Slow Boat to Java

            So I’m on the slow boat – that’s what they call it – the slow ferry from the Karimunjawa Islands back to Java, a six hour ride, on Monday, and we’re crammed in some plastic seats in the center part of the boat, with people smoking all around us, and I am eyeing the sign that says there are 46 lifejackets, the sign hanging just underneath the TV screen that shows the safety video where a calm Indonesian woman in a jilbab helps her daughter put on the life-jacket, presumably while the ferry is descending the way Indonesian ferries do in the media legends. There must be 150 people in this room alone, perhaps all of them thinking something along the lines that I am thinking, which is: “What’s the best way to get to those lifejackets first?”

            Actually, I was thinking of my mom and dad, who were sitting in the row ahead of me with Laura and the kids, and who were supposed to be, on that day, in the Karimunjawa Islands, but for the booking mistake the hotel on the islands made, and which we learned about only after we disembarked from the fast boat on Saturday from Semarang. “There is no fast boat on Tuesday,” said the manager from the hotel. “Only a slow boat on Monday, or Wednesday, to Jepara.” In other words, instead of a three night visit to the islands, with a return to Semarang on Tuesday followed by a 90 minute drive back to Salatiga, we had two night stay with an early Monday departure for a six hour ferry ride followed by a four hour drive to Salatiga.

            The hotel was, in fact, the textbook study of the false tap, which device faithful readers of this blog will remember was installed in all the sinks in all the rooms in my hotel in Jember, a faucet which didn’t work, which was not even attached to anything, but which completed the illusion that the sink in the bathroom was functional. I will not belabor this point, only to say that I was enormously frustrated that this apparent highlight of my parents trip to Java was somewhat tempered by a hotel that was something like an Indonesian version of Fawlty Towers, only with a very pretty beach. A pretty beach we all went down to that afternoon to swim (after the nearly inedible lunch we were sent to after we learned that they had booked us into the wrong rooms, which mistake they rectified) and we frolicked, and laughed, and Graham ran into the water and right into a jellyfish, which embraced his legs with that calm jelly zeal and elicited a scream of pain and all the staff running down to the beach to treat Graham with vinegar and pain cream. They were very nice, and competent, and they slowly peeled off the tentacles of the jellyfish off of the swollen leg while Graham howled.  And Graham and Laura went up to the room, and the rest of us stared at the Java Sea, stared, quietly, a little forlorn, and sort of scared to swim again, though we did.

            So the snorkeling on the next day was wonderful, and Graham recovered and you can prepare yourself to be regaled, by Graham, with the story of the jellyfish and how incredibly painful it was and do you want to see the picture of my knees with twisty swollen jellyfish marks on it? (By the end of the weekend Seamus displayed exostion [‘exhaustion’ as spelled by Graham in his first round spelling bee elimination on Thursday] by Graham’s epic jellyfish adventure narrative and knee museum.) Truly, the coral was magnificent, and the gardens were rich and extensive, and I saw a yellow fish with black polka dots that was shaped like a box with a small nose and fin, a boxfish, I later learned.

            We were mollified by the snorkeling, using it to see past the doors that were very pretty but that could be opened easily after they were locked with a deft pull back and sideways, or the mosquitoes that enjoyed our company in the rooms without mosquito netting, or the showers that had several complex mechanisms that operated three different water systems, or the jellyfish, or the lousy breakfasts, or the fact that on Monday morning I led my parents into their authentic Indonesian traveling experience, the slow boat to Java, on a hard plastic seats. But it was a smooth ride, and my parents served a useful purpose: when Graham, or Seamus, began to complain about the ride, I could point to my father, and say “Your grandfather is 80 years old and doing just fine” and they retreated in a way they would never have done without them there. My father spent a good deal of time mastering the golf game I downloaded just for him on my iPad, my mother read, Seamus and Graham wandered around and played games on their Nintendo travel device Seamus rented for the year from our neighbor. I finished two books I had started already, a book of short stories by T.C. Boyle and a book about the Scottsboro trials in the 1930s and 1940s.

One hopes for companions like my parents on trips like this, understanding, bemused, patient, and better-humored than the rest of us. Their visit has been wonderful. I spent four days driving them around Central Java, exhilarating days like any days spent driving in Java. We saw a good chunk of the place, and we ate well, and they met several of our friends, and we had snacks at our maid’s house (they cut open three young coconuts they had taken from their tree and served us coconut water with chunks of coconut and palm sugar [made from the flowers of the same tree]).  It has been incredibly fun showing them around, in part because we’ve realized, in doing so, that we have actually learned this place a little bit, that we can maneuver comfortably – and sometimes uncomfortably - around an island that is not an easy island to negotiate. We have been so grateful for their visit, and this time with them. I keep trying to talk them into staying for another week, but they won’t do it. My mom says they have some appointments, but I suspect the real reason is that my dad can’t miss his tennis match next Monday.