemed like re-enforcement or a sketchy lead, but worse case I’d just double back to Bajawa if I had to. I knew the road going forward to Ruing was suppose to be worse than this one. I had hit one patch that day under construction, cranes and bulldozers on the road and just a kid signaling for you to wait a second. Had the crane spun around, it would have knocked me right off the mountain side. No OSHA in Asia.
I finally found the hot springs, and the guy working confirmed the Paradise Bungalows were “broken”, which I took to mean abandoned, in a state beyond repair. But Alan and David did rent rooms right up the road. He took me up there. They were back in Australia, but David’s wife was home. Unfortunately the two rooms they had were occupied. By now, I’d lost quite a bit of the afternoon and knew after some hot spring time I’d return to Bajawa. The hot springs were nice, only one other Dutch couple around, but getting in, they sapped all remaining energy out of me. After those hours on the road, I was soothed to sedation. I had to get out for bit to keep from falling asleep. They seemed a bit fabricated: no sulfur smell, the temp just perfect, even when you sat right on where it came out of the ground. I figured they were somehow regulated with pumps and such. Still it was nice.

Back in Bajawa, I checked out one place to stay which was OK but I thought I might do better. Outside where a bunch of women travelling together. Since I had the bike and they were on foot, I said I’d do recon on another place. It turned out to be a bit more, but much nicer, free breakfast and wifi. Going back and telling them about it, I checked in, and they wandered down after a while. There I could see on a map I’d been a third of the way to Ruing, and the “17 islands area” when I was in Soa, and the road wasn’t that bad… So maybe the next day I’d just leave my pack here, shoot up there for some snorkeling and return the that night, not having to deal with my pack which I’d leave in the room. Meanwhile I’d drink some beer and enjoy the company of the French, Canadian, and French-Canadian girls. One of them even had a bit of grass left over from the Gili’s!

The next morning though, the Dutch owner woman pointed out to me that even once I was in Riung, the snorkeling wasn’t just off the shore and I’d have to hire a boat to get out to the islands. My budget was already a concern. I hadn’t planned on doing any “anthropology tourism”, but that became my default plan, as Bajawa is very near several traditional villages. I left my pack and set out with just camera and raincoat. It was nice to travel light. I didn’t hire a guide either, so missed a lot of the explaination/background, but there weren’t many other tourists around and the villages were easy enough to find.
The first one wasn’t so great, but Luba, which a Swiss couple back at the hotel had recommended was better, then Bena best of all. And they were essentially deserted – the men and younger women out working in the fields, only some older women weaving. On the one hand, it was sort of depressing, to think these people’s way of life was essentially doomed and their best hope was to become a tourist attraction, but it was cool too. Looking back from the view point at Bena into the village, the village almost empty, had a total Indiana Jones vibe…

Ruteng

A good friend of my sister, and sort of an adopted sister of mine, worked in NYC for Rough Guide for a number of years. While there she farmed out to us many a travel guide. The only issue now is that my SE Asian volume is 14 years old. And heavy. But I did photocopy a few maps out of it before I left, and also looked through a friend’s Lonley Planet, jotting down some more current contacts. Another teacher was going soon after I and she had dibs on borrowing the actual book.

And this is how I found out about Kongressi Santa Maria. When I pulled into town, I lost about an hour looking around for it – blindly searching and slowly getting warmer and warmer despite my pathetic bahasa language skills. After trying so hard at Mandarin last year, I can’t really be bothered, but it’s to my own loss of course. When I finally did find the place, I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted. The nun who greeted me had very little English. Yes they did have rooms to rent and for a good price. But it seemed very much I was in a convent/girls boarding school. No drinky that night, it just wasn’t comfortable. But some other tourists pulled up a few minutes later and I didn’t feel like such a freak.

I headed out to explore the town and very quickly met Richard, who was on me like a hawk. Unlike Bali, they aren’t over saturated with buleh tourists here, and anyone with some English is eager to try it out. So I took Ruchard on as a guide to show me around town. First he wanted to show me his “sculptures” in a yard nearby. It seemed fortuitous, as I love such things, but they were sort of the amaturish scratchings of a metalhead. Not without merit, though. We had a common lunch in a local warung. He was eager to show me around – there was a waterfall nearby as well as the cave where they found the Flores Hobbit, but it started raining. And I was a bit eager to move on from this “guide” after an hour.

I’d only driven about 4 hours that day, but found that style of bike, with the standard transmission needed for the mountains, you couldn’t extend your legs beniethe like my Vario, and with my pack and such, the seat like a stone, my back really started feeling it. I imagined I might ride further the next day. I was on vacation afterall. And Ruteng had a cool vibe, literally near the mountains, neat little houses, sort of an Indonesian variation on Switzerland. At least houses quite different from the Bali style. And my room had hot water! My first hot shower in nine months. I’ve gotten used to it, but hot water takes you right back again. Parting ways with Richard, he hit me up for some gas money, and as I had nothing smaller than a 20k, that’s what he got. Tackless on his part, but more big deal. He made all sorts of Muslim comments about always remembering my generosity. “Ok man, c ya”.
I read that night and generally enjoyed the room. For dinner I heaed out to another place a Dutch mother and daughter told me about called Merlin. Also to get some super glue for my cheap sunglasses, which had broken. This would become a recurring theme… At Merlin, a chatty waiter wanted to learn Spanish for some reason. Now my Spanish is far from fluent, but I amused myself for a while feeding him phrases which he scrawled on paper and practiced. The owner came over and joined in too. Eventually I said “hasta luego, via con dios!” and tried to get back to the room, but found myself completely lost in the darkness. Eventually a cop walked out in the road, stopped me going the wrong way down a one way, but without incident showed me the way. When he discovered where I wanted to go he asked if I were a priest or a monk. Nope, just a clueless traveler in the dark, officer. I turned in and hit the road early.
There was a huge line at the gas station the next morning, trucks and bikes blocking the road in both directions. But some enterprising locals had bought gas earlier in the dawn and had filled their water bottles which were for sale on the side of the road. It wouldn’t have done for the trucks, but motorbikes didn’t have to wait long and I was on my way. The road was definitely the best part of the Flores experience. Despite the fatigue and danger, totally beautiful the entire way.