Pangandaran, Java island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: a pleasant and fairly uneventful end to a fantastic couple of months in Indonesia

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All aboard! Heading to Pandangaran

Despite being a country of many islands and therefore lots of beaches, somehow we'd only been on the sand once in Indonesia. So with just two remaining days to be used wisely, a trip to the coast seemed like a perfect ending to our time in this wonderful country.

We left our previous destination of Yogyakarta nice and early on the train, and the four hour journey passed quickly and uneventfully. We arrived at the small town of Sidareja ready to catch a connecting bus which was said to be straightforward, but ran straight into problems. The first bus driver said he was going to our destination of Pandangaran, but in fact just dropped us at the depot a mile later. We were then told the next bus would come an hour later at 1pm which was annoying, so passed the time by eating at the only crappy little cafe around where the main dish on offer was curried intestines. Errrr just chicken and veg for me thanks! We went back to the station to be told the 1pm bus had already left at 12.30 and a local told us to wait until 2pm. This was getting annoying, especially as Sideraja was the biggest, smelliest, and most unpleasant hell hole I might ever have been. Another shopkeeper soon came along and told us there were no more buses and we despaired. A few minutes later again someone else told us it would arrive at 3.00 which wasn't a lot better either. It was total chaos and confusion, all hearsay and guesswork by the locals and Rene and I were pretty peeved. Eventually at 2.30pm against all advice a rotten and battered old tin can showed up and we were finally on our way. Better than nothing.

We arrived at Pandangaran, and immediately got the impression this was a nice coastal town. Brushing off the persistent local cycle rickshaw mafia at the bus station, we walked past Tsunami evacuation signs, a sad reminder of the 2006 disaster there that killed over 300 people. We found a nice hotel, and with the tiny bit left of the day went for a wander on the beach. After a spot of illness over the previous week I was nearly back in working order again, and the huge crashing waves seemed to knock the last out the bugs out when I swam in the sea. Just what the doctor ordered I reckon.

Having learnt a bit of Indonesian over my time in the country, about fifty words in fact, I ordered dinner that night in the native tongue, translating the English menu into Indonesian. The waiter was impressed and soon I was munching into a beautiful plateful of fresh prawns. However when I got the bill something serious was up; my food cost three times as much as it should. I politely complained and some confusion followed, only to discover that I'd mixed up the words for shrimp and prawns and ordered a much more expensive dish. I noted to myself not to get too cocky with languages!

We had two full days left, but for once I have little to say about them. On the first, after some chores Rene and I went to explore the town, situated on a small peninsula jutting from the coast. The black sand beach was a bit rubbish strewn but nice enough and we stopped outside a small national park. The Indonesian government in it's wisdom has recently set up a two tier system for national parks so instead of everyone paying the equivalent of £1 entry, the locals still pay that whilst foreigners now pay £11, which is both ridiculous and a little insulting. It barely seemed worth a quid from what we knew, so we protested with our feet and left. Yeah! That showed them!

Except it probably didn't.

With monkeys on the road outside and three fairly tame kijang deer eating out of bins nearby we had half the experience anyway, and soon found more entertainment on another nearby beach, watching locals fishing by throwing out fishing nets and bringing in nothing but a catch full of rubbish. It was pretty funny. Nearby were huge groups of locals stood on the road by the sea, pulling in huge trawler nets like a tug of war team, which each yielded about two bucketful's of fish and yet more trash, and a frenzy then followed as they fought to divide the catch between themselves. A bit further along the coast we found the local fish market which because of Ramadan (Muslim festival involving fasting) was pretty quiet. We still managed to find an open cafe behind a fish shop which cooked up a lovely fresh batch of tiger prawns in sauce - the king sized black and green version of your normal prawn and very delicious. We walked back past some young kids playing with home-made bangers which they filled with some sort of fuel and ignited, letting out a shotgun-like bang which almost pierced our ears. The kids absolutely loved it, though are probably completely deaf by now.

That night we found a cafe-bar popular with foreigners and realised how few such places we'd managed to frequent in Indonesia thanks to our route; a nice change. It was our last night in the country and indeed our last night travelling together since Rene was heading for India whilst I was moving towards home. So whilst watching the Germany v Brazil World Cup highlights (the first of the World Cup I'd got round to watching), we mulled over our time travelling in all the out-the-way places in Indonesia, and indeed the past three months we'd travelled together since meeting in Malaysia, picking out the highlights, the tough times and the bizarre situations we'd encountered.

Travelling with Rene had been fantastic and to be truthful I don't think I could have found anyone much better to travel with. He impressed me with general knowledge which belies his 24 years, by always being very laid back, good at problem solving and and by willing to do pretty much whatever I suggested. He amused me with his constant catnapping in every place possible, by walking a mile ahead all the time in his own little world, by staying up 'til all hours on his computer and often falling asleep in front of it, by often sleeping with his rucksack and possessions laid out on his bed, and some of his nerdy habits like hacking into a computer router to reset it instead of just turning it off and on again. And finally he confused me by somehow travelling without what I consider the essentials of suncream, a guide book, anti-malarial pills, mosquito spray, a mobile phone, hat, or an alarm clock (what did he have?!) - yet somehow got away with it. In over three months we didn't have a single argument, and whilst I occasionally stressed or got annoyed about the odd situation, he never got wound up once. So here's a toast to Rene!

On the final day woke up with a half day left before our train to the airport, and since Indonesia is known for it's surfing and the waves in Pandangaran were pretty big, a bodyboarding session seemed like the perfect final activity. Paying the 50p fee to borrow a board for an hour, I headed out into the waves and caught a few, and I mean just a few waves. They were a bit crashy at times and it was hard to get back out to the break but a lot of fun anyway. Pandangaran had been surprisingly quiet for the time of year and our time there brief, but it left a good taste of Indonesia in my mouth.

It was time to leave both the town and the country. A cycle rickshaw journey followed by a couple of hours on a bus led us to Banjar train station, and in the waiting room I briefly chatted with a young solo German guy who'd just left hospital nearby after a bed-ridden week alone recovering from dengue fever, a particularly nasty mosquito-borne illness - the whole experience sounded awful. Our night train journey that followed was also pretty awful, relatively speaking anyway, since only economy seats were available and we spent the night sat bolt upright, face-to-face and knee-to-knee with other passengers. It was far from comfortable and I barely slept.

We arrived in the capital city of Jakarta at 3am and departed the train when to my surprise an Indonesian guy in his forties showed up and greeted Rene. It turned out to be someone he'd met when he popped to Jakarta a couple of weeks ago to get a visa - an extremely helpful and pleasant, if slightly strange chap who he claimed he couldn't sleep so decided to come and say hello to us. At 3am! Very bizarre. Since the station was quiet and I had a couple of hours to burn 'til the airport buses started running, I slept on some benches for an hour. Mr Helpful however decided we'd be better off going across town to another station where I could catch an earlier airport bus. I protested since I was quite happy sleeping like a tramp on my bench, getting what little sleep I could, and was a bit of an angry bear when stirred but he was insistent so I reluctantly I went with them on a commuter train across town. This guy was supposed to know everything about Jakarta, yet we ended up going half an hour further away from the airport, where I said bye to Rene at a station and caught the bus straight back past where we'd come from originally, totally pointless. I was not amused, even if I knew the guy probably meant well. It was however not enough to ruin my fantastic impression of Indonesia. Little could.