by Frank Kusy
I settled, on Ian’s recommendation, on a club called Cleopatra. This had nine bare girls with flower-garlanded hair, jiving mechanically to disco music on a narrow strobe-lit stage. The audience were mostly balding, middle age men, and more than a few of them had a girl or two jigging up and down in their lap.
Cleopatra was run by a happy, twinkle-eyed, rascally ‘Mama San’ called Jean, who spoke surprisingly good English.
‘Call me Gin,’ she quipped with a wink. ‘Like the drink we do not have.’
‘What you do have,’ I said, looking around the packed club, ‘is all sorts of farangs (foreigners). ‘Which nationality do you like best?’
Jean gave a sniff. ‘No like English – too stingy. No like Americans – noisy, big mouth, and get angry easy. I like German and Australian men best – they spend most money.’
Jean’s eyes flitted to and fro while I interviewed her. She was watching over her girls like a broody hen. I expected her to clam up when I asked the touchy subject of how much she considered a fair price for their services, but no, she was quite candid. ‘One thousand baht (£20), not one baht less. My girls are good, clean girls, not from gutter!’ And where did her girls take their customers? Jean confided that most of them ended up in the car park of the nearby Star Hotel. She also confided that her ‘lovemaking’ show – involving a hunky stud and lissom lady in full sexual intercourse on stage – embarrassed most of her customers. ‘It make them think what they are all doing here…and of what they all wish to be doing themselves!’
I personally found Jean’s show pretty tasteful. Well, as tasteful as Patpong could get. And one really had to admire the courage of those girls. It took real guts to stand on a lit stage stark naked except for a Chinese riverboat hat and a light silk wrap, with nothing else to do but gyrate round a pole and playfully tweak other girls’ nipples. Down on the floor, the hostesses who were distributing Coca Cola and whisky (at horribly inflated prices) were amusing themselves by tying bits of cloth and string into one tourist’s hair, while a party of fat Germans dressed up as stallions, and reared and snorted their way into the toilet, never to reappear.
At 10.30pm, Cleopatra’s special ‘3 in 1’ show came on. This comprised: a) a girl with a lit Christmas sparkler twinkling between her spread-eagled legs, while Perry Como sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’; b) three lesbians soaping each other in a large tub; c) an athletic couple making it energetically in the corner.
At this point, having run out of questions to ask Jean, I made to leave. But no such luck. Two chunky, naked ladies came out of nowhere and straddled both my knees, pinning me to my seat.
‘Where did you come from?’ I gurgled helplessly.
‘You handsome boy,’ purred one of them. ‘Buy lady Coca Cola?’
I thought on my feet, even though I wasn’t standing on them.
‘Sorry, no,’ I said. ‘Me Buddhist.’
It was lucky that my head was still bald, and that I looked the part.
‘Oh, you Buddha!’ cried both girls, leaping off my lap. ‘You no like Coca Cola lady!’
I interviewed several more clubs over the following nights, but with diminishing interest (they were all pretty much the same) and with an increasingly bad taste in my mouth. It was not that I was prudish, but my mother had raised me to have a decent respect for women, not to watch them prance around naked on stages or imagine them committing unspeakable acts of carnality in car parks. What on earth was the attraction, I found myself thinking. Why were so many men driven to come to this part of the world to indulge in such sordid activity?
Before too long, I would be finding out for myself.
*
The second Trailfinders tour was fun, if a bit rushed. Over half the 15 days were spent in planes, trains and buses, and over half the other half lounging in pools or getting pissed in discos, but I didn’t mind. I’d be coming back this way on my own later on – I could do all my guidebook research then. We didn’t see much of Thailand – just a quick view of the seaside port of Hua Hin – and even less of Malaysia, but then we crossed from Singapore to Jakarta and suddenly the tour slowed down and became a lot more interesting.
For one thing, our alcoholic new leader, Steve, absconded with one of our number, a pretty young Brazilian girl called Edie. We didn’t know where or when they had gone – it was like the X Files, they just plain vanished, possibly abducted by aliens and taken away to repopulate a different planet.
In their absence, with no-one else experienced enough to handle complicated travel itineraries, I took charge. I phoned Trailfinders in London, got everyone’s forward travel confirmed (and their hotel bookings) and settled back for what I thought would be an easy ride.
How wrong I was. First, John, the young Scottish guy who went everywhere in red, blue and white Union Jack boxer shorts, had his passport stolen in Jakarta. ‘I was standing in this bus,’ he recounted, ‘when three youths got on, pulled out very sharp knives, and wandered up and down the aisle relieving passengers of watches, jewellery and in my case, passport. I thought I was going to die!’
Then, when we got to Mount Bromo (a day late, because of having to get John a temporary passport), I managed to lose someone else down a volcano. It was all my fault – I really shouldn’t have downed a malaria tablet on an empty stomach at four in the morning. It made me feel so ill, I let the rest of the group go ahead and since nobody anticipated a thin two foot rim at the top of the crater and no safety barrier, the first person up – a sunny young girl called Sally – just walked into the volcano…and down it. Suddenly, Sally wasn’t sunny anymore and her screams of anguish echoed round the huge black hole as she clung to a ledge by her fingernails. ‘Oh dear,’ I thought as we flung down a rope and gently helped her back up. ‘I really should have given her the torch.’
But the thing that really bothered me about being an (impromptu) tour leader was that I couldn’t have fun anymore. No more pools and bars and discos for me – I had to make sure everyone got to bed at a sensible time and got up for the next bus or sightseeing trip in the morning. The only thing that was holding me together was the knowledge that Nicky, my darling Nicky, would be on a plane to Bali in a few days.
I could hardly wait.
Chapter 5
Bali High
Nicky had taken it well, I must say. It wasn’t often that a girl got a wedding proposal one day, and the next, her hubby-to-be was on a plane to the other side of the world for three months.
‘You go ahead, darling,’ she’d said when I broke the news of our enforced parting. ‘I’ve got a bit of money saved up. What say I fly down to meet you in Bali? We can have a pre-wedding honeymoon!’
I’d nodded in happy agreement. ‘That would be great! And look, I just got this advance royalty cheque of two-and-a-half grand. Now we can afford to get married in style!’
But waiting for Nicky in Bali was torture. Having crossed through the rest of Java without further incident, and with a shamefaced Steve having returned (minus Edie) to close down the tour, I suddenly felt at a loss. It was hard to explain, but as Steve got all 16 of us together for a farewell meal at Kuta Beach, and the emotional security of the group began to disintegrate, an overpowering mood of sadness swept over me. ‘This is no fun,’ I thought glumly. ‘No news from Nicky, no idea if she’s still coming or not, and nobody to keep me company while I kick my heels and wait.’
But then Scottish John, and two of the Trailfinders girls, Jackie and Anne, said they were hiring a jeep to tour the island, and would I like to come?
Well, yes I would. It was exactly the distraction I needed. First, however, I had to report on Kuta, the tourist centre of Bali. And it was not an easy report to make. It was bad enough walking through the Benidorm style town of frenetic bars, noisy discos, and beer-swilling Australians holding frog-leaping competitions in the high street, but then I came to Kuta Beach itself, and here it was that I gauged the full horrors of tourism. The rudenesses of drunken surfer
s had rubbed off on the locals and it was impossible to sit on the sand for more than five minutes without being hassled to buy something or insulted if you didn’t.
Then I looked around and reconsidered. If – like a lot of travellers seemed to be doing – you let the locust swarm of traders, massage ladies and hawkers wash over you without protest, you could have your hair plaited and beads, your fingers and toes manicured, your whole body massaged with sun-oil, you could buy your gaily-coloured sarong, beach shorts, swimsuit and souvenirs, you could drink your cold beer, have a newspaper delivered, buy a big bag to get all your gear back to the hotel – you could do all this for less than £10 and from the comfort of your newly purchased 180 x 60cm beach-mat!
*
‘You can’t go off the beaten track in Bali,’ Steve had told me. ‘The whole island is cultivated to grow crops. There’s nothing “wild” about it anymore.’
What he didn’t tell me, and this came as a very pleasant surprise, was that 5kms out of Kuta, John and the girls and me were suddenly in the rice fields. Everyone was laughing and smiling and shouting ‘Hello, mister! How are you?’ Mile upon mile of glistening green rice paddies unfurled before us, along with immaculately laid-out plantations of rubber, bananas, coconuts and cloves. ‘Wow, this is the real Bali!’ John enthused as he drove the jeep through this magical landscape, and we all grinned in happy agreement.
Passing the craft villages of Celuk and Mas, we came to Ubud, the cultural centre of Bali, and saw the famous Kecak or monkey-dance. One hundred men seated in a dark, torch-lit circle, chanting, clapping, hissing and shouting in perfect polyrhythmic harmony. It was quite a spectacle!
Over the following few days, we pretty much covered all of the island – from the bat cave at Goa Lawah (where thousands of the creatures were in a flap or hanging out), to the wonderfully clean and golden-sand beach of Candi Dasa with (as yet) not a single annoying hawker or massage lady on it, and finally to the black volcanic sands of Lovina Beach right at the top of the island.
‘Why are we the only people in the water?’ observed Anne, as we stripped off for a nice, cool dip. ‘Look, none of the locals are going in!’
I chuckled. ‘Oh, Steve told me about that. The Balinese are superstitious, spirit-fearing animists, apparently. Not many of them will go swimming because there are too many mind-boggling monsters in the sea!’
As soon as we got back down south to Denpasar, Bali’s smelly capital, I checked in at the GPO for news from Nicky. There was none. Instead, I got two other letters – an angry one from Anna and an even angrier one from my mother, who wanted to know why I was still ‘gallivanting round Asia’ when I ‘should be back home getting a proper job.’
Oh, my supportive mother. She should have known the answer to that one. I was doing what I always did when under pressure from women – fleeing to foreign climes. And she it was who had set the trend. Fifteen years earlier, I had tried running away from her loving but very smothering presence to a Welsh university. Not far enough, as it happened, since she followed me up there every weekend, fighting her way through a scrum of rugby fans at Cardiff station to replace my laundry. Then, a year or so later, I ran away to an Israeli kibbutz to escape my first girlfriend, Jacky, who wanted marriage and kids when I wanted the exact opposite.
But it wasn’t only women I was running away from. It was pretty much everything my mother represented. Yes, the smaller part of me did want a safe, happy job and a settled, mature relationship, but the greater part of me hated feeling trapped in any one set of circumstances – professional or romantic – and craved total freedom. I was beginning to really enjoy my new unfettered existence where every day brought new adventures, new challenges. The only thing that concerned me, that broke my mood of ‘Hey, I’m freewheeling Frankie, I’m having a ball!’ was Nicky. I was missing that girl so badly, but hadn’t heard from her since I’d left the U.K. over a month ago. Where the hell was she?
At the height of my insecurity, the night before Nicky was supposed to arrive – and still having received no letter – I took the cheap engagement ring she’d given me off my finger. And was immediately accosted by a very pretty Balinese girl in a disco. ‘You nice boy!’ she said, tugging at my shoulder. ‘You come home with me!’
I immediately put the ring back on my finger.
*
The following day, I stood nervously at Ngurah Rai airport. ‘What if she’s not coming?’ I angsted. ‘What if she’s found someone else? What if she didn’t have the heart to tell me?’
But I needn’t have worried. There, rushing towards me through the crowd of new arrivals, was a familiar pint-sized figure with a quirky grin – Nicky!
‘OhGodOhGodOhGod,’ she shrieked as she threw herself into my arms. ‘I’m here! It’s really happening!’
‘I can’t believe it myself!’ I cried, holding her smiling face in both hands and smothering it with kisses. ‘But why didn’t you write? I thought something horrible must have happened!’
‘I did write. I wrote you half a dozen letters!’
‘That’s strange,’ I croaked through my emotion. ‘I didn’t get them. Who did you address them to?’
‘Frank Cosy,’ she said. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
No sooner had Nicky got off one plane, than she was on another one – a short 20-minute hop to the neighbouring island of Lombok, famous as a jump-off point to see Komodo dragons. We didn’t see any Komodo dragons. All we saw for three days was the inside of a luxury bungalow on the paradisical Sengiggi Beach.
‘Ooh, this is nice,’ said Nicky, as we sat in the sunken bath and threw bubbles at each other after yet another round of steamy sex. ‘I could live here forever!’
‘It certainly beats Bexleyheath,’ I agreed. ‘Here, pass that bar of soap. I’ve just thought of a new use for it…’
*
I didn’t know about getting married in style, but Nicky and I got married anyway – and in the strangest of circumstances. As we made our way back to Bali, and up to the cooler environs of Ubud, I had no idea how strange it was going to be.
Igeda, the manic little manager of our lodge in Ubud, went all aquiver when he found out that Nicky was a musician. Not just any musician, mind you, but a contrabassoon player in the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra. ‘Oh, you must learn play gamelan!’ he cried, clapping his hands together with joy. ‘It is bestest music of the world!’
Well, that idea went down a storm with Nicky. The gamelan bands of Bali were famous – she couldn’t wait to be one of those turbaned, cross-legged, and colourfully sashed musicians gonging away on tinny xylophones.
There was however one problem.
‘Number one gamelan band is in village of Menyali, two hour drive north of here,’ Igeda told us. ‘But this one no possible…so sorry.’
‘Why no possible?’ Nicky was crestfallen.
Igeda gave an apologetic sigh. ‘Menyali band play for only three thing. Birth, death, and marriage.’
Nicky looked at me, and I looked at her, and in one breath we said: ‘We’re getting married!’
Two days later, having left Igeda sixty quid to make the arrangements – yes, just sixty pounds sterling to get married in an exotic Balinese village! – we duly turned up in Menyali. All the villagers were there, dozens of them, and they’d brought an old blind priest on a donkey to perform the service. Nicky and I were crammed into impossibly tight Balinese clothing – we were obviously much better fed than the locals – and then they popped a turban on my head and a bee-hive wig on hers. A drum roll announced the arrival of the famous Menyali gamelan band, and we were on our way!
I don’t remember much of what came after, it all happened so fast. I do recall our faces being constantly daubed with rice and incense, and I smile in recollection at having to jump over a ‘wedding hat’ of vegetables for good luck, but then – as the band built up to a fever pitch of cacophony and the surrounding jungle vibrated with the echo of their sound
– we were married!
The following day, as Nicky was being given her precious gamelan lesson by the Menyali band leader, I was shown into a small, cramped room – full of ancient rice-parchment scrolls – and introduced to a small, serious man with horn-rimmed spectacles and the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. This was the village astrologer, and he wanted to know both our birth dates, so he could make a prognosis on the marriage. ‘Ah yes,’ said Igeda as he slowly translated back to me. ‘This man say, you are so lucky! You will be happy together for full-life term – congratulations!’
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter 6
Java Jive
As I waved Nicky goodbye at Bali airport, I couldn’t help feeling a tiny sense of relief. The past week had been very intense – when we were not making love (which was often), we were tearing about researching my guidebook, snorkelling in the clear, blue, transparent waters, and engaged in long, late-night discussions about our real wedding, which was to take place in August. Now, with my loved one suddenly gone, I relished the prospect of some time on my own – it would, after all, be my last ‘bachelor’ time for the rest of my life.
From Bali, I tore through Java like a knife through butter – covering 50/100 miles a day, stopping in one place just long enough to gather information before steaming off to the next. Malang, Solo and Yogyakarta sped by, and then I was on the ferry from Cilicap to Pangadaran. In Pangadaran at 6pm, I found the tourist office closed but my becak (bicycle rickshaw) driver drove me to a local travel agency which gave me everything I needed…with the bonus of a free bus out to Bandung the next morning. I was chanting for, and getting help from, all sorts of shoten zenjin (protective forces) like this, which was just as well since I was living at the cheapest level in £2/3 Javanese losmen and getting no more than four hours sleep a night.