Ms Ani

Introducing Ms.Ani, one of my favorite local characters. Not one of my better captures, but she was very difficult, not wanting to be photographed, but I insisted, as did everyone else around and fired this shot as she was on the move.

I see Ani quite often around the food store down the road. She has a very cheeky character, always laughing, I suspect at my expense, but she makes everyone else laugh too. She tries to set me up with every young lass that comes to the shop, jabbers away at me in Indonesian, as if I understood every word. She treats me to hugs and generally treats me like some kind of sex object, so stealing her image was kind of revenge for me. It was all very entertaining.

The Bandung story - part 11

The next morning after breakfast, as I was settling into a lounge chair to lick my wounds for the day when Geoff comes in and announces, "The bikes have arrived"! He had arranged the hire of four motorbikes for us all. No cars were allowed in the village, except to and from the hotel, so although four novice riders would seem like a bad idea, at least we wouldn't get run over.

I actually quite liked the idea as I had briefly owned a motorbike a few years earlier and had earned my motorbike license while working a contract in Belfast. We loaded up the girls and toured around the village. We did the harbour, beach, some shopping and the fish market, which was amazing. Piles of weird and wonderful fish being studied and auctioned like a beef market, with a guy jabbering into a crackly PA system.

Pangers, as it was affectionately known, was not that small and apart from a lot of cottage industries manufacturing stuff for the tourist trade, it was all about commercial fishing. Pangers, being coastal, also took heavy casualties from the tsunami that resulted from the 7.7 earthquake that rocked the south coast of Jave in July 2006, claiming the lives of around 400 villagers and flattening hundreds of dwellings along the coast. The same coastline escaped the ravages of the huge 9.1 quake driven tsunami of 2004, due to it's geographical location.

After the tour, we arrived back at the hotel and gathered at the poolside. Charlie, a rather short, podgy but very sweet looking boy, dressed as a hotel waiter, came over and asked what we would like. "Seven big beers with lots of ice. Very important, LOTS of ice". Beer in this part of the world is generally not cooled, so you have to add ice. It waters the beer down, but it is still an improvement on warm beer.

A few minutes later, Charlie returned with two champagne ice buckets loaded with ice with seven large bottles of Bintang beer buried within, what a glorious sight. Mark, in his best American accent, said, "Charlie, you're the man", to which Charlie in a high pitched and very effeminate voice replied, "Thankyou"! to which we all fell about laughing. This became a quote to be repeated throughout the weekend and for many months, even years later when we met up on future contracts.

We invited Charlie to sit down and join us in a beer. He grabbed a seat next to Mark, as everyone else was in couples. "I don't like beer, I prefer cock tails" he announced, poking his tongue against the inside of his cheek! We were all in stitches, except Mark of course, who had become the focus of Charlie's attentions.

We took an early lunch, as Geoff had planned A trip for the afternoon, to the Green Canyon. Still in major agony, I really did not want to go, but I had given up arguing as it was pointless against a character like Geoff and I was getting a reputation as a whinger, so we loaded up the van and off we set.

To be continued.

Dave