A JACKASS IN JAVA: DAY ONE (16-18MAY2013)

Preface:

     Two years ago I took my first trip to Indonesia, Bali to be exact. To prepare myself for that trip, I surfed as much as I could, mostly at Trestles. Little did I know that I was surfing a wave that wouldn’t prepare me for what Bali had in store. If I could go back in time and talk to Donny Duckbutter from two years ago, I would say, “Look, man . . . I know you respect the ocean, and that’s cool, but don’t let your head get all big. Remember, this is just your FIRST trip to Indo. And your expectations of getting barreled? Look, you’re not gonna wanna hear the this, but you're putting too much pressure on yourself with this barrel business, which will interfere with your fun.” So that would’ve been my advice for Donny from two years ago: just have F-U-N! I think the homie PABS (R.I.P.) told me the same thing on my blog post.

     So when I did go to Bali, it was a learning experience. If anything, I gained perspective and surfed waves different from the waves in my beloved South Bay, Orange County, and San Onofre. I had put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to get barreled, and when it didn’t happen, I felt completely let down. So my advice for this trip is to plainly and simply have “fun.”

     I told my brother about this whole fun-factor deal through email, weeks ago. I said something like, “You know what, Bro? I’m not gonna put any pressure on myself like last time. I just look forward to coming through to hang out with you and surf some good wave. Barrel or no barrel, I just wanna have fun.”

     He said, “That’s cool, but where we’ll be surfing, it only barrels.”

     Upon hearing that news, I felt my anus clench. East Java . . . Donny Duckbutter’s going to East Java. SO, join me on this adventure because . . . I have no fucking idea how this is going to turn out.

LAX 2315:

     I’m humping it to the international terminal. Klaude’s FCS boardbag is slung over my shoulder, stuffed with two boards, and hopefully enough bubble wrap to keep them “ding free” when I reach my destination. I’m pulling Boris’ suitcase at my side (thank God it has wheels), and it’s half-filled with goodies for my brother and his friends. I also have a five day supply of boardshorts, underwear, and shirts. And then I have my carry-on bag that I bought from Khang, where aside from my passport and laptop, I also have some dark-chocolate brownies that Bri baked.   The sidewalk is so crowded with travelers, and none of them want to part for me even though I’m hauling some major cargo. “Xcuse-me-xcuse-me-xcuse-me,” I say, as I wedge myself through, splitting them like a seam. I feel the wheels from Boris’ suitcase run over someone’s feet. I glance back but keep on walking. I have to because there’s this fucking plane I need to catch, and I’m hoping, HOPING, that the recommendation to check in three hours early is bullshit. Maybe the line is short or maybe there isn’t even a line.

     It’s 2320 when I bust through the sliding doors, and I don’t see any signs that say EVA Airways. I find an airport employee and ask.

     She points to the numbers dangling down from the ceiling and says, “One, two, three.” She holds up three fingers. “Number three.”

     I continue my trek, thinking what the fuck? Did she think that I didn’t speak English? I turn the corner, and one of the ticket counters has a long line, serpentined all the way past the boundaries of the turnstiles. I need to find EVA Air, and I don’t even realize that I just did. Fuck me. Fuck my ass. Yeah, it’s “three hours” for a reason.

     A guy is standing next to a pile of boardbags, the big ones with wheels that can hold up to five boards. He stares at the line with his mouth shut tight in the tense terminal. I take my place all the way in the back. I have a missed call from Al. I check his message. He says that he just arrived from Southwest Airlines, and that he’s in the baggage claim area waiting for his luggage. He’s fucked. I’m not sure if he’s gonna make it, let alone if I am myself. I call him back and let him know that we’re cutting it really close.

     He says, “Matt, show your military ID. See if they’ll let you move to the front of the line.”

     There goes Al for you. You see, in Iraq we were roommates, pretty much staring at each other’s faces for a whole year, at the chow hall, in the showers, and in the shitters. We both can’t stand each other but are so familiar with each other’s quirks that we’ve learned to deal with them. I’ll be the first to say that aside from surfing, we only have a few things in common. Probably one of the bluntest guys I know, never afraid to speak his mind, despite all of our differences, I consider him a true friend in my very small, exclusive circle.

     Pulling out my military ID to skip in front of all these people is preposterous. What kind of shit bag would I be to just take it out, talk to the lady managing the line, and say, “Hi, since I’m a veteran, can I just skip the entire process and move to the front?” It’s unethical and would probably bring shame upon the military community. I walk up to the woman who’s directing the sea of Asians, pull out my military ID which shows an outdated photo from nearly five years ago. My cheesy smile on the ID is the same one that I’m wearing right now. Right now my life depends on this ridiculous, crooked-toothed, Donny Duckbutter smile. “Hello,” I say while facing my ID towards the woman. She looks down at it. “I’m flying on military orders. Can you please help me get through the line.”

     She looks at my boardbag and pushes out a breath with a sharp, “Hmmph!” Crossing her arms she says, “I would let you move to the front, but you need online check in. Do you have online check in?”

     I shake my head as a response while also remembering my friend Tim’s advice during sushi just hours ago: “You have to check in before your flight. You can do it online.” Fuck me. Why am I so stupid? I go back to the end of the line, whip out my phone, and now place my life on LAX’s 3G Network. The web page loads slowly. People shuffle forward, causing me to shift my caravan of shit while trying to input my passport number and flight info to do this online check in. I don’t care what people say about technology, but as much as this world may be going to shit because of it, right now it’s saving my arse.

     The woman who was directing traffic is now doing it elsewhere, and there is a Hispanic, young man standing in her place. I say the same spiel, even show my iPhone screen that verifies my online check in is complete. He looks at me as if whatever conversation I had with the other woman before does not pertain to him.

     He says, “Uhhhhh, what’s your flight number?” I tell him. “See, I’m confused,” he continues while scratching his curly hair. “First they told me to put you guys in that line, and now . . .” He looks behind him at the empty line for first-class passengers. “Just go over there, dude.”

     My smile’s never been wider. “Right there?” I say. “That line!”

     “Yeah, yeah. Hey, and if anyone gives you a problem, tell them that I said it was okay.” He smiles while pointing as his nametag.

     I go back to the line, where my cargo has prevented passengers from moving forward. As I pull my luggage away from the piles of people, I feel their stares as I, the brown dude in chucks, blue jeans and a polo shirt, move to the vacant line, the line meant for the rich, the important, the people who wipe their asses with hundred-dollar bills. I have a grin like I just got away with murder, and I keep my head down to make sure that the others don’t see it.

     I’m at a different counter, ready to get my boarding pass, when Al enters the terminal. He wears that same face that I had when I walked in this place. “Al!” I yell. I step away from the counter and tell him where to go.

#

     Show up three hours before boarding? Not for us. VICTORY. Long ass TSA line through security? Let’s see what military IDs can do. Well pull them out. VICTORY once more. Bye-bye long ass lines. Yes, the surf bums, we’re getting through. Confused looks on families’ faces, all wondering, Why? And then, this is when Al and I have our first gay moment of the trip:
     “Are we really doing this?” says Al.

     “Yes. We are,” I say.

     And here we are, in the terminal waiting to board our flight, giddy as little girls. Al’s wide smile reveals his intricate network of braces. When we were deployed in Iraq, we said we’d take a surf trip together, and we’re actually living up to our “word.” How often does that happen between people, commitments made over beers only to evaporate like farts in the wind. Yes indeed, Al and I, we are . . . doing . . . “it.” I snap a photo to make it official.

#

EVA Airways 0200

(2hrs. & 45 min. into trip)

     Sleep on the plane as much as you can. That’s what my bro had told me, and after the stress of school and getting my shit together for this trip, sleeping will not be a problem. Al and I both have Aisle seats but not close by. It’s about a fourteen-hour red eye, so the flight crew dims the cabin. I have some minor uncertainties, like how the hell are we going to contact my brother in case of an emergency, the bottles of liquor that are well over a liter that customs will hassle us about, and humping our luggage to our connecting flight in Jakarta. It’s a recipe for disaster, but for now, I pull out The Warrior Ethos by Stephen Pressfield and read it until my eyes get heavy. I recline my seat and hope to make it to Java in one piece.

#

     Tim told me that EVA Air is a good airline company. He told me that their planes used to be owned by Japan Airlines, so they are in good condition. Each flight attendant is a skinny, young, Asian woman with face-length hair—clones. They remind me of the girls who work for Papa Song’s in Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. There ain’t no equal opportunity in their hiring process. They are fast too, constantly running down the aisles, ensuring that people get their red wine, orange juice, and water. In the back they all sit in their break chairs, side by side, not even talking. Weird but efficient.

     Dinner is chicken with rice. The bread roll is still steaming on the tray that they hand you, and the portions are good enough to prevent me from asking for seconds.

     Pressfield talks about the archetypes that people go through in their lifespan, like the warrior, the wanderer, the husband, etc. I know that my “warrior” days are done, but I figure I must be in my “wanderer” stage right now. This is my second trip to Indo in two years. I know there are backpackers and other well-traveled people that have me beat, but most of my friends don’t travel outside of the country much, so I’m doing okay.

     In between our broken sleep, Al comes over to bug me. While I’m sitting down, he hovers over me and puts his crotch in my face every time he has to make room for someone in the aisle. I’m embarrassed because the two Chinese dudes next to me are staring, but I don’t let Al know I am because he’ll probably sit on my lap.

     Breakfast is chicken porridge, just as good as dinner was. Despite the in-flight entertainment, I polish off my first book and move on to Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, but during the last two hours of the flight, my reading eyes lose steam, and I fall asleep watching some documentaries.

#

Taipei 0620 local time

(16 hrs. & 45 min. into trip)

  

   I’m not surprised at the sight of this place. Not much has changed since the last time I flew here, but I’m in a different terminal. Al tells me it’s his birthday. I had no idea. We find the latrines, where I take an opportunity to brush my teeth. From there, I whip out the dark chocolate brownies that Bri made for me. There are two pieces left. I grab some toilet paper and place our brownies on top of it. Handing a brownie to Al I say, “Happy Birthday.” 

     The surfers that we saw at LAX were on our same flight, and now, they are at our gate on the same flight to Jakarta. I worry that we’re all in this together, heading to the exact same place where my brother is staying.

     We decide to do some exploring since we have some time to kill. Some of the gates have themes, most interesting is a Hello Kitty Gate, where everything is pink. I pass by an electronics store where Nintendo’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II is displayed on a TV, and I tell Al that I had got that game for Christmas when I was in the 6^th grade.

     Back at the gate, our flight is delayed about fifteen minutes. 

#

Taipei to Jakarta, EVA Air 0915

(18 hrs. & 40 min. into trip)

     It’s a five hour and ten minute flight, which seems kind of long, but compared to the fourteen hour flight earlier, this shouldn’t feel long. We still feel well rested from all the sleep from the flight prior, but I can only read a few pages before I decide on some brainless entertainment. After they serve us lunch, I watch some of Anthony Bourdaine’s The Layover, the episode where he’s in Amsterdam. I’ve been there three times, myself. Unfortunately, I got into some deep shit that second time I was there. I wonder if I’d go back, but in the days that I used to “smoke,” I remember how I used to be useless when I was high. If I would go to enjoy the festivities there, I’d have to have a PS3 with me because I would be too paranoid to venture outside unless it was to eat.

#

Jakarta 1325 local time

(23 hrs. & 50 min. into trip)

     This is the leg of the trip that I’ve been worrying about: Jakarta. Even my brother has never flown in through this airport, which makes me ask myself, why the fuck did I fly here? Anyway, we must catch a local flight from here to Jogja, which involves getting our bags and humping it to Lion Airlines, the same Airlines that crash landed in the ocean in Bali just weeks ago. Right when we step off of the plane, that tropical heat hits us. “It’s just like Ecuador,” says Al. My pores already begin to excrete some grease from the airplane chow. We do the one-hundred yard dash straight to the Visa counter, which costs us twenty-give bucks. From there we’re still fast enough to be in front of the line at the next counter.

     Our bags take a little while to come out of the carousel, but we have about three and a half hours before our next flight. The reason for this long layover is that we still have to go through customs. Heading towards the x-rays is tense. In Bali they had gone through all of my shit and haggled me about the vodka I brought. I had a twenty-dollar bribe in my shirt pocket ready to go, but I had bubbled wrapped the bottle so tight that they didn’t want to bother with it. It’s Al’s idea to gamble on going through the green line, the line that means we have nothing to declare. Are they gonna be pissed when they find we each have bottles of liquor, one of them being well over a liter? I hold my breath when we go through. I have a twenty for the bribe. How long is this going to take? Will they make us take out our boards, dump our luggage? Here it comes. Our bags come out on the other side, and the customs agents don’t even blink in our direction.

     Exchange rates . . .  my brother had recommended that we convert our money in Jakarta because we might get fleeced if we do it in Jogja. The airport should be legit, but he still said to make sure we count our money again. Since Al’s only staying for two weeks, he’s only exchanging two-hundred-and-fifty dollars. Me? I’m staying for a month, so I’m exchanging eight hundred. Randy said that his bank was exchanging US currency at 9600 Indonesian Rupiah. As soon as we exit the baggage claim area, there is a mass of brown bodies, waiting for their friends and family. The temperature outside is even hotter. On the right hand side are the exchange booths, and as soon as they see Al and I wheeling our carts with our boards, they start smiling and waving for us to come over. I look at the digital board behind her. It says US 9600, and in the column next to it, the exchange rate is knocked down to 9300; I guess they need to take a little off of the top for themselves. But right now, my adrenaline is rushing. We just avoided customs, thank God. We still need to find out where the fuck Lion Airlines is, AND . . . the money. This moment is tense because I almost got fleeced on the streets of Bali, trying to exchange my money, but there’s this light-skinned Indonesian woman in front of me smiling. She should be friendly, shouldn’t she?

     “Hello,” I say. “Eight hundred?”

     “Yes,” she says, nodding her head in short, rapid bursts.

     I reach in my wallet and pull out eight, crisp, hundred-dollar bills, all dated 2006 or newer. I hand them over. She starts counting, and my adrenaline is so high, that I cannot keep track of the mountain of blue, 50000 IR bills that are piling up so high that they’re spilling over. I’m supposed to have 7440000 IR, but I’m lost halfway through her count.

     “Okay,” she says, with a smile that seals the deal.

     I ask for her calculator and recheck the conversion. 7440000. “Okay,” I say, returning the smile. I hope I can trust her.

     Al’s already done. He’s been waiting for me, since converting two-hundred fifty doesn’t take that long. I pull out my stack of IR and start counting. My hands are shaking. “Dude,” he says, “you need help?”

     “No, I got it.” There are so many god damn 50K IR bills, that I’m engulfed in them. The air, humidity, roar of gibberish from the crowd, the shiny sweat now coating my forearms, I am much too distracted to count this right.

     “Here,” says Al. “Look, let me do this.” He grabs my bills and counts them out, moving his fingers fast as a dealer shuffling cards in a Vegas casino. In less than a minute he counts 6440000 IR.

     “Fuck,” I say.

     “Is that right?” says Al.

     “No . . . it’s supposed to be seven million.” I recount the neat stacks that he’s placed on top of my boardbag, trying to make six stacks of millions into seven, as if I’m staring at shitty surf trying to make it surfable in my mind. Motherfuckers, they got me. It’s Bali all over again. Make no mistake, I’m not a “tough guy” or one of those douche bags that go around wearing the UFC and Tap Out shirts, two sizes too small, but I’m a cheap bastard, and someone messing with my money stimulates a “go response” in me.

     I grab the stacks and head back to the woman at the booth. With the same face that I wore in Bali when those other dickheads tried to fuck me, I say, “You shorted me one million!”

     Still wearing that same smile, she says, “Not enough? Okay.” She takes my fistful of cash back. “I use bigger.” She now pulls out a stack of 100K IR bills. How convenient. She recounts the stack of money, while Al is over my shoulder counting along with her. She counts seven million.

     “And the four-hundred forty-thousand,” I say.

     “More?” she says. And she throws down seven or eight more 100K IR bills. Al and I look at each other and back at the woman. Her smile hasn’t waned. She nods her head and says, “Okay?”

     “Ummmm, okay,” I say. Leaving the booths we’re even more stumped than we were when she shorted us. She just gave me more money than I was supposed to have.

     That was obstacle one. Now our next mission is to find out where the fuck Lion Airlines is. We exit the baggage claim into a barrage of taxi cab drivers. My brother had told me that 20000 IR is a fair price to pay for transport. We cross the intersection and talk to a taxi driver who’s been smiling at us since we were across the street. “Lion Airlines,” says Al.

     “One-hundred thousand,” says the driver.

     “No,” I say. “Twenty.”

     “Twenty what?” he says. “US?”

     “No, rupiah.”

     “Okay, fifty thousand,” he says.

     “Fuck it,” says Al. “Where is Lion Air?”

     “Terminal one,” says the driver.

     “We can just walk it,” says Al.

     The driver continues, “Fifty thousand because of you and you.” He motions towards our bags. We turn around and head back across the street. “Lion Air is far. You are crazy!”

     Across the street, the guy directing traffic tells us that Lion Air is at terminal one. “Yellow bus upstairs,” he says. Al and I struggle with our boards and luggage in a tiny, cramped elevator. Once the doors open, we’re exposed to open, silver sky. I say silver because the sun is so blinding and intense that we are frying.

     In the open sun, with my black polo shirt now drenched with sweat and my forehead dripping profusely, the words “Lion Air” escape my mouth like I’ve been stumbling through the desert, mumbling for water. And every person points us in the direction at the end of the airport. It’s not too far, maybe a couple hundred meters. Why the hell would someone wait in this hot ass sun for a shuttle just to walk there? Al and I hump it to the end, my balls now dripping in anus juice, and there is no sign for Lion Air. FUCKING LION AIR, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! A woman in the terminal points in the same direction that everyone else has. “Terminal one,” she says, and that’s when it hits us. My brother had told me that we could probably hump it there for twenty minutes if we didn’t want to catch a cab, but he was wrong. Where we are is only where the arrivals fly in. There are still three other terminals for departures.

     “Yellow bus,” says Al. “That’s what they were trying to tell us: yellow bus. We have to get on the shuttle.”

     I contemplate on catching a cab, but fuck it now. The cabbies here are less interested in us compared to the way they were downstairs, and we don’t want to get fleeced for a ride when we could catch one for free. Standing in a crowd full of men in blue jeans, smoking cigarettes, and Muslim women wearing white from head to toe, the shuttle approaches in the distance.

     “Yellow bus,” says Al, as he grabs his bags. “Honey Badger don’t give a fuck.”

     Al . . . let me start by saying he’s a warrior. Initiative all the way, helping me count my money back there when I was too frazzled, and now taking the lead to get us on the shuttle, while I am borderline close to just coughing up for a cab. He stands on the curb before the shuttle’s even there. As it approaches, an army of women surround him, trying to fill the gaps between him and the door. I hurry and secure a spot. Momentous hands are on us, not shoving, but not letting us stop either. Inside, the shuttle isn’t equipped to handle boards, so we take up so much space. Even though the bus is asses and elbows, more people pile in. A sauna on wheels, we get to the terminal. Lion Air, we see the signs. Please let this be the last obstacle.

     Airport security points to the sliding doors leading to the Lion Air check-in counter, and I have to say that this place is a fucking shit storm, worse than Denpasar/Bali. Forget about any signs in English, let alone anyone who speaks it. The whole row of counters have words that we don’t recognize. We work our way to the very end where the line is shortest. A guy in the line next to us asks where we’re heading.

     “Jogja,” I say.

     He opens up and says that he used to go to Sacramento state. He then speaks to the woman behind the counter. I hear the word “surf board” come out of his mouth. “Surfboards used to be free,” he says, “but now it is twenty thousand.”

     Once he leaves, the woman asks me to put both of my bags on the scale. She looks puzzled as she scribbles on my itinerary, and then she looks up and says, “Your board and bag.” She points to a price on the sheet of paper. It looks like she did some math with kilograms, and next to it is a set of numbers circled: 2,690,000 IR. I’m stumped again. There are no managers, only the woman wrapped up in a blue head dress, a woman like her in the next counter, and another one in the next. There appears to be no authority. I look over at Al at the next counter over. He’s shaking his head, going through the same thing. I didn’t read Lion Air’s baggage policy, but I didn’t think it took a gynecologist to figure that one parcel of luggage is free, and that I would have to pay for the board, which is acceptable.

     “Isn’t one bag supposed to be free?” I ask.

     She shakes her head and says something in Indonesian. It’s what I’ve feared: a communication barrier. Welcome to obstacle three. We have no idea what we are both saying to each other, or does she? I look at the IR amount that’s circled and say, “Fine,” while in my mind I’m saying, “Fuck it.”

     Al and I are at a different counter now, paying for our baggage fees. When the woman gives me my change, I count it twice. At least she doesn’t rip me off. Meanwhile, Al is shaking his head again, talking through the hole in the glass window. He looks at me and says, “They tried to rip me off.” Obstacle four.

     Once we get our boarding passes, we grab a couple of drinks before going through security to get to our gate. I recount my money as a fly crawls over my left cheek. Airport security is pre 9-11 over here. Everyone beeps as he goes through the metal detectors. The worker doesn’t feel me up much, which is a little insulting, as in the U.S. they LOVE to cop a feel.

     Finally, at the gate, we’ve made it. We look around us. The surfers that were on our flight aren’t in sight either. We receive stares, but I let out a sigh of relief when an old white couple enters our gate. Now we have others to bear our Western Shame.

     The second they announce that our flight is ready to board, everyone gets up and races towards the stewardess who’s taking the boarding passes. There is a different kind of order here. I can’t say it doesn’t exist because that would be ignorant. Let’s just say that they do it differently. A crowd funnels into a tight bottle neck. There is no zone 1, 2, or 3 “now boarding.” There is just one mob.

     When we take our seats, the plane moves to position itself on the runway, and then it stops for what seems like forever because of the stuffy cabin. I start to sweat whatever excrement my body has left to diffuse.

     In the air, I’m tired. I want to sleep for this short, hour and ten minute flight, but my seat can’t recline because I’m seated in front of the emergency exists. Stiff and upright, I close my eyes.

     When we land, there is no announcement to force you to stay in your seat. As soon as the plane slows down after landing, people start standing up to grab their carry ons from the overhead cabins.

#

Jogjakarta Airport 1810 local time

28 hrs. & 35 min. into the trip

     I was once Zestfully Clean, but now I can smell chicken porridge from my armpits. Jogja Airport is small compared to the places we’ve been so far on this journey. Getting our bags is not a hassle. We stumble out of baggage claim as Jakarta Airport’s Western rape victims of the day. A guy about our age in shorts, T-shirt, and glasses holds up a sign with my name. I walk up to him and collapse in his arms, saying, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

     “It’s just like Ecuador,” says Al, as he peers and points outside the van’s windows. Traffic is bad, even worse than Bali. So many cars with every gap filled with mopeds. There are dark, small restaurants and shops, and then huge hotels adorned with lights, reminding passersby that they are in the city. The van pulls next to a movie theater, and my brother jumps in.

     Usually, I’d meet him outside and get a big hug, but dammit, I’m so drained. We both are. We sit inside and greet eachother, front seat to back seat. Randy says, “It’s about a three-to-four hour drive where we’re staying.” We tell him about the cab experience in Jakarta. He says that 50K was a fair price, not the 20K that I thought he had said. Also, he tells us that Lion Air did fuck us on our bags. “You guys should have said something,” he says.

Disclaimer: Even though this surf spot isn’t considered a secret, it’s been getting crowded over the last couple of years, so my brother asked me to refrain from disclosing the names of any of the places.

     Four hours is right. We depart from the city and enter narrow roads where the only thing with light is our van’s headlights. Al and I both drift in and out of sleep, trying to engage in conversation with my brother, but struggle to keep mentally fit for the task. Small town, remote rode, small town, remote road. We pass a rock concert in the middle of nowhere then small town, remote road. “Our spot is kind of like Napili,” says Randy, and as we approach the town four hours later, being able to see the sparse and scattered lights, I realize my brother is right. It resembles our tiny Maui town.

     We stop at Indomaret, which is like the local 7-Eleven to grab water and snacks. When I pay at the counter I hand over my bill of Rupiahs. My brother tells me afterwards, “You’re supposed to hand it to them with your right hand.”

Compound One, 2230 local time

(32 hrs. and 55 min. into the trip)

     I’m tired. We’re tired. I open up my suitcase and give Randy all of the stuff he requested from the states. He’s like a kid who’s just received a butt load of toys. To see him this stoked makes me regret not being able to get everything that he had asked for, but I could only do so much with my time constraints. He says that tomorrow we’ll play it by ear, and that we’ll check out some spots tomorrow. Al and I are overwhelmed with our accommodations. Two beds in a clean room with big, wall-length windows and marble flooring. The bathroom is very simple, but we have AC. 

     “Dude,” says Al, “are we really in Java right now?”

     Randy comes back into our room and says, “Oh, and don’t flush any toilet paper down the drain. You have to either throw it away in the waste basket next to the toilet or use the pail to ‘rinse.’” This, my friends, is obstacle five.