Given that the boat had arrived at Tual in Kei Dulla at three in the morning and we didn’t have a place to stay pre-booked Keva and I decided we would sleep at the harbour for a few hours until sunrise. It seemed pointless to spend more money on accommodation that we would be in for just a few hours as we were planning to move on from Tual in the morning. We had just spread out our sheets outside when a shifty looking guy told us we should sleep inside a run down old building at the harbour as it would be safer. Thieves apparently operated at the harbour and although the place seemed pretty deserted once all the cargo had been taken away we thought we would go with the safer option. We gathered up our sheets and moved indoors and just as we did a huge black rat scuttled past where were had been about to sleep.
Inside the old building was pretty rough. There was a bench, a huge old TV, some piles of rubbish, bits of wood and rubble, a huge stack of eggs in crates, mosquitoes and a few homeless children inside as well as a few burly men who looked a bit rough round the edges who we assumed were port staff. There was a woman in pyjamas chain smoking cigarettes listening to music on a mobile phone through headphones. With body language the men indicated that she wasn’t altogether mentally stable. I wondered if she might be the mother of the homeless kids. The door of the building was long since gone. One guy swept a little space for us to spread out near the homeless kids and told us to sleep with our bags right next to us.
I had a quick chat with the burly guys and they asked me if I liked football. I explained that I preferred motor sports, Formula 1 and Moto GP. As we spread out our sheets once again with the kids looking on with great interest at these foreign girls who had come to share their pad, I realised that there was motor sport on the TV. I heard a Northern Ireland accent and my interest grew. I couldn’t quite believe it! They were watching the 2012 Ulster Grand Prix, one of the most famous road races in Northern Ireland which had been held about six months previous. I got up and joined the men on the bench. I explained in my limited Indonesian that this race was in my little country and that I used to drive on the very roads they were watching on my way to work every day. I knew those sweeping corners, those trees, those views, the commentators voice. It was clearly a sign that I was in the right place. It was too much to be mere coincidence, besides, I don’t believe in coincidences any more. The guys were understandably surprised. A conversation about Northern Ireland geography and politics ensued. I explained as much as I could in Indonesian. Finally we spoke a little about the Kei Islands and the men told me there were many tourists at Pasir Panjang, one of the famous beaches in the island of Kei Kecil. I asked how many, they said maybe twenty! They had clearly never been to the Costa del Sol.
Finally I retired to my dusty corner where Keva sat reading and nodded off the sleep with the TV blaring with the sound of motorbikes. I can sleep through just about anything now. Gone are the days when the smallest bit of light or distant traffic noise kept me awake. At 6.30am we packed up and went in search of breakfast at the market in Tual. We ate rice, eggs and tofu in a shoe stall next to a food place on two plastic chairs while waiting for a respectable time to contact the guest house in Ohoidertahun that we wanted to go to next. Soon after we got a response from the guest house and they had a room available for two nights. They quoted prices of the room and meals. While the room price was affordable, to eat there three times a day would cost each of us 235,000 rupiah. Our daily food and beverage budget was around 50,000 each. We could afford the room but we had to work out another solution for food. We asked around and apparently there were no warungs (local eating places) near there. We decided this would be a good time to do a fruit fast to clear all the junk out of our systems after the boat rides.
We walked uphill to the Pelni office fully loaded with all our luggage to buy our return boat tickets but they hadn’t yet opened. We waited one and a half hours outside, only to find when they opened that tickets didn’t go on sale for another six days. One local guy waiting with us asked us where we had stayed last night. We told him we stayed at the port. He thought this was really funny. We went in search of whatever fruit and nuts we could find at the market to bring out to Ohoidertahun. Our total food bill for two people for two days was 132,000 rupiah (about US$13) – well within budget! We left the market laden down with peanuts, salak (snakeskin fruit), mangoes and oranges. The curiosity of the locals idicated that they didn’t see so many foreign tourists.
We were both coming down with the cold after so much travel, sleepless nights and sleeping outside in the wind on the deck of the ship so a vitamin packed diet, supplemented with health powders, electrolytes and multivitamins, we hoped, would help us to get back on track in a short time.
We took a bemo (minibus) for a short journey from Tual to Langgur where we were going to try to find an ojek (motorbike taxi) each to take us to Ohoidertahun but instead we found an empty bemo which we chartered for just a dollar more.
We arrived, speechless once again at the incredible scenery. It was a postcard. It couldn’t possibly be real! A horizon of white sand topped with a strip of turquoise off in the distance, broken only by the occasional island, greeted us. A small rowing boat lay beached in the vast expanse of clean white sand. We viewed this scene for several hours through the young coconut trees planted along the edge of the beach while we sipped on coffee ‘gratis’ from the guest house. We were hypnotised. We watched the colours and the scenery change as the clouds rolled in, shed their load and moved on. We had reached paradise. All the research and planning we had to do to get here was worth the effort for just one glimpse of this scene. Their couldn’t be a more beautiful beach on the planet. Every nautical mile seemed worth it. Exhausted and elated, we browsed on dubiously translated brochures of local tourist ‘objects’ and beaches while reflecting on the experiences of the last twelve days.
After watching us munching on just fruit and nuts, our neighbours in the bungalow next to us, a couple from Australia and New Zealand who worked for the World Bank, took pity on us and brought us ‘bungkus’(take-away rice meal) from the town during one of their excursions by motorbike. They refused our offers to pay for it. We were excited and happy to interrupt our fruit fast with some rice and spice. Keva would often say I was becoming Indonesian. If I didn’t have rice at least once a day I would begin to crave it. We wolfed it down with enthusiasm, satisfied to finally have some starch in our bellies.
After two days we moved on from Ohoidertahun along chalky white roads to Pasir Panjang, a three kilometre stretch of supposedly idyllic beach on the west coast of Kei Kecil. Our ojek drivers looked young enough to be our sons, and they seemed to enjoy taking us there. The road was so bright and dusty I gave my driver my sunglasses to wear while he drove. The brochure had read “Ngur Bloat Beach – white sand so powdery it feels like flour” and locals say it is the softest sand in the world. I couldn’t help but wonder how many beaches in the world the locals had actually been to. When we arrived and stepped onto the lilly white sand we discovered it was all true. The sand was so powdery you couldn’t distinguish the individual grains at all. To walk on this beach without sunglasses would be to invite snow blindness, such was the reflection of the sun on the pearly white sand. Backed by trees and jungle, the beach was virtually deserted. We did see two other white tourists one day at the other end of the beach and some locals splashing around towards sundown but most of the time it felt like we were on a desert island. It would have been perfect, had it not been for the pieces of plastic, water bottles, flip flops and other rubbish washed up along the high tide mark. A tree on the beach was strung with odd lost shoes and flip flops. Some had fallen off and we stopped to put them back on the tree.
I’m not a big fan of sand generally although I like to look at it. I love the beach but I find the combination of sand and sunscreen particularly irritating. It’s scratchy and gritty usually but this dusty sand was so soft that when you tried to brush it off it wasn’t at all course. Some women take the opportunity to exfoliate their skin while at the beach but this sand was all but useless as an exfoliant. Frankly, soap bubbles would be more abrasive.
The beach was perfect for swimming, sandy bottomed, gently sloping, warm and so clear you could be fooled into thinking the water didn’t exist at all were it not for the patterns of dancing light on the sea bed. We bobbed around while we wallowed in the achievement of finally working out how to get to the Kei islands without flying and going through the arduous journey required of a budget traveller in order to reach this island that tourists and time seemed to have forgotten. I was amazed that more foreigners didn’t flock to this paradise when I thought about the crowded beaches in parts of Thailand and Southern Spain. Right enough, it could be challenging if you had a tight deadline or didn’t speak at least some of the language. The people of the Keis also have their own language. When our guest house owner heard our attempts at Indonesian he told us we should try to learn Bahasa Kei. We felt like we had enough studying on our plate. This trip had been as much of a study adventure as a travel adventure.
While at Pasir Panjang I would awaken to the sound of birdsong that would remind me I was in a remote and wild place. The birdsong, I’ve come to realise, sounds different in every place you travel to. Most people, I’ve discovered, are too tuned out to notice this. I don’t carry a mobile phone that plays music or an MP3 player. The sounds around me are my entertainment and I’m grateful for this fact. I don’t distract myself with electronic sounds. You can easily miss a whole sensory dimension of travel if you aren’t careful.
The Keis are a sometimes kind of place. Sometimes there’s transport to certain places and sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes there’s a cellphone signal, sometimes not, sometimes you can find cheap food but sometimes you just have to eat at your guest house. Sometimes you are glad you went there. Sometimes you are ecstatic.
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