The Worst Motorcycle in Laos

by Chris Tharp

  Once on the new bus, a policeman boarded and asked if any of us needed to go to the hospital. We all declined. He then passed around a clipboard and asked for contact information of anyone who planned to visit the hospital later. This was everyone’s chance for a payday, and about half the passengers bit. The three of us passed. We were fine and we knew it.

  The cop bade us adieu, and now it was time to get on the road. We had a new bus and a new driver and would be able to make Suwon only an hour behind schedule. After all, the show must go on.

  And then he boarded the bus. Him. He sat in the seat, clicked his buckle, and turned over the engine. He engaged the gear, pulled onto the ramp, and gave a quick honk to the new driver standing next to the old bus, who smiled and flashed a thumbs-up before we poured back onto the busy highway. That’s right, the same driver who had crashed the bus would be completing the route. He would go on to nearly rear-end another car and shower us with apologies, but he would see the night out. Of course. This is what happens when buses crash in Korea. There are no debriefings, no reports to be filed, no rest for the visibly shaken operator: just the continuation of work. Suck it up, ajeosshi: you’re finishing your shift. People do not miss work in old Korea. They grind it out. They endure. How do you think the country went from being one of the poorest in Asia to one that now walks in stride with some of the wealthiest in the world?

  Hard fucking work. That’s how.

  Sparkling, indeed.

  GLIMPSES OF SUMATRA

  Indonesia, 2012

  The “Marriott Hotel” stood across the street from the Mesjid Rayja, Medan’s alabaster and green-tiled central mega-mosque and easily the tattered town’s most majestic structure. Our fourth-floor room was only six bucks a night—a bargain even by Indonesian standards. Any similarity to its more glamorous sister hotel ended at the name, however. The crumbling stairwell was dark, narrow, and precipitous. The walls were painted puke green and cracked in spots, evidence of the many earthquakes endured over the years. If another large rumbler were to strike, I doubted that the building would stand… but what did I know? It had obviously survived many before. Perhaps Allah was looking out.

  After cups of tar-like coffee, we walked outside—stifling even in the late morning—leaving behind the cluster of sad hotels and guesthouses adjacent to the mosque and setting out into the interior of the town. The two of us immediately became a spectacle. Strangers waved and shouted from moving cars and motorbikes. Men hungrily ogled Minhee, my wife, despite the fact that she had used a scarf to cover her shoulders and head. Vendors in front of the mosque stared without shame, pivoting their heads like vultures as we silently strode by.

  A crazed woman in filthy rags came staggering toward us from behind a bus stop. Her insect eyes threatened to burst from their sockets as she growled, mumbled, and thrust her filth-caked hand out for cash. Her hair was a frizzled nest of snags; rodent-like teeth jutted out at all angles. I gasped as she approached, feeling the wind knocked out of me; I couldn’t bring myself to give her any money. I just wanted to get away. Minhee gently surrendered a 5,000-rupiah note that was in just as bad of shape as the woman, who snatched it away with her talon-like fingers and scurried off.

  Getting about on foot in Medan was a dangerous endeavor, strictly Walk at Your Own Risk. The sidewalks, when they existed at all, were death traps. They were built a meter or more over runoff channels, and in many spots the concrete was missing altogether, creating an obstacle course of potentially leg-snapping gaps that surely must have taken their toll on the locals. The result was a populace that generally avoided the sidewalks, electing instead to stick to the sides of the roads, which were already crammed with cars, buses, motorbikes, and trucks.

  “This is dangerous,” I said. “I suppose it’s a good thing that booze isn’t readily available. Can you imagine walking around here at night, drunk off your ass?”

  “You,” Minhee said, sticking her finger in my chest, “would die.”

  *

  “Seven years ago we had many visitors,” Anne said, “but after tsunami and earthquake, very few come.” I was sitting at a table in the empty restaurant on the one road that circles through Tuk-Tuk, the village perched on the peninsula that sticks out into Indonesia’s largest freshwater body, Lake Toba, like a broken thumb. I sipped from a cup of grainy, strong-as-hell coffee and tried to write in my notebook, but Anne wasn’t having it. In fact, anywhere I went in Tuk-Tuk it was the same: restaurants and guesthouses with nary a customer, and owners who were so happy for some business that they plopped down next to me and flung friendly questions my way.

  Want be left alone? Forget about it.

  Lake Toba was created by a volcanic explosion some fifty thousand years ago, and is surrounded by green and grey highlands that rim its deep waters like a bowl. In the middle is Samosir Island, a rock escarpment that rises like a gnarly spine, with enough flat land for some farms, villages, and the former tourist magnet of Tuk-Tuk. The lake is well above sea level, and as a result a welcome bit cooler than the sauna that makes up the lowlands of Sumatra. The mornings are usually sunny and hot, but by late afternoon grey clouds pour over the mountain ridges and light rain drizzles down, imbuing the surroundings with a moodier tone. Wind streaks over the hillsides and agitates the surface of the lake, creating thousands of small, frothing whitecaps; any thought of the pounding sun is immediately laid to rest.

  Tuk-tuk looked like a backpackers’ haven. Scores of guesthouses offered cheap accommodations with lakefront access. Open-front restaurants served up thick curries, pizzas, banana pancakes (of course), and the omnipresent nasi goreng (fried rice) and mi goreng (fried ramen noodles). The local Batak people were all smiles, welcomes, and happy greetings. As Christians, they drink alcohol, sell the hell out of Bintang beer, and are just more relaxed than the rule-burdened Muslims who make up Indonesia’s religious majority. The place was beautiful, and as laid-back as anywhere I’ve been in Laos, which really sets the standard for chill. It was easy on the wallet, the eyes, and the soul. The question was, where were the people?

  After talking to a few locals along with some seasoned travelers, three things essentially killed tourism in Tuk-Tuk and Sumatra in general: the first was the Bali bombing of ‘02, in which over two hundred Aussies (and others) died and made Indonesia officially dangerous in the eyes of the Western world. The next thing was the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004—along with a couple of subsequent deadly quakes—which turned the word Sumatra into a synonym for tragedy. The final straw was an inexplicable government decision to reduce tourist visas from three months down to one. Most tourists hit Bali, Lombok (most famously for the Gilis), and then Java. Sumatra has always been a bit farther down the list: with only a month to spend in the country, most travelers are now giving the island a pass, whereas before, they’d include it on the itinerary.

  This dearth of travelers was obviously taxing on the locals. Many of the larger hotels built in Tuk-Tuk had been shuttered entirely. Only the smaller places could afford to stay open, and I was struck with a sense of eeriness as we strolled around the partially abandoned tourist enclave, trying to imagine the place booming with guests. The ghost-town vibe was welcome by us, though: Tuk-tuk was quiet. After all, who likes crowds except for the people profiting off them?

  Like most Batak people, Anne was Christian. Church spires poked up all over the region, and the restaurants and homes of the locals were often adorned with huge golden crosses and colorful, graphic depictions of Christ in his agonized glory. Perhaps it was a reaction to floating in a sea of Islam, but these people were seriously Jesus’d up.

  I asked her directly, “How is it living in a Muslim country? Do you guys get along with your neighbors?”

  “Generally no problem,” she replied. “But now more Muslims are coming. Before not so many, but now…” She shook her head and raised her eyebrows. “They are not so friendly, you know. Always like this with the Christians.” She stuck her arm away from her body with her palm up
, a literal representation of at arm’s length. “You know, for Christmas, we give our neighbors food that we cook. This is our tradition. The Muslims they take the food, but they never eat it. They just throw it away… if they give us gifts we take them and eat, but they throw away. And if a Batak woman marries a Muslim man, we never can see her again. Muslim family doesn’t even allow her to go see her family, to go to wedding…”

  “That is too bad,” I said. I mentioned how her Muslim neighbors were probably not trying to be rude by throwing out the food they received, but just following the rules of halal, but this did little to assuage her skepticism.

  “Let’s just hope that, despite your differences, you can continue to live peacefully, side by side.”

  She nodded her head in agreement.

  “And let’s really hope the travelers come back again.”

  With that she smiled and laughed.

  “Yes, yes. Let us hope. In the meantime, are you hungry? Nasi goreng?

  *

  The bus station in Parapet was empty and neglected, with just the odd minibus lurching in to drop off or pick up a passenger or two. The place was lined with two-story buildings that boxed in the unused expanse. The ground floors housed a handful of woeful businesses, while the upper sections were home to people, as evidenced by the laundry hanging from the windows and terraces. The concrete was ancient and cracked, with weeds sprouting up wherever they could. Chickens and emaciated cats roamed freely, along with packs of wild children who looked more feral than the animals. I passed some time wandering about and playing with these kids, who squealed and shrieked while I chased them over the rotting ground.

  After a short ferry ride from Tuk-Tuk, Minhee and I were met at the dock and driven to the Andilo Nanay Travel Company, which maintained a small office in the dilapidated complex. The décor of the room looked as if it had not been changed since 1981, with a bare concrete floor and paper peeling from the walls, revealing sickly beige underneath. Everything was covered in a yellow film, the result of tens of thousands of cigarettes puffed down over the ages. A handwritten fare chart barely clung to the wall, advertising prices that were at least a decade and a half old. A giant cross hung next to a late-‘70s-era illustrated poster for Indonesian Airlines. A tourism ad for Canada—a glacier-topped mountain and pristine lake—hung above the forbidding entrance to the back half of the building. Could this decaying office actually transport me to the Great White North?

  We sat on a hard wooden bench that was as comfortable as an inquisitor’s torture chair. Minhee smoked and played Angry Birds on her smartphone, while the only other waiting passenger—a ponytailed Batak dude sitting next to us—sang along with tunes warbling from the speaker of his mobile. Audioslave figured prominently. Evidently Chris Cornell was huge in Indonesia. Who knew?

  He turned off the music. “Where are you going?”

  “Bukittinggi.” I replied. “You?”

  “Padang.”

  “That’s a long ride.”

  “Yes. Twenty-four hours.” He shook his head. He then got up and walked to the counter, behind which sat a dark-skinned man in a jacket and blue stocking hat. They spoke a few lines in the local language, and he sat back down.

  “The bus is late,” he said.

  “I know. It was supposed to come at four. It’s now seven thirty.”

  “He said it is coming… maybe twenty more minutes.”

  Minhee broke in: “He said the same two hours ago.”

  The young man noticed the ink on her hand.

  “Cool tattoo.”

  “Thanks.”

  He rolled up his sleeve, revealing some mighty designs etched into his own skin.

  “Wow!” Minhee went in for closer inspection. “Those are great.”

  “I am a tattoo artist. I am heading to Padang for a job.”

  “Really? Cool.” She bent down and examined his work close up.

  “Twenty-four-hour ride?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tough gig, man.”

  He smiled and laughed.

  “Can’t they just fly you down?”

  “No no. I must pay my way down.” He pulled a clove cigarette out of his pack, lit up, and exhaled. It seemed Indonesia was a nation of committed smokers. “If I spend money on an airplane, then I have much less in my pocket when I return to Lake Toba.”

  He took another deep drag and then asked, “Why aren ‘t you flying? This bus trip is not so good. Most foreigners avoid it.”

  “We’re masochists,” I replied. “I actually like to see the country from the ground. Gives you a better perspective.”

  “Liar,” Minhee cut in. “You just don’t like spending money.”

  She was right. I shrugged, yawned, and tapped out a beat on my leg. The young man extinguished his smoke and fired his phone back up, singing along to “The Rooster” by Alice in Chains. We sat there for another thirty minutes before a filthy orange-and-white bus finally pulled up out front and jerked to a stop.

  “Here it is,” said the young man, rising from hard bench. “Are you ready a long ride?”

  *

  Bukittinggi lies in the shadow of two active volcanoes, with a third just an hour down the road. The people are living on what can only be described as a powerful piece of land, but they do their best to drown out the rumblings of nature with manmade blare. Our room was on the top floor of a guesthouse located on the busiest corner in town. It was one of the cheapest available, and placed in the midst of a vortex of sound: a cacophony of car horns, bus engines, and motorbikes swirled through the windows and bounced off the plaster walls. Five times a day the call to prayer blasted forth from the loudspeakers of the local mosque. This all added up to create some serious sonic assault. After some initial resistance, we surrendered. We were exhausted from the bus ride and it was useless to resist. We just lay on the bed and let the clamor envelope us. We gave in to the racket and then embraced it. To quote the late poet Steven Jesse Bernstein: “More noise, please.”

  *

  After a solid week in Indonesia it hit me: the teenagers were badass. Many of them in the cities and towns dressed in Converse-style sneakers and skinny jeans and wore Exploited and Ramones T-shirts. They all smoked cloves and seriously dug punk rock and metal. The first sign was in a PC room in Medan, where my screensaver was a logo from the legendary band, the Descendents; the bleached-haired kid who ran the shop blasted furious punk from his computer, while he and his tattooed, pierced friends sang along in English.

  My heart soared.

  During a solo trip to the market in Bukittinggi, I was shadowed by a pesky college kid who peppered me with the usual curious questions: ”Where are you from?” “Where do you stay?” “How do you find our town?” At first I was annoyed and assumed he was on the make. I tried to brush him off, but he stuck to me undeterred, and after a few minutes I realized that he just wanted to practice his English with a foreigner. So I warmed to him and lobbed some back his way. When I asked him about his favorite kind of music, without blinking, he replied, “Grunge! I love grunge!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I love Nirvana! They are best. Also Soundgarden and Alice in Chains! Seattle bands are number one.”

  “Well, I’m actually from Seattle.”

  “You… you are from Seattle?”

  “Yes. Not only that, but I’ve seen all of those bands you like. I love grunge too!”

  “You have seen Nirvana before Kurt’s death?”

  “Yes, many times.”

  “Oh! How lucky you are!”

  He kept with me as I wandered the market in search of some towels, asking me details about the shows I’d been to, about my grunge past. I was amazed that my hometown music had penetrated so deeply in the world. He was equally awed to meet someone who had walked in the presence of his musical heroes.

  He proved himself helpful, eventually leading me to the towel stand, where I purchased four for a steal. As I was thanking him and saying goodbye,
he unleashed a confession.

  “My dream is to start my own grunge band, right here in Bukuttinggi.”

  Just the thought of it made my mind explode in a fountain of glory. My hope in mankind was, for a fleeting moment, restored. “Rock on, sir,” I said, vigorously shaking his hand. “Rock on.”

  As I walked away I gave into the urge to turn back once more. The young man stood at the edge of the market waving goodbye. I responded by flashing him the devil horns with my right hand.

  *

  After an hour of following our guide, Mr. Coin, through the patch of jungle that fringed the town, we walked out of the trees and into the wide expanse of the river, over white stones and driftwood snags. The sky had blackened and now opened up in a thick downpour. Minhee and I donned our rain gear but Mr. Coin pressed on through the deluge, getting drenched in seconds.

  “I am used to it,” he said. His accent was strange—more European than Indonesian—the result of having learned English from a Dutch couple living in town.

  As we approached the river, we saw that there were plastic bags everywhere: a rubbish-covered wasteland. They blanketed the surface of the rocks and were pinned underneath; they lay scattered over the sandbars, tied and twisted around the shrubs, logs, and other wood that had been brought down by the river’s high water. And this wasn’t in just one spot. As we walked on through the downpour—past a group of semi-wild buffalo, past a family of villagers netting small fish for the tropical-fish trade—it was obvious that the bags polluted this whole stretch of river, as far as the eye could see. The place was a trash dump, and my stomach twisted at the sight.

  “Twenty years before, no problem,” explained Mr. Coin. “People they just use basket, but now at the market”—he pointed upstream—“they use the plastic bag. The people throw on ground and it comes to the river.”

  “Has anyone tried to clean this place up?” asked Minhee, her face obscured under the hood of her pink Hello Kitty raincoat (she loathed the thing, but it was the only one available in her size at the time).