Well here we are in rainy Timika, Irian Jaya, Indonesia. The Qantas flight had all of 14 passengers and was a FIRST for me – an all female crew – not just the two cheerful “G’day Mate” girls in the cabin, but both flight deck occupants were ladies too, so more G’days from them too. Thus we zooted off at midnight for a remote tropical jungle location.
The arrival procedures were tortuous to say the least. It took nearly an hour to clear all 14 of us ! What they would do with a huge mob of 96, as we could turn up with, is something to have a worry about. Everyone’s bags had to be gone through and anything like a drug container looked at hard. My cellphone was also regarded as suspicious. Oy oy oy.
The luxurious Sheraton Timika was only 2 k’s away and is not your average airport hotel by any means. Built in 1995, it serves as a base for business visitors to the vast local copper and gold mining area here. It is the ONLY reason it is here. In fact, it is the copper they are after and the gold is a subsidiary operation, to the tune of FIVE MILLION DOLLARS A DAY III!
And if you want to see GREEN and TROPICAL foliage, then come on over – this place receives an annual rainfall of a cool 35 FEET. It is lush and steamy and it IS a jungle out there and if the hotel didn’t keep on cutting it back, then it would be taking us over pretty fast. It makes the Amazon look like Central Park. And right outside my window, there was nice family of wild pigs having a root around in the undergrowth. For the moments when it does stop raining, then the insects sing out and best of all are the butterflies, some of which are really huge, with iridescent cobalt blue wings or black and white blobs.
The only trouble going somewhere where they have not had tourism on any scale before is that I have to work VERY hard, so those of you who think I am permanently anchored by the pool with cooling libation to hand, are DEAD wrong. It was a great runaround trying to put things together in a place that is not very organized to begin with. And it was so WET – incredible amounts of sheer torrents of water coming down for the best part of the first two days and later on the third – not good for glasses wearers, as the moment you walk out of the a/c, then the lenses just fog up in 1.5 seconds.
I was driven off for nearly 2 hours of lurching along a long series of interlinked potholes (here called a road) to visit a remote village which is the scene of an annual arts and crafts show and which we may be able to sked for one of our visits. Total third world, half naked snotty nosed kids in rags and a feeling of real end of the world. There was a large boat tied up in the river, offloading cargo that was the biggest excitement – it was really a larger version of the African Queen, with a lot more rust. Many huge sacks of onions coming ashore.
The arts show would be tremendous for the right pax and if it does come to pass that we can be there the right day, then we shall have to be careful how we advertise it so that only the right ones come – Gucci sandals-land this is not. But for collectors of knockout pieces of carving and at prices that are lower than low, then the right ones will be wetting their knickers. Dealers from Jakarta come for this show, so I know that any of our gang could outbid them in a flash. There were things here that would be thousands of dollars in a gallery in NY, which here go for $50. And fortunately, there is DHL so they can send their 30 feet pieces of carving home that way. Don’t worry, I have seen that done. On a boat trip around here several years ago, a young couple with oodles of money, bought a huge and long traditional war canoe and had it SHIPPED on Fedex back to the States. It would have taken up about three pallets on the aircraft and the cost must have gone in to thousands.
But the basic logistics will probably defeat this visit as of course there are NO TOILETS. That is one of my questions I ask everywhere and here it is behind the trees … my babies don’t get on with that !
Hopefully we shall be able to fix a visit to the copper mine itself – the logistics of this place are beyond believe – how do you run the world’s second largest copper mine on the top of a 13,000ft mountain in a totally third world country? Well somehow, they do and we shall want to go see. I am hopefully going to go back in Jan by which time we can organize an invitation so I can go to see them and try to make it their idea that we should come to visit.
(Note from later) Mine owners absolutely vetoed anyone not connected with mining to come to visit. Even pleas from the mining biggies in SYD and NY fell on deaf ears, so it never happened).
Well now, here we are in sweaty Saigon Airport (it may technically be Ho Chi Minh, but we old timers still call it Saigon and so do most of the locals). Arrived here on the Vietnam Airlines, A320 from Singapore, where I had my usual night of luxury chez Raffles. They even sent the maroon stretch BMW to find me, so I had a chauffeur in a peaked cap and had to resist waving to the masses from my acres of room in the back. Oh boy, I can be bought !
I had come up there from Darwin on the Qantas, just a 4 hours hop. Very ancient 747, one of their originals and a fairly similar vintage crew too, but they were good and even managed to do the meal service at the right time! Changi airport is still working miracles, though I should have a whinge and say that I had to wait at least 4 mins for the bags to come up and mine was only number 7, so seems like things are slipping a bit!!!!
Anyway, Viet Nam (I have gone bush so it is two words) is of course great fun for the likes of me. The immigration form has a few pearls of wisdom on the back – many instructions as to what is permitted to bring in, so along with the standard ban on narcotics and ammunition (good thing I had left mine at home), you should be warned that also the import of “subversive materials, children’s toys having negative effects on personality development, social order and security” are also going to get you into deep dudu, so just watch out when traveling with kids in case you end up in an immigration holding pen here (which would probably not be very nice). You should also leave behind all “toxic chemicals and species of wild animals” – so much to remember already! You might just never leave home. Anyone walking off the aircraft with a tiger on whose back are strapped a dozen hand grenades, will not be warmly welcomed.
The crew on the aircraft were very sweet, the girls in their traditional au dai – flowing very thin satin pants, tight at the top and bell bottom as they go down and then the high necked, long sleeved, skin tight top, which divides into two long floating panels front and back. As the pants material is both sheer and tight, I can tell you that nice Vietnamese ladies wear full sized knickers, of the types that Bridget Jones did not favor for a hot date ! No bikinis or thongs around here please ! Well, I just thought you would like to know … inquiring minds and all that ….you never know, facts like this could be on the end-of-season-test.
In SGN (see they haven’t even changed the three letter code to HCM) I was met by me ole mate Huy, who is a very switched on 30 year old local guide, who seems to find me the funniest thing on two legs. Whatever I say to him, has him totally creased up. We once spent a week together and he was still laughing at the end, so he gets a medal for hanging in there. I had thought he was coming to Danang with me (I am just in transit today) but he has to stay here and another poor soul will be waiting for me there. We went over the road of a beer, in a very very sweaty airport restaurant – amazingly non a/c, which I wudda thought was impossible around here, so we drank beer and dripped it out simultaneously, as it was pouring outside and the sweat was just running down my legs.
I am now perched in the domestic deps. area, along with what seems to be most of the population of SGN. Hard to believe that Vietnam Airlines uses prerecorded departure announcements and the English tape is done by a perfect sounding English female voice who could get a job at the BBC, so carefully enunciated is her delivery. Good thing too, so that I am not trying to listen out for a fractured Vietnamese voice which is unable to pronounce any consonants – these p.a’s, done by someone with nothing but vowels to offer, can be total mysteries and you have to keep going and hunting someone down to interpret them. And the flight is one hour late too, so plenty more time to observe the scene.
Now there is a huge thunderstorm raging – sort of thing that would close JFK for hours, but here it is so normal that the flights are still operating – not a place for the faint hearted flyer around here!
We finally staggered off the ground and the storm must be going the other way, as its quite smooth. Fortunately most people who were originally booked on this delayed flight moved to another one which was leaving a whole 10 mins earlier – I played a hunch and thought that a full 767 would NOT go when they said and that an empty ATR would, so stayed put and won, as the 767 was still there when we leapt into the tuft. Stick with moi and I shall get you there first.
So anyway, I’m here in Danang and have been running around like a soul possessed. Super deluxe hotel like something out of Bali, with vast areas of open sided polished hardwood floors, but full right now with an Australian incentive group – they are all successful! supermarket owners, so somewhat far removed from my type of client – in fact the very opposite end of the spectrum – brings out the worst snob in me I know and I just want Hyacinthe Bucket to arrive and give them a few clue on social behavior.
Anyway, time to send this down the wires, or you just will never get through it all and I should be spending my time writing up everything I have been taken to. But you just should see the acres of white sand beach, the celebrated China Beach from the VN war days, which at 7am, is being raked by cheerful VN ladies, huge floppy hats, long gloves ready for the opera and Mexican Pete bandeleros, armed with huge rakes. Their aim is a perfection that would make a Japanese weep. I went and looked at the un-raked-since-yesterday-area and apart from a few footprints, it was as perfect as they left it.
timothyvalentinestravels 