Sept 2, 2005 - Indonesia - Kupang, West Timor
by George Backhus

"This is Rally Radio...Welcome to Indonesia!" boomed Dick McCune's voice over the VHF as we crossed the finish line of the Darwin-to-Kupang Rally. Continuing in a voice that sounded like an FM radio personality, "Come on in to Kupang Teddy's at the end of the beach. The beers are cold!" This was just the first of many welcomes to Indonesia.

As we were the first to arrive, we had the anchorage to ourselves for awhile, but within a few hours and throughout the night, the fastest boats in the fleet began to quietly arrive and take their places along the beach at Kupang on the west end of Timor Island. The 465-mile passage across the Timor Sea from Darwin was too easy, all downwind, and too much motorsailing when the breeze got too light to keep the spinnaker flying. That evening, we enjoyed a few celebratory drinks, a late dinner on board, then retreated to our berths, looking forward to a quiet and motionless sleep.

	The boys tacking during the race.

That sleep was interrupted well before dawn by Arabic a capella singing, broadcast loudly with an ample dose of distortion throughout the town. We later learned that the singing (which sounded like Tarzan having his wisdom teeth pulled) was one of the five or so calls to prayer broadcast from the local Mosque starting at 0430 daily. As the morning wore on, the cacophony of vehicle horns, booming car stereos, and loud, distorted music playing outside various shops, mounted a full-scale invasion on our eardrums. Welcome to Indonesia!

We were told that Customs, Immigration and Quarantine officials started work promptly at 0800. We were the first boat to be cleared, and they arrived at about 10-ish. This is what is known in Indonesia as "rubber time." Now normally, when we clear, we are boarded by two to four officials. In this case, it was ten or twelve people. I couldn't exactly count them all as they were all over the place. At least there were four of us to keep an eye on them. Customs conducted a very thorough search of every drawer, locker and under and every settee - of only the forward half of the boat. In eleven years, that is the most we've ever been searched. Satisfied that we weren't laden with contraband, they suddenly departed, with the last guy, apparently a hanger-on mate of one of the officials, asking for whiskey and cigarettes. Assuring him we had neither, he shuffled off, disappointed, to the next boat. Feeling violated, we mentioned this to the rally organizers and they instructed the remaining boats to permit no more than four "officials" aboard. Not exactly an impressive first impression of Indonesian officialdom.

Graham and Todd were eager to check out Kupang, so after a quick breakfast, they assembled the dinghy and headed for shore. Merima and I remained behind and gave Moonshadow a tidy-up. That afternoon Merima and I headed ashore to stretch our legs and see a bit of Kupang. After a short walk through the town, we felt as if we had seen enough and headed for Teddy's to see if the beer was in fact cold as advertised.

Over a few bottles of Bintang, the rather tasty local brew, talking with some other yachties who had been before, we learned why we came to Kupang first. They told us from here, it just gets better. What a relief! Kupang made the average Mexican town look pretty flash. The infrastructure, if it could be called that, was literally crumbling under our feet, and there was trash everywhere. Apparently the Indonesians have not embraced waste management. For security, all the shops have roll-up garage doors which they pull down when they're closed for the day. At night and on Sunday, the whole town is a mosaic of various colored steel roll-up doors. We noticed a few of the white trucks with "UN" in blue letters on the side (as seen on TV), reminding us that we were just a hundred or so miles from one of the world's hot spots, East Timor, which occupies the other half of the island.

As the rally fleet arrived, the crowds at Teddy's Bar got bigger, and the welcoming festivities began. These consisted of long-winded speeches, in Bahasa Indonesian of course, with broken translation, by all sorts of officials like governors, mayors and regents. This was followed by traditional dancing with loud music, followed by very loud rock music, followed by dinner of mostly unidentifiable food accompanied by deafeningly loud rock music. If the food didn't drive one away, the music did. Many of us were driven back to our boats anchored hundreds of meters away, where it could be enjoyed at a proper volume. We have learned that every sound device is always played at full volume. Welcome to Indonesia!

Now, when one arrives in a foreign country, it's a good thing to learn a few important phrases, like please, thank you, how to order a beer, directions to the toilet, important stuff like that. I asked the Indonesian word for thank you and was told that it was terima kasih. Hell, I asked, how will I remember that? In his own inimitable way, Todd replied "Just think, 'Tear up my car seat.'" Worked for me.

Merima and George jammed in the back of a bemo.

The easiest and cheapest way to get around an Indonesian city is in a bemo. I'm not sure of the literal translation to English, but I would nominate "boom box." A bemo is a minivan with two long bench seats in back, oriented fore and aft. The ones in Kupang were frivolously decorated with colorful paint jobs, lots of unnecessary lights, bright stickers and various chrome adornments, posters of Bob Marley and/or gorgeous western female divas, and of course, equipped with a copiously loud stereo system. Under each of the bench seats was one solid speaker box with at least a half a dozen sub-woofers, generating hundreds of decibels of sound, mostly the pumping bass track. A defibulator on board would be redundant. The conductor acts as sort of a barker, soliciting customers and collecting the money. He rides hanging mostly out of the perpetually open side door, getting off before the bemo fully stops and hopping on after it is well under way. This leaves the driver to fully concentrate on his driving. This is a good thing, as there are were no traffic signals in Kupang, and driving in Indonesia is a "life in your hands" proposition. The only driving rule is that there are no rules. A ride in a bemo is like walking into a coffin-sized disco, complete with large doses of secondhand smoke, and deafeningly loud music. The good news is they are very cheap transport. For four of us to go 20 minutes across town to the shopping mall cost a total of 4000 rupiah (the Indonesian currency) or about 40 US cents.

Speaking of the rupiah, if it was the world's currency, almost everyone on earth would be a millionaire. I changed AUS$400 in Darwin and got over 2.5 million rupiah, which was a massive wad of notes. If you wanted to make a large cash purchase in Indonesia, you would need to show up with a suitcase or wheelbarrow full of notes.

While the grocery store in Kupang was very modern and well-stocked, we realize that we weren't in Australia anymore Toto, and would need to get used to eating different, non-western foods. This is always one of the interesting and challenging things we enjoy about cruising to new countries. Some of the things we take for granted like mayonnaise, UHT milk, sliced bread, wheat flour and peanut butter are just not to be found here. On the other hand, we did discover some things that we would have least expected to be there, such as A&W Root Beer, 7-UP, Oreo cookies and Tupperware.

Visiting the "locals'" market is a completely different experience. It's an outdoor arrangement of ramshackle stalls, consisting of bamboo poles supporting some sheets of rusty old corrugated iron to keep out the sun and some of the rain. This is by far the roughest I've seen in 11 years of cruising. The smell of dried fish and decaying vegetables is enough to drive away most Westerners. If you can handle that, then the muddy pathways and the foraging rats won't bother you too much. What we encountered, besides many unrecognizable items, was an assortment of miniature food, covered in flies. Onions were the size of garlic, tomatoes the size of grapes, potatoes the size of walnuts, pineapples the size of potatoes, pumpkins the size of grapefruits, carrots the size of, uh, baby carrots. And if the produce was miniature, the prices were minuscule. For example, limes (for caipirhinas) cost us AUS$1.00 each in Queensland, and about the same price per kilo in Indonesia.

Indonesia is an archipelago made up of thousands of islands, so naturally the Indonesians are quite keen seafarers and fishermen. We've seen a plethora of boats here, ranging from simple dugout canoes to posh inter-island ferries resembling small cruise ships. What we mostly encounter are either long, narrow open wood canoe-type boats or larger exotic looking trawler boats with a wheelhouse or cabin to protect the occupants from the elements. What they seem to have in common is that they are very low and rakish looking, painted in bright colors and they have incredibly noisy inboard engines. When an Indonesian boat passes, it usually comes close enough to swap paint, and it sounds like either a Harley Davidson motorcycle with no muffler in full throttle acceleration, or a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter flying over at masthead level. Most of the boats have some sort of primitive inboard engine, as outboard motors are expensive and rare. The Indonesians are quite resourceful and have learned to attach a prop to the end of a Weed Eater, which they then affix to the side of a canoe for propulsion. Of course, in most cases they remove the muffler to ensure it reaches proper sound levels. The popping and clacking of any Indonesian boat will immediately cause any conversation in which you may have been engaged to pause, and in some cases fingers to be inserted into ears. In most cases the boats are chock-full of curious Indonesians all waving, smiling and yelling "hello mista" to us. We smile, pull a finger out of an ear and wave back.

With all these boats running every which way, burning up millions of liters of dinosaur juice, it's a wonder that someone has not embraced the concept of a fuel jetty with electric pumps. Almost everyone uses plastic jugs, filled at a service station, and lugged to the boat. We took on 500 liters in Kupang, which was a real welcome back to the third world for me. The local fuel man came alongside with a small canoe and preceded to hand-pump fuel from 30-liter jugs into our tank, through our Baja filter of course, to remove all the crap that he insisted wasn't there. We had to stop twice in the process to clean the filter, as it had totally clogged with water and crap. I'm glad I stocked up on Racor fuel filter cartridges in Oz.

With all the rally welcoming ceremonies finished, and the fuel tanks full, we were all too happy to leave the bright lights, noise and smoke of Kupang in our wake and head off to spend a quiet night anchored in the middle of nowhere.

(Next week: Adventures in Kalabahi.)