Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Hello friends, loved ones, colleagues, and creditors,
This is the second report of the travels, trials, and travails of your intrepid traveler in the wilds of Southeast Asia. This report could be titled "planes, trains, and automobiles", or "Where to go and how to go if you want to disappear from your creditors"

As you know, gentle readers, I flew into Singapore a few months ago to begin this journey. I was in town just long enough to sweat through my first set of clean clothes and then it was off to Balikpapen, Indonesia by way of Jakarta, by air. We drove thru the "rainforest" and put on presentations to customers, some of whom actually spoke some english and may have understood a few of my comments. Then it was off again to another location by air. Ever since the Sept. 11th attack there is lots of security in the airports, as you can imagine. In Indonesia, however, they seem to have taken it a step further. Once you get into the airport, you continually have these xray machines set up every thirty yards or so. As if you had time to slip some explosives in your bags between examinations. I don't really know what they were protecting us from, since the metal detectors that the people walked thru didn't seem to be plugged in.

We flew back to Singapore to make another training session on valves, and then took a ferry boat to Batam, Indonesia. Every time we go back to Singapore we change time zones from Indonesia, so it is really difficult to tell what time it is. So, then it was off to Pekanbaru, on the island of Sumatra, to see Caltex. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive on one of the worst roads I've ever been on. Along the way we passed thru some terrible poverty where people were eeking out a living in the former rainforest. (fomer because they have cut down all the trees and planted palm oil trees everywhere. All along the roadway there was everything imaginable for sale in little huts that looked like something a child had built. Everything from fried pork skin snack food, to jugs of stolen gasoline, to small animals. On one stretch of road I saw three cages of Green Parrots for sale. Who would be buying them and for what purpose, I don't know. They were sold as pets, watchbirds, or perhaps lunch.

We made it back in one piece from that trip and I congratulated our driver on us cheating death again. He did not understand. Apparently he felt no danger from the logging trucks passing us in front of oncoming vehicles. I am convinced that the bravest people on the planet must be the pedestrians who wander aimlessly in between vehicles in the Indonesian roadways. The drivers certainly don't give them any consideration. The very last thing an Indonesian driver will do in use his brakes. In fact, I think they are optional equipment that they don't bother to purchase with a vehicle. The accelerator and the horn are the only two essential items.
After tramping around the cities of Indonesia, I made it back to Singapore a last time and had a day with no calls to make. So I took the electric train all over the city. They have a simple, cheap, and effective means of public transportation, but it would never work in Houston, since we would never agree to live in 20 story high rise apartments, like nearly all the Singaporeans do. I even took the sky lift to a resort island, and then took a monorail line all around that island.

So, the only local transportation I didn't care to take was to ride on the back of a motorcycle. I will leave that to the more adventurous souls who either love the smell of two cycle engine fumes in the morning, or want to stare death and truck treads in the face.
I will end for now, gentle readers, with the hope that further reports will be from a computer terminal and not a hospital bed, jail, or the jungle hut of some headhunter