Experiences

Thus begins the conclusion of the tale of how one young man’s willingness to document his personal embarrassment lead to an unexpected foray into the wild world of travel writing. A much shorter account of this story was originally published by Lonely Planet in the late ‘90s.

For those of you have not yet read Part 1, click here to read about my first foray into the mean streets of Bali at the wise old age of 14.

By the time our week in Bali came to an end, our group of grade 9 students was starting to look the worse for wear. We may have adjusted to the 11 hour time zone difference and paid back some of the sleep debt we racked up during our 30-hour flight to Indonesia, but the stifling heat, homesickness and digestive ailments were beginning to take their toll on our team of pasty teenage Canucks.

But for the few days following our arrival to the island of Jakarta, I was the Teflon Traveller. I could spend ten hours in the sun, eat eight pounds of squid and climb 300 stairs each and every day, only to spend my evenings moving from room to room with aloe, Imodium and a sympathetic ear for those less fortunate, a look of smug satisfaction upon my face. It’s a wonder that someone didn’t attempt to bludgeon me with a hand-carved chess board.

The worst I’d suffered was a ruptured suitcase in the middle of the Yogyakarta Airport, which had been brought on by my seemingly insatiable thirst for Indonesian knickknacks and my belief that I could locally acquire a second suitcase to store said knicknacks without spending more than 3,000 Rupiah (roughly $2.00 Canadian).

Then came the fateful day when we went to tour the Sultan’s Palace in Yogyakarta. Feeling rather full of myself, I elected to leave my backpack on the bus. I was convinced that by doing so, I would look much less like a tourist, despite being part of a massive group of 14-year-old students lead about by a tour guide and two teachers.

No, my mind had been made up. I was going to Look Cool.

We had toured the small, picturesque Indonesian village which surrounded the Sultan’s Palace for almost an hour before I felt as though 32 pounds of previously-consumed squid had risen from the grave and joined forces to deliver a roundhouse kick to my digestive tract.

I mumbled something incoherent to one of the teachers and began a frantic search for the nearest restroom. I soon realized that, when the Sultan’s Palace was constructed in 1700s, the designers had more important considerations than how to place the bathrooms for maximum tourist convenience. Right before panic set in, I finally managed to spot the WC sign, which I thankfully knew stood for ‘Water Closet’. My brow, dripping with cold sweat, began to feverishly dream of a throne fit for a Sultan.

Then I opened the door to the most disgusting bathroom I have ever seen in my life.

I am not one of those ethnocentrists that believe that the developing world has a monopoly on disgusting bathrooms. I have been to enough dive bars, gas stations and amusement parks to know that the disgusting bathroom phenomenon is a world-wide epidemic.

But I will say that there is no bathroom in the history of disgusting bathrooms that even compares to this particular bathroom. Imagine if everyone at Burning Man contracted typhoid or someone dropped a lit firecracker into the toilet of a cross-country bus. Now imagine that these two bathrooms somehow married and gave birth to an even more disgusting bathroom, and you might have some idea of how disgusting the Sultan’s bathroom was.

Lacking a lock, latch or Do Not Disturb sign, I wedged a small piece of wood under the door to prevent interruption. My slow, awkward shuffling turned into a faint sloshing as I waded through the inch of water on the floor. I rounded the corner to discover that the ‘facilities’ were no more than a hole in the ground.

I was almost grateful for the pathetic lack of light, as it meant that I would not be visually confronted by the stark realities of this bathroom – that is, until I realized that the sole source of illumination came from a window directly above the facilities, and that it faced directly onto a parade square packed cheek-to-jowl with tourists. I reluctantly closed the shutters and plunged the bathroom into near-total darkness.

Some time later, I realized the gravity of my situation.

The thin layer of water on the floor had originated from the bathroom’s sole source of “hygiene” (read: a filthy wooden box with a rusty ladle and several thriving colonies of flies). Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, except that I had left my backpack on the bus. I had left my backpack on the bus. And in the backpack lived the most essential of my Indonesia travel essentials, my role of toilet paper.

Naturally, this was when I started to hear my teachers’ voices as they rallied the students onto the buses. To my alarm, they seemed to have somehow completed the headcount without noticing that I was stuck in a disgusting Indonesian bathroom. My future life as a scullery maid at the Sultan’s Palace flashed before my eyes.

There are times in every man’s life when he seeks guidance from a higher power. This was one of those times.

I closed my eyes and asked myself, “What would MacGuyver do?”

It was at that moment that I realized the relative low value of the Indonesian Rupiah to the Canadian dollar.

Withdrawing a series of 100 Rupiah notes from my wallet, I proceeded to make my own political statement against Then-President Suharto. I can say without reservation that it was the best $0.21 I had ever spent.

I squished my way back to up to the bus just before it left. The teacher looked at me with surprise and asked, “Where have you been?”

Lacking the energy or the imagination to wield some elaborate lie about being abducted by the Sultan’s harem, I told her exactly where I had been and what had just happened. I suppose I believed that it would be kept in student-teacher confidence. I supposed wrongly.

Instead, my adventures in an Indonesian bathroom became my teacher’s favourite anecdote from the entire trip. Not only did she share it with the other students last night (who were gratified to note a distinct lack of smugness on my face), she also shared it with each of her classes after we returned. My fame spread to the point that I was frequently referred to as ‘the bathroom money guy’ for months after we returned to Canada.

A year or so later, I put pen to paper and sent the story in to Lonely Planet. To my complete astonishment, agreed to publish the story and send me a copy of the guidebook of my choice as payment. I chose Western Europe and, true to their word, I received a slightly irregular copy of the guide to “Westen Europe” (sic) a few weeks later. Thus began my foray into travel writing.

I’m not sure if there’s any real moral to the story, but I would perhaps say that the unexpected experiences that so often happen when we travel can change our lives in wonderful and unexpected ways.

That, and always carry plenty of small bills.