Equivocality

Indonesian Roadside Attraction

Rumah Makan
Rangkiang
Sopang Pangkalan km. 4

says the sign, so I guess this stretch of the highway across central Sumatra is known as Sopang Pangkalan. It’s about 11:30pm, and we’re somewhere between between my departure point of Bukit Tinggi and the my final destination, the port city of Dumai where I will take a ferry across to Malaysia. The sign is for a restaurant (rumah makan, “eating house”), one of many at this enourmous transit stop which my night bus has just pulled into.

The equatorial air is warm and humid. Low clouds hide the stars and moon and make the night feel opressively close. It has cooled even less than usual since nightfall, and here the air is also choked with the fumes from dozens of running diesel engines. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes idle in the parking spaces. Their motors are on during the sometimes long stop-overs to keep the air conditioners going. Thus inside the parked buses, coaches, trucks, minibuses, vans, passenger and freight vehicles of all descriptions, the air is cool and fresh, insulated from the scorching poisionous atmosphere outside. Most vehicles are stopped for food, as is typical of Asian bus routes. The driver always stops somewhere for a quick meal, and the passengers get to stretch their legs and perhaps eat too. Maybe this sprawling place began as a single good restaurant with good parking along the side of the highway; I’ve certainly been to enough such places, small roadside establishments which have inexplicably become the pit stop of choice for the drivers whose regular routes roar past daily. In my broken command of whatever local language, I am not always able to ask my driver how long we will stay, and so I am consigned to grabbing a plate of whatever can be served fastest and eating nervously within sight of my bus. Tonight is no exception, but I sense that we will stay here, at this huge writhing here, for quite a while.

Pedestrians scurry back and forth across the highway which neatly bisects the complex, nimbly dodging the traffic which does not slow down, running unabated at 80 km/h. This is a truly unreasonable speed given the poorly maintained road which is little more than broken chunks of asphalt in places, but the Indonesians are undeterred and drive with what would be called reckless abandon in many other countries. I watch the traffic for a moment, pause, wait as a dumptruck flies past not a meter from my nose, and run through the cloud of exhaust into the road. My objective is the low row of stores on the other side. There is a similar strip on this side, but I’ve decided that I don’t like any of the restaurants there. Besides, the toilets are on the far side, big neon silhouettes of a man and a woman betraying their position. It costs 500 rupiah to enter, and I hesitate for a moment at the clerk’s desk to fish a coin out of my pocket. God, what a job: toilet admission taker at an all night highway stop. The toilets themselves are a dirty, smelly affair, as one would expect of a truck stop anywhere. There is a huge row of stalls and not all of them work. Inside each is a squat toilet set in a bare concrete floor, soaking wet as is usual in this part of the world where one uses water, not toilet paper. The mandi, the basin of water for flushing and washing, is a huge tiled trough that runs the length of building through the back of each stall. I get out of there as quickly as possible, washing my hands at a cracked sink. I am thankful there is a sink at all, often one must wash using the water scoop from the mandi.

I want food now. There is a big restaurant here, with the usual plates of room temperature curries on display. After several months in Asia I still can’t get quite used to the idea of eating food that has been sitting around all day at the ambient temperature of 30 degrees celcius, even though I understand that the spices preserve it, even though it’s sometimes tasty. But this restaurant also has trays of hot food in a steam-table setup, and I assemble a plate of yellow curried chicken, some soggy fried vegetables, and of course, rice. I pay, sit down, and eat quickly, trying to pick out my minibus among those parked across the highway. It’s difficult, because the company I have booked with operates many nearly identical vehicles, and about a dozen of them seem to be parked here tonight. The white minibuses have “BMW 2000 Travel Group” written on them, complete with the signature round BMW logo. I suspect that there is some trademark infringement going on here, but the buses themselves are nice enough, with only two rows of seats in the back, as opposed to the ubiquitous Thai design with three rows. Long haul transport in Thailand can be absolutely brutal on one of these packed buses, twelve passengers wadded into a vehicle about the size of a small utility van. My ride for the evening is roomy by comparison, although still crowded by Western Standards. I may even be able to get some sleep, later.

Hundreds of sweating people are swarming around the restuarant, at the buffet, in line at the registers, sitting down and getting up at the tables. This place is not air-conditioned — you’d need to go to the smaller, more expensive establishment next door for that — and so the wall-less building is open to the sticky night for ventilation. I finish my meal, which tastes faintly of exhaust, and look around in a a futile attempt to determine where I should bus my plates. Within seconds, a main in a grubby uniform comes and clears my table, solving that dilemma. They’re nothing if not efficient here, swiftly moving hundreds of tired and hungry passengers through the enourmous dining hall, presumably 24 hours per day every day. I leave the seating area and walk across the wide parking area toward my waiting bus, hoping that it’s still there, that one of the vans I can see is the one carrying my luggage.

On the way I investigate the stop further. Three men are working to change the tire on a huge decrepit passenger coach. I can see the rust in the vacant wheel well as they jack the bus up. Four or five public buses are parked in seemingly random oritentations at one end of the lot, faded yellow and orange and green. Being the cheapest transport option, they are the only non-air-conditioned vehicles here, all their windows open to the night air, brown hands and arms hanging out. Inside, the heads of those who have elected not to leave the bus are pressed against cracking vinyl seats, sleeping or attempting to sleep in the noisy evening. To one side, a series of wooden shacks comprise a service garage of sorts, or actually the individual establishments of a number of different mechanics, their dirty tools hung from nails on the dimly lit walls. Another large bus is parked there, engine compartment exposed in the glare of a flood lamp as a mechanic works at it. In front of the long low building with the restuarants, twenty or thirty merchants have set up small stalls, most of them selling an identical array of fruits and snacks. Each of these call out their wares as I walk by, in Indonesian or broken English depending on the fluency of the proprietor. I’m white; I have money and they know it. I politely refuse them all in turn, but end up buying some pineapple from an old woman. She serves it to me in the usual way, cut and skewered on sticks, placed in a clear plastic bag which is then placed inside yet another bag, this one with handles. They love plastic bags here; one day Asia is going to have a serious problem with available landfill space, if it doesn’t already.

Finishing my fruit, I search for my bus among the identical parked vans; no, not completely identical, for mine has, inexplicably, a Warner Brothers logo stencilled on the windscreen. I am relieved to discover that my bus is still parked, though the engine is now runnning. I search vainly for a trash can to throw the sticks and plastic into, but none can be found. Disheartened, I toss the trash onto the ground like the locals do, and climb aboard. I settle into my seat, the door closes and the bus pulls out, the purr of the engine replacing the drone of large diesels and the gentle cool air-conditioned breeze displacing the remnant exhaust. As the lights of the highway stop fade and I begin to fall asleep, the throb and writhe of the place, lost somewhere in the middle of Sumatra, seems less and less real, like something out of a dream.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2004 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Favorites, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.