Jungle Hospital Around the Bus Terminal
Bornean Jungle Sanatorium as a Means of Deflecting My Personal Fear Monster
Today’s postcard Jungle Hospital Around the Bus Terminal comes from the series Postcards from the Road: Out and About by Bus. It records the last fragment of a memorable bus journey into the jungle of Western Borneo.
My decision to get on the bus away from Pontianak and deep into the jungle, was a direct consequence of events described in the following fragment of Other Eyes for Johnny Rocco:
With all its cultural weight, Eid al-Adha—the holier of the two main Islamic holidays—found us in this beautiful valley almost by fate. Muslim celebrations, it seems, have an uncanny way of rattling the author of this report.
I’m reminded of how Ramadan, the lead-up to the lesser holiday of Eid al-Fitr, once caught me entirely off-guard at Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, as if conspiring in an unpremeditated attempt to smother my unsuspecting, infidel soul.
Back then, I’d taken a night flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Jakarta, eager to roam across Java, rent a bike in Bali, circle the island, and eventually ascend Mount Agung, Bali’s most sacred peak.
Around 3 a.m.—possibly 3.14—I staggered off the plane, feeling a bit frayed from the nightlife of Vietnam’s biggest city. Laden with an odd blend of doubts and anticipation, I stepped onto the tarmac and straight into the jaws of my personal Fear Monster (FM). We don’t typically travel together, but somehow it had arrived ahead of me, lying in wait on the premises.
Perhaps it was the ungodly hour, or the abrupt shift from Saigon’s festive buzz to Jakarta’s somber stillness, but as soon as I set foot on the island, a sense of tension crept in, urging me to stay alert, as if I were bracing for something just out of sight.
Soon enough, I got exactly what I’d invited. At the check-in desk, Jakartan authorities zeroed in on my Fear Monster, eyeing my passport with suspicion. The photo was slightly unglued, a casualty of a torrential downpour that had soaked me through on a leaky sleeper coach in Vietnam. The interrogation dragged on for over an hour before they finally stamped my entry into the Republic of Indonesia—offering my FM a hearty feeding in the process.
Then the Jakartan taxi drivers spotted my now well-fed FM and regaled me with tales of Ramadan’s arrival, warning me that the commemoration of Muhammad's first revelation would make travel nearly impossible. They explained that every soul on the island would soon be rising early to visit relatives, turning the streets into a bustling river of humanity, making any journey a daunting challenge.
I quickly turned to Wikipedia for more details and learnt that ”during Ramadan fasting from sunrise to sunset is fard (obligatory) for all adult Muslims who are not acutely or chronically ill, travelling, elderly, pregnant, breastfeeding, diabetic, or menstruating.”
”Phew!” I exhaled, trying to reassure my Fear Monster. I reminded him that even though I was an adult who was not acutely or chronically ill, not elderly, pregnant, breastfeeding, diabetic, or menstruating, I was still a travelling non-Muslim, wasn’t I? ”Surely that counts for something, right?” I asked, but he barely heard me.
Before long, the taxi drivers had managed to sway my Fear Monster into changing my plans and flying to the island of Borneo instead. ”The folk there are less strict and you will somehow get by,” they assured me. One of them whisked me off to the domestic terminal, parking the taxi illegally on the double-yellow lines as if we were on a clandestine mission.
When I returned with my plane ticket in hand, I found a traffic warden already writing up a ticket. My driver quickly settled the $30 fine and passed the cost on to me. “We’re just trying to help you!” they shouted, each exclamation causing my Fear Monster to grow ever larger.
The domestic terminal struck my now-hysterical Fear Monster as utterly peculiar. It felt too ornate for an airport—overly round and defiantly non-square. Passengers constantly flowed in and out of musholas*, most clad in dark clothing, and everything smelled of the same musty spice.
To make matters worse, a blind hawker, flaunting a dozen Rolex watches on his forearm, approached my table far too often for comfort. My Fear Monster loathed it all, yearning to whisk me back home, vowing I’d never go travelling again.
Finally, the oversized brute managed to stow away on my morning flight to Pontianak… Let’s just say that navigating the less-traveled paths of central Pontianak with Mr Fear Monster in tow was a claustrophobic experience—at least for the first couple of days.
I’d rather not dwell on those densely clouded memories any longer. Instead, let me share a fragment from my wife’s report about our brief stay in another chamber of cultural disassociation:
* In folklore, the witching hour or devil's hour is a time of night associated with supernatural events. Witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful. Black magic is thought to be most effective at this time. In the Western Christian tradition, the hour between 3 and 4 a.m. was considered a period of peak supernatural activity, due to the absence of prayers in the canonical hours during this period […] Psychological literature suggests that apparitional experiences and sensed presences are most common between the hours of 2 and 4 a.m., corresponding with a 3 a.m. peak in the amount of melatonin in the body (Wikipedia).
** A mushola (Arabic: مصلى) is a space apart a mosque, mainly used for prayer in Islam.
Below is my Fear Monster recorded in a smelly and scruffy, windowless hotel room in very early hours of my first morning in Pontianak:
Soon after, my survival instinct told me to run for the Terminal Pasar Cempaka and gabble something like tiket ke hutan.
- ”A ticket into the deep jungle, please.”
- ”Where into the jungle would you like, sir?”
- ”As deep as it gets, please.”
I remember this urgent imperative to leave this world:
and transport my body and soul into this world:
The photo at the top of the newsletter is of another Bornean DNA Shaker that was standing nearby. Unfortunately, I somehow failed to capture our psychedelic Mitsubishi—a beast of a vehicle with an overgrown afro of bags stacked on top of sacks on top of cardboard boxes, all strapped to a roof rack. Rally-style stickers and a bewildering array of lights covered its body, which sat atop massive tractor wheels bolted to a high-suspension, Soviet-made monster-truck chassis.
We waited for hours as the loading process dragged on, before I sat amidst brave souls perched on worn artificial leather. Unlike me, they all seemed to know what was coming—those treacherous jungle roads that demanded either extreme caution or, more likely, full-throttle madness. Our afro-monster was clearly designed for the latter.
Over the next 48 hours, I learned that 59 white balls from a Bornean National Lottery air-mix machine could manage a decent night’s sleep aboard what felt like a paddled de-escalation cell on wheels.
Hold tight to the paddled rail in front,
Don’t ever let go of it! Don’t!
You'll shake, you’ll rattle, hit the roof,
But our jungle service is shatterproof!
The relaxed driver and his two assistants seemed to shout right before our departure.
Some 24 hours later, which was half way through to my Jungle Hospital, my fellow passenger decided to whisper in my left ear things that should better have been left unspoken:
"We tear out the hearts of our enemies because we believe that’s where the evil hides. My sword’s already tasted Madurese blood. The ones I’ve beheaded will serve me in the afterlife as slaves. It's easy to track them down because they stink.”***
He was Dayak, native to the very jungle we’re travelling through, and he held a deep hatred to the immigrant Madurese. At one point, he said he would show me how far that hatred goes. Then, he barked something at the driver, who promptly slowed down. That’s when I saw them—four impaled Madurese heads lining the roadside.
Since then, I’ve been repeatedly touching my neck, thinking:
Oh geez!
Why did I say:
”As deep as it gets, please?”
This way MPFM was at its best again until we arrived at the bus terminal.
*** I later found this online account by Krzysztof Kęciek - Zemsta łowców glów, Tygodnik Przegląd, which reflects the mode of my passenger’s long whispered monologue
And now the postcard:
My dear subscribers, if you have seen the video and possibly played Sueurs Froides at full blast, you probably deserve an antidote in the form a lullaby by Chinese Man.
It’s late Sunday evening when I am writing this here in Łagów now, I feel like sending you good vibes of consolation in these difficult times:
Good Night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite and ‘fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people’ (Luke 2:10)
Next week’s post will be at the same on Monday. And remember my dear subscriber that whatever’s been published before, can be found in the archives. Also, if you can’t find our post on a Monday, don’t think that Nova Literary has forgotten about you. No, never! Check your Spam, Social or Promotions inbox tabs and we’ll surely be there. Finally, it is a good idea to click open in browser in the top right-hand corner of your newsletter message.