16.12.10-22.12.10:

You know, when I stepped out of the Vietnamese Consulate back in September I honestly thought that my days of being trapped like a cog in the bureaucratic nightmare that is VISAHELL was over.

But then came East Timor, deciding just a few months ago to stop issuing visas for the trickle of western tourists that bother to visit their country overland from Indonesia.  But even after that was all sorted out, like the mythological hydra, more bloody visas were called for, most hilariously for Indonesia as described in my blog entry entitled A Red Background.

And now with just 17 countries left to visit and all of them being as far-flung as you can fling a flang, I’m trapped on the border of Papua New Guinea almost having a nervous breakdown brought upon by yet another impenetrable layer of bureaucracy that makes the world of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil look streamlined and sensible.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THESE DAMN PLACES?  I’m not a criminal, I’m not a terrorist, I’m not a international superspy.  Are they really doing that well that they can afford to turn back tourists??  PAPUA NEW GUINEA, in the short time I was in Jayapura I met SIX people who gave up trying to get into your country.  I’m not bigging myself up, I’m just a wannabe TV presenter on just one of Rupert Murdock’s myriad cable channels.  But one of the guys you shooed away was a millionaire.

I’ll say that again, just in case ANYONE from Papua New Guinea is reading this.

YOUR COUNTRY, WHOSE PER CAPITA GDP IS LESS THAN THE GAZA STRIP’S, TOLD A MILLIONAIRE THAT THEY DID NOT WANT HIS CUSTOM.

Are you guys INSANE?  Like, really really insane??

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.  Let’s start at the beginning.  Stepping off the Pelni ferry at 4am on Thursday 16^th December was a little like trying to get out of the front row of an Oasis gig just as the band is about to start but loaded down with backpacks and teetering on a watery precipice.  There were people EVERYWHERE.  It was all I could do to prevent myself falling into the breathtakingly polluted water of Jayapura’s port.

Groggy, sleepy and unhappy I began to trudge towards the few hotels listed in the Lonely Planet.  The few CouchSurfers here had buggered off for the Christmas hols and so the choice was either hotel or a notel.  The first place I tried was full.

So was the second.

And the third.

And the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh.

After TWO AND A HALF HOURS of trudging around with my backpack and my bags, I finally found somewhere for the night, but at $22 for a single room, I could feel my already stretched budget kicking me in the balls.  But I justified it to myself because I could have a couple of hours kip this morning, so I was effectively getting two nights for the price of one.

It wasn’t much of a justification, but at least there was air conditioning, a hot shower, a western-style toilet and a TV (that I didn’t use).  I fell asleep and woke up a couple of hours later, gathered my ‘visa kit’ and raced off to the Papuan New Guinea Consulate for when it opened at 10am.

Now it says in the Lonely Planet that you can get a PNG visa at the Consulate in Jayapura the next day, or if you ask really nicely, the same day.

HA!

Good one, LP.  Did you actually get a visa at this consulate, or did you just go in and ask them how long they take?  Because I can tell you it’s much MUCH more of a headache than that.

I filled out the form enquiring after my collar size and father’s maiden name only to be told that I couldn’t make a visa application without a valid airline ticket out of the country.

Oh, right…

TOP TIP for developing nation: If a western tourist ludicrously outstays his or her visa and you can’t afford to deport them, just sentence them to five years in jail.  THEIR OWN COUNTRY will soon pay for their repatriation!!

Anyway, twattily enough, I also had to write another daft letter explaining why I wanted to go to Papua New Guinea.

The temptation to write TO RAPE AND STEAL AND DESTROY was almost overwhelming, but I managed to stifle that baser instinct.  So I went to the internet place over the road, bought a ticket from Port Moresby to Brisbane, wrote a silly letter and returned… to be told to come back after 1pm.

Fine.

So I waited outside in the baking heat of northern New Guinea, within a skerrick’s pube of the equator, sweating and fuming.  If only I’d know this would just be the beginning of my VISAHELL, I probably would have gone off to shoot liquid crack into my eyeballs.  But instead I waited patiently (and sweatily) and at 1pm I walked in and handed over my papers, tickets, photocopies, photos and application forms only to be told I needed to get a photocopy of my Indonesian visa.

Wha?  Uh?  Bu…?

FINE.

I stormed off down the road, got page 23 of my passport photocopied in a roadside shack and returned within the half-hour.

Thanks.  Will it be ready tomorrow.

The lady said she would try.

Okay. Great.

I jumped onboard the next ‘bemo’ (minibus) back to town.  Happy days.

I found a place just up the road from my hotel that had free internet but where the coffee was TWO POUNDS a cup  (blimey! – so much for travelling on the cheap!) and managed to pad two coffees out to last me the whole day.  The coffee place closed at 10pm and I retired to my hotel.  Things were going well – at this rate I should be in Papua New Guinea by the weekend.

Ha.

Ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

No.

The next day I checked out of my hotel and hop, skipped and jumped down to the Consulate, five miles away.

Here’s a video recreation of my conversation with the woman on the front desk.

I stepped outside and emitted a silent scream.  Looks like I’ll be in hideously expensive (well, let’s just say ‘hideous’) town of Jayapura for the weekend.  If this visa isn’t ready by Monday morning, I am quite frankly going to have a bit of a meltdown.  After scoping out the competition (and finding them all full for the weekend) I checked back into my hotel only to be told that the only rooms they now had left were ‘luxury’ rooms.

I stepped outside and emitted a very LOUD scream.

So the weekend slobbered by with me attempting to minimise my expenses as much as possible.  I generally hung out in the café with internet and actually managed to stretch the purchase of one coffee cover a mammoth twelve hour internet binge in which I managed to download this video off my good chum Leo and convert it for YouTube:

No mean feat at 56 kbits a sec I tell you!

So what do you want to know about Jayapura?  Well it’s a wild west town on the far eastern edge of Indonesia.  It’s unattractive, unremarkable and, well, about as much fun as sticking broken glass up your nostrils.

But here’s something to make you laugh.  Or cry,  I dunno.  In the middle of the town there is a excruciatingly tasteless concrete statue of an Indonesian soldier standing with a flag and gun – and this soldier is being held up on a pedestal by obviously Papuan natives.  Anyone who has seen the latest Harry Potter film might spot the similarities with the ‘Magic Is Might’ statue ordered by a certain He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Anyway, before I knew what was what it was Monday.  The weekend was over (not that Jayapura has much in the way of ‘weekends’ but hey-ho.  So I hailed a bemo and headed off to the PNG consulate for the fourth time.

Here’s a video recreation of my conversation with the woman on the front desk.

I returned THREE TIMES that day.  The first time she told me to come back at 1.  The second time she told me to come back at 4.  The last time she told me that it wasn’t ready, but would DEFINITELY be ready for tomorrow.

It’s not just the inconvenience here, it’s the fact that Jayapura is ugly, smelly and EXPENSIVE.  I returned to my hotel sweaty, hot, exhausted (the consulate is five miles away) and ready to kill, kill and kill again.  Luckily for me I ran into a couple of Bules in the same position.  One was a South African surf/wave detective (yes!) called Harald, and the other was a top chap from Hawaii called Mike.  Harald and Mike are travelling the world in pursuit of the perfect wave.  It’s all very cool indeed.

So we had a few drinkies together.  They were going to try and get visas for PNG but decided (based on what they had been told by fellow Bules) that they were going to skip their trip to Papua New Guinea BECAUSE IT WAS TOO DIFFICULT TO GET A VISA.  You hear that, PNG??  So they were going to stay in Indonesia instead AND SPEND ALL THEIR MONEY IN INDONESIA INSTEAD.  Yeah – go for it, guys, PNG obviously has bigger fish to fry.

The next day I (again) packed all my things together and checked out of my hotel.  I travelled over to the PNG consulate and… hey! Guess What…?

So that’s a no then is it?  A NO.  EVEN THOUGH YOU TEXTED ME THIS MORNING SAYING THAT MY VISA WAS READY AND I COULD COME PICK IT UP.

If somebody had handed me a tank of petrol and a match at this point I would have not been responsible for my actions.

So I returned to my hotel as quickly as I could an – would you Adam n’ Eve it – the damn place was FULL.  Utterly utterly full.

That was it, I thought.  Death must reign down from above.  While I know it’s not Indonesia’s fault per se, I must regretfully report that I’m really starting to despise Indonesia.  While India will always be home to the most irritating people in the world, Indonesia (appropriate name) comes a very close second.  As I walk down the street there is an excruciating meeeeee-ster every few seconds.  If I ignore it, it will continue meeeeeee-ster!  MEEEEEEEEE-STER!!!  MEEEEEEEEEE-STER!!!!!!!   MEEEEEEEEEEEE-STER!!!!!!!!!!!, but if I turn I know I’ll get the old howareyou? followed by the usual, predictable peel of howling laughter that leaves you wondering whether you remembered to put on your trousers this morning.

No, I don’t want to shake your hand wizened old man – mainly because I was having a slash the other day and I saw the man next to me SCOOP PISSY WATER OUT OF THE URINAL WITH HIS HAND and ‘wash’ his dick with it.  As with many developing nations, germ theory and basic hygiene are undiscovered countries here – people do all kinds of disgusting crap with their hands and then expect me to shake on it.  Ha!  No!  Bugger off.

And for heaven’s sake: maybe, like one day, I might, you know, want to go 24 hours without eating luke-warm white rice with a GODDAMN COLD FISHHEAD ON TOP.  I saw a sign for Pizza Hut yesterday.  I got very excited about it and all day I was fantasising about getting a nice HOT pepperoni pizza… Actual Bread! Melty Cheese! Spicy Sausage!!

I walked back to my hotel and asked the girl on reception to order me a pizza.  Then I found out that Jayapura does not have a Pizza Hut.  It’s in another town, 15km away.

Okay: is there anywhere in this large sprawling town where I can get… chips? No. Steak? No. Pasta? No. Potatoes? No. A Sarnie? No. A Sausage? No. Mexican? No. Indian? No. Thai? No. Malaysian? No. Chinese… come on, there MUST be a Chinese place…? No. A kebab?

What’s a kebab?

DEAR GOD PLEASE HELP ME.

There are a hundred food stalls and shops here in Jayapura, and EVERY SINGLE ONE just sells white steamed rice and fish-heads.  You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.  In the Middle East I get it, IT’S A DESERT: a lump of gritty meat wrapped in sandy bread is the best you can hope for.  But in Indonesia you could throw a stick into the ground and it would grow into a tree.  These were THE SPICE ISLANDS for heaven’s sake.  What’s with the monoculture?  What’s with the little plastic packets of ‘spicy sauce’ I get with my rice and fish heads??  Maybe Indonesia isn’t such an appropriate name – if there’s one thing I’ll always forgive India all her sins for, it’s the corkin’ nosh.  Here you’re best bringing a packed lunch – those fish heads have been sitting in that hot, sweaty, fly-infested window for hours… or maybe days…

And is anything open after 9pm?  I know going to bed early is the Asian disease (and quite possibly why there are so many Asians in the first place) but please, I just want a bottle of water.  Or maybe a pack of Handie Andies.

And are sidewalks without massive deadly holes in them too much to ask?  Do Indonesian town planners sit around with diagrams and schematics working out the optimum way to turn a simple task like walking down the street into a live-action version of Super Mario Brothers?  And does all this litter bother anybody but me?  On the boat to see the Komodo Dragons last month there was so much crap in the water I was convinced that a ship hauling rubbish to the dump had recently sunk – it brought to mind the trash-compactor scene from Star Wars: oh no, all in a day’s work for this dianoga-friendly UNESCO World Heritage site.  Illegal logging?  That’s no problem – just give me a bung and I’ll look the other way… after all, there’s plenty more virgin rain forest where that came from.

AND WHAT is with this whole thing of making it impossible to see out of the windows of minibuses?  How the hell am I supposed to know when to get out?  Now I understand some people (drug-dealers mostly) don’t want people seeing into their vehicle, but purposefully making only 10% of your windscreen see-through is just f—ing NUTS.  Is it to stop tall people stealing your minibus?

And no, I DON’T SMOKE.  But thanks for walking all the way over here so you can sit right next to me in this big empty room and blow smoke in my face.  And, since you’re here, why not crane your neck over so you can read what I’m typing?  Go ahead, I find it easier to write with a goddamn audience.  Yes, I prefer friendly people to the cold indifference of Eastern Europeans, but c’mon, this is just… irritating.  Really, really irritating.  Like that noise they make in Dumb and Dumber.

AND YES your music is shite it keeps me up all night.  Well, it would do if I wasn’t such a heavy sleeper.  And no, I don’t want it amplified so loud that it shakes the poo out of my bottom.  There’s a passive-aggressive notion from middle-class dinner tables that western (well, UK, US and Jamaican) music is somehow inferior to what we like to condescendingly describe as ‘World Music’.  To that I say PFFFFFFFFT.  Local music is AWFUL pretty much everywhere: in Latin America the best you can hope for is Me Gustas Tu, in Africa everyone is too busy listening to African-American homosexual jingle-pop (or R&B as it’s also known), continental Europe is all um-pah-pah, accordions, the Spinal-Tap of Death Metal or 80s pop that would have seemed dated in the 80s, the Middle East just sounds like Tarzan falling down a very deep well, India is some shrieking harridan singing through her nose whilst wobbling about behind a pillar, SE Asia is even more obsessed with Celine Dion and Bryan Adams than even the Middle East (the more I travel, the more I become convinced that heterosexuality is the one that’s ‘not natural’) and Indonesia?  Jesus wept.  Possibly because people kept playing Indonesian music at him.

Oh Graham, you big meanie… you’re such a music nazi.  Yes, yes I am and this music ist not gut!  From a population of 250 million with its thousands of islands, hundreds of languages and mosaic of cultures, I expect at least one song that makes me tap my foot instead of sticking my fingers in my ears and going LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA.

In short, Indonesia: you irritate the crap out of me, you don’t wash your hands, your cuisine is as dull and your music is poo.  And too loud.  It’s not me, darling, it’s you.  You’re too plain Jane, the spice has gone out of our relationship and I would rather spend my time with other countries – ones that like to stay up late and dance until the break of dawn.  Let’s get divorced so I never have to see you again, but I can look back on my time spent with you with fondness as my memories of your bloody awful cooking fade with time.  Welcome to Dumpsville, Population: You.

BUT WAIT…!  What’s this?

Indonesia?

Indonesia… come back!!

I didn’t mean it!  I was just – you know – venting!

Yes, I will forgive a country of pretty much anything if it manages to send my tastebuds on a spine-tingling roller-coaster ride of texture, flavour and outright  yumminess.  And tonight, Indonesia you have surpassed yourself.

Maybe the fact that I had to eat crap for two months was a conspiracy to make me lower my standards, lower my defences before… WHAM!!!

The tastiest dish I have EVER EVER eaten.

A little bit of backstory: after getting kicked out of my hotel, I headed over to the hotel that Mike and Harald were staying at and tried to check in there, but (lords-a-lordy) it was also full.  Harald and Mike, being the top blokes that they are, agreed to let me sleep on their floor and the hotel kindly supplied me with a mattress.

So once I was settled in, Mike and Harald had some good news… unlike me they wouldn’t be spending a lonely Christmas in this shithole, they had just scored the last couple of seats on the last plane out of here on Thursday morning.  Lucky buggers.

Mike was (understandably) ecstatic at this news and wanted nothing more than some decent tucker to celebrate, so we headed towards the seafood shacks laid out along the road beside the harbour.  But not just to any seafood shack, we went to THE seafood shack.  Possibly the finest seafood shack in South East Asia.

THIS is what I’m talkin’ about!  For just six quid each, we got a deliciousfreshly-caught blue grenadier cooked to perfection of the barbie:

We also got a plateful of delicious deep-fried king prawns:

But that was a mere trifle compared to the gastronomic perfection that was to come.  I ordered fresh calamari out of the cooler box and Harald, being fluent in Indonesian (and an able fisherman himself) was able to explain exactly what we wanted.  And what we wanted was heaven on a plate.  And that’s exactly what we got.

She may not look like much kid, but she’s got it where it counts.

Lightly tempura’d calamari, served up with long-cut stir-fried veggies in a sweet and sour sauce.  Man, my mouth is watering just thinking of it. Usually calamari can be a bit chewy – this stuff was so fresh it literally melted in your mouth.

YUM!

YUMYUMYUM!!

So yes, Indonesia, you have won me over.  Unlike the BLOODY PAPUA NEW GUINEA which well and truly HASN’T.  That night I stayed up drinking with the other Bules staying at our hotel, all of whom were waiting for visas.  This guy, Quentin, was from France and had been waiting TWO WEEKS for a visa.

Please be aware that at this point it was the wee small hours of Wednesday morning: Christmas day is NEXT SATURDAY.

If we didn’t get our visas for PNG today, we’d be stuck in Jayapura until 2011.

And all the wonderful calamari in the world wouldn’t make it worth staying.  I wanted out.  I wanted to reach my 51^st country before the year’s end – and, more than that, I wanted to USE the damn plane ticket to Australia they made me buy.

I wanted to see Mandy again.  It’s been too long.

So after a few hours kip, Quentin and I descended on the FRIKKIN’ PNG Consulate for the twentieth time.  And this time we were not leaving until we got our visas.  I had been told yesterday that my visa was ready and IN MY PASSPORT.  Arriving at 10am, we were told to wait.

Why?

The visa is in my passport!  Give me the damn thing!!

Sorry…

What?  Why?

It needs to be signed.

By who?

By the man who signs the visas.

And is this man in work today?

No.

And is this man coming into work today?

I don’t know.

ARE YOU ON CRACK?

No… Sorry…

Okay, give me my passport now, I’ll sign it myself and take my chances.

No… Sorry…

I have never wanted to beat another human being to death with their own shoes before, but this bloody woman was seriously moments away from joining the choir invisible.  I told her I wasn’t leaving without my visa and she put up the ‘closed’ sign and tottered off.

If they had just told me in the first place that it would take a week to put a bloody stamp in my bloody passport it wouldn’t be so bad.  If they hadn’t made me come back TIME AND TIME AGAIN IN THE SWELTERING HEAT with false promises that my visa was ready it wouldn’t be so bad.  If they where rushed off their feet and had thousands of applications to get through, it still wouldn’t be acceptable, but it wouldn’t be so bad.

But we are talking here about a stamp in a passport and a couple of lines of writing.  Even if you were an illiterate slug it would only take a minute to do.  And it wasn’t as though there was a queue of Bules waiting outside every morning – and Indonesians don’t need visas for Papua New Guinea.  They probably had about ten visa applications to process A WEEK.  If that.  Well, me and Quentin waited.  And waited.

The first few hours were painful.  It was hot, it was sweaty and I’m sure my hair was beginning to fall out. At 1pm they wanted to close for lunch so we go chucked out, but we were back again at 2pm sharp.  My bloody mindedness was now thinking along the lines of ‘if I create a bloody nuisance of myself, they’ll give me the visa just to get shut of me’.

Well, it wasn’t the most elegant of plans, but (eventually) it worked.  But not early enough for me to be able to get to PNG today.  The last taxis apparently left at 1pm.  It was 3.30pm before I got my visa.  Another exasperated Bule, a German guy called Jan, came into the consulate and got his visa at the same time – he, like me, had been waiting a week.

Quentin, on the other hand, who had been waiting for TWO WEEKS for his visa, came away empty handed.  Unbelievable.  Utterly unbelievable.

Oh, and our ordeal didn’t end there.  Jan and I headed over to the immigration office in Jayapura to get stamped out of the country when we were hit with the most baffling piece of red-tape in the history of dick-headed bureaucracy.  If you got a visa on entry to Indonesia, you aren’t allowed to leave via Jayapura.  As Jayapura is the ONLY border post between PNG and Indonesia, this somewhat leaves your options limited.

Luckily for me, I had gone through the frigmarole of getting a ‘proper’ visa for Indonesia in East Timor (as they weren’t being issued on the border).  Jan wasn’t as lucky.  Of course, the c—s at immigration would be willing to accommodate his predicament (for a $60 ‘fee’), the alternative being for him to FLY BACK TO JAKARTA.

Seriously.

SERIOUSLY.

This is just quite mind-boggling and a new one on me – an international border that you cannot LEAVE a country from without the correct ENTRY visa.  How f—-ing stupid do you want to be?

Oh, Indonesia, you had me for a moment with that sublime calamari, but you’ve just blown all that good will.  Sickeningly corrupt and loaded with ill-gotten blood money, you can go to hell, Indonesia.  You SUCK!  And, while you’re at it, get the hell out of West Papua.  It’s not yours and you’re only there for the gold.  The profits from which go on WHAT EXACTLY?  Health care?  Schools?  Roads?!

Ha.  HA!  HAHAHAHAHA!!  Don’t make me laugh!

They go straight into the back packets of the slimy politicians that live on an island a thousand miles away, literally and metaphorically. Bluuuuuurgh to the lot of ya!!

Happily, Mike and Harald weren’t leaving Jayapura until the morning, so they (being top chaps) again allowed me to kip on their floor.  Thanks, guys!!

Tomorrow there will be nothing to stop me getting into Papua New Guinea.  I booked a taxi to the border.  It will be the Eve of Christmas Eve.  Looks like I’ll be spending another Christmas without the girl I love.  PNG is not a happy place and while I’m quite happy to risk my safety doing this crazy stuff, I’m not willing to put Mandy in that situation, so I’ve told her not to fly to me this time around.