It was humbling to feel so loved.
Back to the night in question, and I was struck by how well-spoken and sophisticated all her friends seemed to be. They were all immaculately dressed, spoke fluent English and carried themselves in the way that successful, confident young professionals do.
The only slightly confusing part of this initial meeting was the way they all individually either asked permission to accompany Yossy and I, or else thanked me for inviting them. One by one they took the opportunity to sidle up to me and uttered a version of the following, ‘Hey, Neil. Thanks for inviting me. Are you sure it’s OK if I join you guys tonight? Yes? Well, thanks a lot, then.’
I was a bit perplexed to tell the truth, because as far as I knew we hadn’t actually invited anyone and it was nothing more than a night out together, so when we were together in the cab heading up to a small club in the south of the city I took the opportunity to ask her about this.
‘Don’t worry, hon,’ she said, ‘they are just being polite.’
When we reached the club it was pretty dark and there was a live band gently playing melodic rock. Finding some tables a little way back from the stage, and slightly tucked away, totally suited me because one thing that living in Indonesia had taught me was that a lone bule in the audience at an event, or amongst the guests at a gathering, would often be picked on by the MC or whoever was performing. This would lead to the poor sap either being asked to come on stage to introduce himself or else to sit and suffer while the guy entertained himself and everyone else present at his expense. With this in mind, a place in the shadows suited me just fine, thanks.
We all ordered some food and watched the group strutting their stuff. I don’t know what I was expecting from either the group or the evening in general, but both were really not bad actually and I found myself relaxing and having a thoroughly pleasant time. After a couple of hours I realized I had to be up early the next day and so I suggested to Yossy it was time to start thinking about making a move.
As the bill was being prepared, I started to get my wallet out to pay for my and Yossy’s share, but she stopped me, saying she would take care of it.
‘We all pooled our money in the office before we left.’ she told me, ‘I’ll use that.’
Who was I to argue, thought I, and finished up my drink.
On the pavement outside the club a discussion took place about whether or not to go onto a ‘real’ club or else call it a night. It turned out that the club in question was a place called Limelights. Evidently it was notorious for being a sort of rave club.
At the somewhat ancient age of 27, I felt that was the sort of place that deserved to stay in the darkest recesses of my memory and be left there. I could see Yossy wanted to tag along, though, and, after a bit of persuasion from me, she headed off into the night with her friends while I took a cab home.
Looking back, that night may well have been the catalyst for what was to follow, but for now I had to negotiate my way home in a taxi. Taking a taxi in Indonesia was a whole new ball game to anything I’d ever experienced back home. The roads were absolutely flooded with them, for a start, and everywhere you looked dozens would be out on the street at any one time. If I happened to walk any distance further than a hundred metres or so, I could be sure I would be accosted by up to half a dozen drivers of the blessed things, all beeping their horns and competing for my patronage.
The thing is, though, that practically every taxi company was nothing more than a bucket shop. Almost all the companies were the same in that their fleet of vehicles were totally decrepit and barely moved over twenty miles an hour; any AC the contraption ever possessed had long given up the ghost; there were no seat belts; the windows wouldn’t wind down, and ultimately the drivers were incompetent at best and downright crooked at worst.
It was impossible to take a simple journey without having to play the ‘taxi game’ described thus: firstly the passenger would hail a taxi, climb in and tell the driver where he or she wished to be taken. The driver would then state a price – usually exorbitant and three times what the meter would read if used for such a journey – and the passenger would then invariably either try to haggle the price down or try to insist the driver use the meter. A request for the latter would now be countered by the taxi driver informing the hapless passenger that said item was ‘rusak’ or broken. At which point any passenger with the slightest nous about them would make to get out of the taxi only for the ‘taxi-pixies’ to magically fix the meter just in time to prevent this being necessary.
So, after one fairly transparent effort to defraud or extort the passenger had failed, the sap would embark on his journey. What would follow would invariably be the world famous trick of taking the longest route possible due to ‘macet’ or ‘bad traffic’ or even ‘maaf, aku hilang’. Sorry, I’m lost. This particular rouse of course, is in no way unique to Indonesia.
However, the intrepid Indonesian taxi driver does
