By Any Means: His Brand New Adventure From Wicklow to Wollongong (36 page)

I took another big fall and another, but I got upright again and we passed under the causeway. Ryan made a left at the next headland and we cruised beyond a light-house. I could see Catherine waiting on the dock wearing a white dress and straw hat, with Rem and Tico at her side. Letting go of the handle I glided across the water and sank right in front of them.

We stayed with them for the next two days. It was wonderful to be around old friends again and have some home-cooked food. Rem and Catherine have lived in Singapore for the past four years but would be leaving for the States soon. They said they’d enjoyed their time but Singapore was a transient society for expats, and it took a couple of years to make good friends. It’s a little strait-laced and of course it’s ultramodern; very clean and very safe. They never locked the house and could leave wallets, computers, cellphones in the car without fear of losing anything. If you don’t break the law I imagine it’s a pretty cool place to live. If you do break the law you get beaten, thirty lashes with a cane. They have a doctor present, and if your back is too bad after ten they let you have a week or so to heal up before they dish out the rest. Every Friday morning at six a.m. the drug runners are hanged at Changi Prison.

On 22 June we took a look round the street circuit where Formula One was going to be holding a night race in September. It was still being built but turn one was complete, quite a tight left-hander. It would be a fantastic place to watch. The start and finish straight and the pit garages were just about finished, too; it was actually pretty exciting to see.

Close by is a stretch of beautiful parkland, where couples go to have their wedding photos taken. It’s also the old expat area where the famous black and white houses (the official residences from colonial days) are located. When Singapore gained independence the government took them back and now if you want to live in one you have to bid the amount of rent you’re prepared to pay, at auction. While we were there we saw a young couple all dressed up in their wedding clothes having their photos taken. They weren’t married yet: in fact they weren’t getting married until September. Rem explained that everyone has their pictures taken in advance. Three months, though . . . I shook my head. Anything could happen. You could travel halfway round the world in that time . . .

On 23 June we headed for Nikoi, a privately owned island where the boat we’d organised to take us to Borneo was supposed to be picking us up. Saying goodbye to Rem and Catherine, we jumped the ferry to Bintan, the largest of the three thousand-odd islands that make up the Riau Archipelago. Forty kilometres from Singapore, it’s where the Sultan fled after the Portuguese took Malacca in 1511. It’s had a chequered history and the whole area is notorious for pirates, but for us it was a staging post on the Indonesian leg of our journey.

Once we reached the Bintan ferry terminal we picked up a 1971 Holden Kingswood, an iconic Australian vehicle noted for its V8 engine. Ours had been transplanted with a Nissan diesel, mind you, and had BMW wheels, but it didn’t matter. It was gorgeous: turquoise paint with a five-speed column gear lever. It had been a taxi originally, but now belonged to a guy called Mark who very kindly let us drive it across the island.

I had a few problems finding fourth and fifth but finally got the hang of it and an hour later we stopped at a little beach where a pretty ancient-looking cargo boat was moored. We were due to meet the speedboat from Nikoi, but standing there, I had a horrible feeling that the old boat in front of us was our transport to Borneo. Peter and Andrew, the guys who owned Nikoi, had told us they could organise something traditional and this looked nothing if not traditional.

‘Pretty wild, Mungo,’ I said. ‘It looks a bit scary.’

He nodded.

‘Oh well. If we’re going to spend thirty-six hours on something like that, then we deserve a night in paradise first, don’t you think?’

Paradise is exactly how I’d describe Nikoi. The guests are picked up in a speedboat and ferried across the bay. A small island surrounded by black coral and massive boulders - some sixty metres high - it is part rain forest and part beach and only a tiny portion has been developed. Four years ago Peter and Andrew bought the place and set about building what they call a ‘boutique hotel’ out of driftwood. They gathered all they could find on Nikoi and the surrounding area and when that ran out they cut some, soaked it in the sea for a month then dried it so it had the appearance of driftwood. The result is outstanding; the guest quarters are pavilions built on stilts like the tree house in
Swiss Family Robinson
. There are no doors, no glass windows, and in the stifling heat the design creates a natural airflow that is so effective some guests have asked for extra blankets.

The whole complex is linked by beautiful wooden pathways and there’s an open-air kitchen, one long dining table and two pools with the most incredible views out across the reefs. We’d rushed through Thailand and Malaysia. Now we had a night in paradise before that boat and the voyage to Borneo.

 

I woke to a perfect sunrise and the grey hulk of the cargo boat we’d seen yesterday moored just off shore. I reminded myself that the old tub was exactly what this expedition was about, but I had a bad feeling. It was nothing I could put my finger on and maybe after what happened at Halong bay I was more wary than I normally would be.

We had to be in Pontianak in Borneo no later than Wednesday night because on Thursday we were off into the jungle with UNICEF. This gave us thirty-six hours to cross the Karimata Strait. I had no idea what the weather would be like; right now it was clear and fine but we were in the rainy season and things could change very quickly.

The guys from Nikoi took us out to the boat, the
Yeremia
. It had a grey wheelhouse built on two levels while the hull was a mixture of white and black paint as well as stained wooden planks that were rotten in places. I could see where it seemed to bulge here and there; the wood broken and splintered. It was definitely the stuff of adventure, but I had a few butterflies and I’m not sure they were all caused by excitement.

I kept telling myself this was what we wanted, and thinking back to Iran it was exactly the kind of vessel we’d hoped would get us to Dubai. We climbed aboard, the deck made from uneven slats like duckboard, bisected by a hold covered with numbered lengths of what looked like railway sleepers with a rope in each end to lift them off. Two of the sleepers were missing - I took a peek into the darkness where I could see the skeleton of the hull. It was wooden, of course, and looked solid enough. There was no water anywhere either, which is always a good sign. The anchor was winched by hand and there was a lifeboat of sorts, a dinghy hanging upside down at the bow end of the hold.

The owner - a nice guy called Ahong, wearing a grubby singlet and a baseball cap - was coming with us. He employed seven crewmen including the captain, the cook and a couple of mechanics, including a heavy-set guy in an orange T-shirt. They were very friendly and when we unrolled a chart and plotted the route I started to get really excited. The wheelhouse was spare, the controls pretty aged and basic, there was a bunk laid with an old quilt, and below the wheelhouse some crude sleeping quarters and the galley.

It took most of the crew to winch the anchor on board and with the engine running we all gathered on deck. Ahong formally introduced us to everyone and then he put his hands together: ‘Before we go we pray,’ he said.

I didn’t think that was a bad idea at all; not when we were about to cross waters notorious for pirates in a boat that just didn’t feel that seaworthy.

‘We ask Jesus to come along on this trip,’ Ahong said, then closing his eyes he launched into a prayer in Indonesian that we couldn’t understand. I did notice he was clasping his hands pretty tightly, though.

As we headed out to sea I sat down with him on the lip of the cargo hold and he told me that their normal load was cigarettes, which they transported from Singapore to Malaysia.

‘Have you ever been to Pontianak?’ I asked him.

‘Never.’

‘Is it the longest trip you’ll have made on this boat?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

I nodded slowly. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right.’

‘The captain’s been to Pontianak,’ he assured me.

Half an hour out, I was in the wheelhouse. It was a bit choppier now - there was quite a swell. A wave hit the bows with a real crack, sending spray flying across the deck. A few minutes later the chubby mechanic came rushing up the steps, looking very concerned. Taking Ahong to one side, he spoke in his ear for a moment then the two of them disappeared below. I glanced at Mungo and with a shrug beckoned him to follow.

Ahong was on his hands and knees bending over the hold, the mechanic squatting next to him chattering away and gesticulating.

‘What’s up?’ I asked Ahong.

Then I saw water rushing into the hold. When we’d left Nikoi it had been dry.

‘I’m sorry, Charley, something’s broken,’ Ahong said. ‘When we hit that big wave just now something broke. The sea is coming in and we have to turn back.’

I was stunned. The sea water wasn’t just slopping around, it was gushing in at a rate of knots. In fact, we were sinking.

Thankfully we could still see the island, and with the bilge pumps working full tilt we could turn around and make it back long before the boat went down. Thank God this had happened now and not when we were twenty hours out in the middle of the strait.

Now we had to find an alternative way of getting to Borneo, and I doubted we’d figure that out before the morning. In the meantime we needed somewhere to stay tonight, so taking my phone I punched in Andrew’s number.

‘Charley,’ Mungo asked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m ringing Andrew. We’re going nowhere on this boat, old bean. You’ll have to make do with another night in paradise.’

‘Yeah, baby!’ He punched the air so hard he almost dropped the camera.

We went below and took a good look at the hold. The water was ankle deep and rising and I could see a tear in the bows where it was coming in. The seriousness of it really hit me then, down here under the roll of the ocean with the smell of seasoned wood and sea water rushing around my legs. If this had happened further out we would have been in real trouble: there was only that one little dinghy and there were ten of us. A cold chill worked from my hair to my toes. Climbing back on deck, I cannot tell you how glad I was to still be able to see Nikoi Island: the place was paradise now in more ways than one.

Gradually, relief was replaced by disappointment. This voyage across the strait should have been one of the highlights of the trip and now it wasn’t going to happen.

Ahong couldn’t have been more apologetic. ‘I have another boat, Charley,’ he said. ‘It’s bigger than this one and I can get it here by about seven tonight.’

I shook my head. Seven o’clock out here really meant nine or ten, and we’d never be in Borneo in time. It wasn’t what we wanted - in fact it was the last thing we wanted - but if we were to meet UNICEF in time then we had no choice but to take another plane.

Back at the island the crew tried to launch the little dinghy to take us off the sinking
Yeremia
. It was a heavy old beast and they manhandled it to the side and hoisted it over the gunwales on lengths of flimsy rope. It was rolling badly and sure enough it tipped over and plummeted upside down into the water. I had to smile: there was a massive hole in the stern where I assumed the engine would fit and it looked about as seaworthy as a sieve.

I told Ahong we’d wait an hour for the Nikoi speedboat to come for us; we had a lot of expensive gear and I could see it ending up at the bottom of the bay. He was still apologising - he told me he’d only had the
Yeremia
for a year and that she was only four years old. The poor old girl looked more like forty; there was a charm about her but the romance of the voyage had been replaced by the reality of our ‘lifeboat’ and once again I was just grateful we were still alive.

23

There and Back Again

On Wednesday morning we returned to Bintan and caught another ferry to the island of Batam, where we took a short flight to Pontianak. I kept telling myself that at least we weren’t using the plane to move from one country to another. We were still in Indonesia and the only part of Borneo we would be travelling through was the Indonesian part of the island, what the locals call Kalimantan. It’s the largest part, the rest being split between Malaysia and Brunei.

When we got to the hotel Wendy from UNICEF was waiting for us with her colleague, Libby, and Anton, their local ‘man on the ground’. Anton - a young, well-educated man who spoke English with a slight American accent - would be translating for us. They’d already been in touch to explain that the plane we’d arranged to take us to Ketapang had been commandeered. There had been a new district government elected and with a stack of official functions coming up, every bit of air transport had been taken. So instead of a short hop in a small plane we’d be up at three and travelling by car, boat, car, boat, motorbike and finally boat again to get to the village. It sounded like a seriously long day.