28.10.10:

I awoke with my teeth chattering like I was camping naked under the stars in Svalbard: my jumper, jeans, waistcoat, sleeping-bag AND blanket were not enough to shield me from the searing frigidity of the air conditioning on this bus.  I mean, I’ve been on buses where the driver has had the same homeostatic malfunction that allows fat orange girls from Newcastle to go out in a blizzard wearing little more than a piece of dental floss, but this was just nuts.

I tried to get him to turn it down, but he just laughed and ignored me.  Was I the only one suffering?  Would I be the first person to die of hypothermia in the history of Borneo?  Everyone else looked just as frozen to death as me, but they seemed to be taking it in their stride.  One guy was wearing a woolly hat.

Imagine: A WOOLLY HAT.  In BORNEO.  A place that hasn’t known winter for MILLIONS OF YEARS.  Where did he buy it?  On the top of Mount Kinabalu?  More unpleasant journeys I have had on this adventure for a smorgasbord of reasons, but generally the unpleasantness ends once I reach my destination.

But it wasn’t all bad: the bus got me through Malaysian Sarawak and into the Kalimantan state of Indonesia.  The rumours were true: you CAN buy a visa on the border (which is what I did eight years ago and what I did again today) By about 2pm we were pulling into Pontianak.  I hoped there was a ferry leaving tonight for Jakarta, Pontianak isn’t the most pleasant place in the world to spend a lonely evening.

I went to the Prima Vista ferry agents.  They had nothing for Jakarta until Saturday.  This was a kick in the balls as my good chum Anna is now waiting for me in Bali and I hate to leave a lady waiting.  However, there was another option: a ferry to Semarang, which is also on the island of Java, left tomorrow at noon.  A lonely night in Pontianak then.

I was a bit short on readies for the ticket, so I walked down the block to find a money changer.  I asked in a travel agents but they didn’t change money.  Then I spotted on their departure schedule a ship leaving for Jakarta today at 8pm

“Jakarta?”

“Jakarta.”

“Eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock.”

And in my best Mr. Burns impression: “Ex-cellent.”

My wish granted, I bought my ticket and headed back to the main strip.  I returned to the Meck World café I had drank a copious number of smoothies last week, logged onto their wifi, rang Mandy via Skype and started throwing more blogs at the website.  That’s the problem with blogs: you can never get them done in time.  At 6.30 I thought it was high time to head to the port when Mand reminded me about something: East frickin’ Timor.

Last December in the minibus up to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, I was with a lovely Spanish couple called Asier and Silvia.  They, like me and like Chiefy, the Oz-Buses people and PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE I MEET were trying to get around as much of the world as they can without flying (travel agents and ferry companies take note: this seems to be a trend).  Asier wrote to me the other day warning me that a couple of months ago, East Timor had changed its visa regulations.  You couldn’t just get a visa on arrival anymore, unless you arrived on a ship.

Must be all the British refugees clogging up the streets.

So, anyway, get this: in a fit of red-tapery that would make India blush, if you want a visa on arrival you have to ask for it ten days before you get there.  All being well, I should be arriving there on 8^th November, so I need to get my application in.

The procedure is the most retarded system imaginable.  You have to fill out a three-page fillable pdf, print it where you are (you can’t save it for later), staple a picture of yourself to the first page, sign the third page and then scan the pages and email the scans to them using the contact form on their website.

Only you can’t upload more than two files with your application.  And the document is three pages.  And no, you can’t zip it – unaccepted format.  So when I was in The Philippines I emailed the form to them using their ‘alternative’ email address.  That was on Sunday.  It was now Thursday and I hadn’t heard anything back from them and was beginning to worry: the last part of this journey is going to take long enough with me faffing about for two weeks in West Timor.

So quickly – or as quickly as this CRAPPY SONY LAPTOP will allow – I attempted to resubmit the pdf scans, this time using their forms.  I tried to put the three pages together using Word, but it didn’t like that format either, so I made a pdf document and uploaded that.  Watching the little grey percentage rise on Google Chrome was like watching the hour hand of a broken clock.

Eventually the file was uploaded, but FILE SIZE EXCEEDED.

No, seriously, the file was like 2Mb, and on the ‘attach file’ bit of the East FRICKIN’ Timor it said (in Comic Sans as if to add insult to injury) ‘5Mb limit’.  So then I fired up Photoshop, put two scans on one A4 page and one on a second A4 page, saved them as the lowest quality jpeg possible and uploaded the two files together.

I think.

I hope.

By this time it was 7.30pm, my boat left in half an hour and I needed a poo.

This was not good.  I used the loo in Meck World, but to my horror it was a squatter.  I had no choice.  Given the quality of the toilet facilities on every boat I’ve been on in this region so far, this was my best bet.  So I squatted.  Damn these nasty nasty things.  Wetwipes usually minimise the time it takes to go the bog, but in this case it made no difference.  I made the fatal mistake of nipping off the last log a fraction of a second too early, the result of which a bit like having a big brown Crayola crayon hiding up your bum, no matter how much you wipe, you can never draw the ace.  GOD I HATE SQUATTERS.  DAMN THEM.  DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL.  It took me a good five minutes and an entire pack of wetwipes to get my nipsy up to my up to my exacting standards, hunched down in that unholy position, my legs killing me and my balance askew.

By now it was 7.40pm.  I legged it out of Meck World and tried to find a moto-taxi, but there was none – there were HUNDREDS of motorbikes, but none of them were taxis.  I ended up having to run to the port, cursing East frickin’ Timor, cursing the stupid French f— who invented squatters and cursing Pontianak for not having enough moto-taxis.

I got to the port at 7.55pm.  By now I’m sure you already know the punchline:

The ship didn’t leave…

Until FIVE IN THE MORNING…!!

WAKKA-WAKKA-Bum-diddly-um-pum-dum-DAAAAAAAAR!!!!!