As I checked out of our hotel I got into a conversation with a young man named Agus. He seemed to be the only person there that spoke any English. We exchanged addresses. Then he said, "My friend and I have a hobby. We collect magazines of you know, naked women." He demonstrated by acting like he was taking his clothes off. I still don't think the women on either side of him knew what he had said. He went on, "You have many of those in your country?"

I thought he was talking in general about pornography in America. I said, "Yes there are many pornographic magazine in America."

He pushed the point. "Do you have any at your house?"

"No I'm afraid not," I said.

"I think you do," he said.

We got an unusually early start. By 9 a.m. we reached the city of Situbondo. We stopped to take a photo of the incredibly numerous becaks (bicycle rickshaws). Everyone wanted to get in the picture. The becak drivers yelled and waved.

It took a few minutes to get the camera out and put it away. Just before we started again a small, older man came up to us. "Don't worry, I speak English," he assured us. He was an English teacher for years but now he only taught one day a week. He wanted to show us around Situbondo and he would not take no for an answer. I thought it would be a good idea to have someone show us around this town that doesn't get mentioned in the guide book. If Situbondo was in Australia or Indonesia it would be one of the major centers.

Joan was immediately suspicious of Anjar. We followed him just 50 meters to his home. The living room was a cozy place. All around the room he had hung portrait style 8 x10 and larger pictures of himself with various tourists from around the world, including a couple from California. Also he had a graduation picture of one of his daughters. He has at least five daughters although Joan talked to one of the daughters and she said she was no. 7.

Anjar served us coffee. He said his wife was sick. I admired his bicycle parked in the room. It had a generator, built-in lock, chain guard. A very practical bike and well taken care of. He said it was made in China and that most bikes in Indonesia were made in China.

I mentioned that while we saw hundreds of becaks on Java, we had not seen a single one on Bali. He explained that it was against their religion, something to do with the fact that it was human powered.

Anjar was adamant that we stay all day. We had another 95km to ride and didn't want to stay long. The conversations went something like this:

Anjar: You must stay until at least 2 p.m.

Joan: We have a long way to ride. We must leave by 10 a.m.

Anjar: You must stay until tomorrow.

Joan: We have to leave this morning .

Anjar: You must stay here - a couple days!

In the end, we agreed to walk around town with him for an hour. We passed several gold dealers along the street. They had little scales and glass boxes. Anjar asked if we had any gold, he said now would be a good time to sell, the price was very high. We told him we have no gold. I don't think he believed us. We talked about the price of gold and he suggested we sell our gold again. Joan told him again we had no gold. She pointed to her wedding ring and said, "Silver."

"Pfft," Anjar said.

I'm not sure, but I think a $20 bill is worth more by weight than gold. At any rate it's far easier to spend.

One odd thing about Situbondo: almost no one tried to sell us anything. Westerners are such novelties that they mostly just stare. Anjar took us through the market. Markets in town like Situbondo are great places to visit. It's usually a large open space under high roof and dimly lit. People sell peppers, pineapples, peanuts, and just about anything that grows and people eat. The sellers are packed tightly together in a large, two-storey building. The ones on the bottom floor sit on the floor, with very narrow aisles between them. You can barely pass someone who stops to look at the produce. Our appearance fascinated everyone but they pretty much went about their business.
 
 

Outside, in the courtyard, was a white statue of Mickey Mouse.

This was the first time I recognized that I am a lot larger than most of these people. In America I fit anything marked "Regular Size" or "Medium." Even at my light weight of 145 pounds, I am larger in height and width than most people here.

Upstairs from the market is another dimly lit market selling clothes. They have lots of cardboard cutout mannequin of very white looking women. We took some photos and everyone loved it. They kept arranging poses for everyone as if we were at a family reunion. We just kept snapping them.

We passed the bus terminal where Anjar says he gets most of the tourists. He hangs out there during the day watching for westerners like us. He's says about one tourist a week visits Situbondo.

As we passed a religious school we notices a dozen girls wearing the Muslim head gear piling around a window waving to us. We waved back and they went crazy. We asked Anjar if it would be OK to take a picture. I thought maybe that's what they wanted. So Anjar went into the school and asked a teacher. Then it turned into far more than we intended as the teacher came out and said he would have to ask the headmaster. But they invited us into the school compound. They have about four buildings around a square. We sat on a bench overlooking the square and spoke to the English teachers. They spoke quite well. I was impressed that a fairly small school had two English teachers.

It turned out that the girls were too shy to have their picture taken. As we talked to the teachers they bopped their heads in and out of the door peeking at us. Things seemed a bit chaotic for a religious school. I was waiting for someone to say, "Go ahead and take a picture," but no one did. Finally a bell rang I thought we better go. We took a picture of the English teachers and got the address of the school so we could send them the photos. As we left I apologized for disrupting everything but the teachers insisted it was nothing.

When we got to his place, Anjar pulled out a funny looking old bugle that was three feet long, like the kind they use in processions for kings and queens. We took it to the street corner and I played a bunch of arpeggios at full volume, much to the delight of all the becak drivers.

Anjar then pulled out a harmonica and wanted to know if we knew this song. Then he played "Auld Lang Syne." He learned the song in high school. He looks about 60 years old now. I went to my bike and proudly produced the sheet music and played it for him. He took the sheet music around the corner and photocopied it as well as "Away in a Manger" which was on the other side. No one except me seem to notice the extraordinary unlikelyhood of any tourist traveling to Situbondo, let alone one on a bicycle, would have the sheet music to the one song that Anjar was interested in. I think he will be puzzled by the lyrics. I have never known what Lang Syne means and I doubt he will find the words in his dictionary.

Finally we talked Anjar out of hosting us for two days and left Situbondo. The rest of the ride, all 95km to Probollingo, were pretty much like the day before: The Most Dangerous Road in the World. We passed a lot more "Muslim Roadblocks" as we called them. To raise money for a new mosque or maybe other reasons, they set these cans with sticks in them and red flags on top in the middle of the road. Several men stand in the road with hats or cans for you to put money in. They force all the traffic to slow down to about jogging speed. Another man has a microphone and talks to the passersby trying to get donations. We didn't understand anything they said usually except once when they said, "Hallo meestir, I ask you only three, one thousand (3,000rp)." Then when we rode by as fast as possible, and he said, weakly, "Thank you, meestir." I wouldn't have minded giving them 100rp or something but it would have meant stopping and getting our money out. And stopping always involved lots of people swarming around us. We passed six or eight of these road blocks.

Fortunately the road was mostly flat, if not particularly scenic. We arrived at the Hotel Permai Bromo just before dark and during a power outage. While I waited on the street and tried to entertain the half-dozen young men that often collect around us when we stop, Joan checked out the room with a flashlight. It turned out to be a great room with AC, which worked great after the power came on about 20 minutes later. We may have endured super-hot temperatures, high humidity and highly dangerous roads, but we stayed in very comfortable places.

We had dinner at a Chinese place about 1km from the hotel. That was the closest place to eat. There were a few Indonesian businessmen at the restaurant and about 10 calendars on the wall, all up to date.

Next: We arrive in Surabaya

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