LUFTY, NADIA, CRAIG and RAY

Photo: Duncan McLeod

Four: Indonesian Adventures

Villagers in the hills of South Sulawesi have a spiritual connection with the forests, an intrinsic respect and understanding for the land on which they have lived for centuries. They are rugged outdoor folk who possess remarkable bush skills, among other things.
Visiting big city TV crews, alas, are not blessed with these talents.
This idiotically obvious revelation strikes me amid a tirade of expletives as I slip on a rock, go hurtling through a bamboo fence and begin sliding on my backside -- at breakneck speed and in pouring rain -- down a hill.
My cameraman Lufty has also taken a tumble, but seems to have recovered his forest legs and is upright again, despite having to balance a camera high above his head while skidding past a cow.
Our translator Nadia is next to go ass up. She was further up the incline when the deluge began, but is narrowing the gap in our impromptu race down the hill. Duncan, our fourth team member, has somehow made it to safety, but he’s an outdoorsy sort of bloke.
My life flashes before my eyes, my left eye at least as my right contact lens has blown to buggery.
In seconds I’ve lost a shoe, ripped my jeans and now appear to be airborne. Nadia is encrusted in mud and in danger of crashing into a beehive. If this were ‘Forest Idol’ we’d be the first ones voted off.
As I resign myself to imminent and disfiguring injury, I become entangled in a row of vines and, despite near strangulation, come to an abrupt halt. At the same time, Nadia ploughs into some shrubs and also manages to stop.
From the top of the hill, the firmer-footed village leaders stare down at us, their concerned looks masking incredulity at our ineptitude.
We had anticipated a few difficulties in what was supposed to be a 1-kilometer trek into the community forests of Labbo, but even the most pessimistic amongst us thought we’d make it past the 100-meter mark. How humiliating.
We should have been more prepared. We should have read up on our bush skills or at least considered purchasing some sensible shoes. But with so much information around, where does one begin?
“The great difficulty in writing about bushcraft is the sheer scale of the task, so I have confined myself to the fundamental skills,” Ray Mears writes in his seminal “Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft – A Handbook of Survival Skills From Around the World.”
“I have assumed that the reader is already interested in travelling in wilderness, can navigate and is conversant with first aid techniques.”
What? Now he fucking tells me! I have no recollection of reading this outrageous disclaimer.
Admittedly, I may have skimmed over the introduction to Mr. Mears’ book. And it’s possible I skipped “The Basics” chapter entirely in order to get to the guts of Ray’s literary foray and discover the essence of the man. Who he is as a person. His motivations, the rationale behind his arcane fashion sense and humorous hairstyle.
I realize I only have myself to blame, but I still feel cheated, deflated, winded. I’m also riddled with splinters and starting to chafe. Instead of being at one with the landscape, I am the laughing stock of Sarawak.

Months into my Craig and Ray challenge, I’m suffering setback after setback as it disintegrates into a soul-destroying fiasco.

Julie Powell experienced similar self-loathing.

“I have wasted a year of my life! Dammit. Goddammit! GOD DAMN IT!” she rails at her crock-pot while de-boning a duck and unraveling in chapter 8. It is arguably the most dramatic moment in her otherwise whimsical Julie and Julia. But it was also an important turning point, I feel.
Julie bounced back. She swallowed her pride, poured her fears down the sink along with her lumpy chutney and got on with her task of mastering all 524 of Julia Child’s French cooking recipes within the space of a year -- before hitting the talk-show circuit.
I need to muster similar resilience; drag my sorry ass back up the hill, persevere with my bush challenge and emerge triumphant, and in one piece, if I’m ever to regale Ellen and Oprah with humorous, occasionally poignant anecdotes from my own riotously self-centered personal journey.
But as my bush outfit is in tatters and I’m minus one Jimmy Choo, a second attempt at scaling the hill is out of the question.
Instead of rising to the challenge, I revert to one of my self-tailored, life-guiding maxims: If at first you don’t succeed, reach for the vodka bottle.
Then I remember I can’t even do that. We are in a conservative part of Indonesia where alcohol is banned. This day just keeps getting better.
Time to go home, pop and Valium and start from scratch tomorrow. We will all need a Valium to recover from our near-death experience and endure another night in the Murianna “guest house,” the only inn in the town of Bantaeng. The Murianna is devoid of light, bed linen and plumbing but abundant in insect and marine life, overflowing with sewerage and distressingly mauve.
Despite our forest injuries and my complaints, we are having a fabulous adventure shooting our film, the latest in the Voices of the Forest series. (See the shamelessly self-promoting links at the end of this blog entry) And, no, the irony of being the producer of films about forests, given that nature is my nemesis, does not escape me.
Without a shred of irony and with no misgivings, Duncan, Lufty, Nadia and I bid adieu to Bantaeng and its bed lice and head back to civilization.
Makassar seemed like a provincial town when we arrived five days ago. After our boozeless bush stint it now feels like Manhattan.
We are thrilled by the prospect of warm showers and Bintang beer at the optimistically named Quality Inn.
Excitement turns to despair, a few tears and some self-reflection when are informed that the rooms we had booked have somehow been unbooked.
It’s the height of the holiday season, the month before Ramadan and every hotel in town is full.
I’m still angry at Ray Mears, and in no mood to construct a shelter from the bark of a rambutan tree and set up camp in the car park, as he would no doubt suggest.
I politely but assertively demand this situation be resolved, and that our unbooked rooms be rebooked.
After a spirited discussion between the reception desk staff there is a breakthrough.
Hey, this is Indonesia – a fascinating, albeit confusing country where yes means no, no means maybe, maybe means go away and ‘It’s fine’ means it’s a disaster. But problems are usually solved.
It just takes a bit of stamina and a sense of humour to get through the solving process.
We breath sighs of relief as rooms are found, keys are handed to us and the Bush Bastard Ray Mears part of our shoot segues into the Being John Malkovich bit.
Our keys are for rooms 02, 08 and 04.
“Does that mean they are on the ground floor?” I inquire.
“No,” says the smiling receptionist without elaborating.
“Where are they, exactly?” asks Nadia.
“They are between floors 6 and 7. Take the lift to the sixth floor, walk down the corridor and go through a small door between rooms 619 and 621, which says ‘Jacuzzi Room’. The staff in there will explain the next part.”
So off we go.
Seventeen minutes later we arrive at the cavernous ‘jacuzzi room’ where flirting women in skimpy skirts are draped across a lime green vinyl sofa.
From there we are pointed in the direction of the kitchen, instructed to turn left at the fridge and proceed up a spiral staircase to a bordello red room where more flirting folk welcome us. They point us to a labyrinth of halls, which lead to curtained -off entryways, fake doors and randomly placed shower stalls.
But the rooms in this hidden bit of the hotel, somewhere between floors 6 and 7, are cleaner, larger and flashier than the generic standard ones and the bathrooms have fabulously gaudy ceiling mirrors.
It seems we are to spend the night in the brothel wing.
It’s bizarre, but we instantly feel at home.
I manage to put aside my feelings of betrayal and block Ray Mears from my mind as I drift off to sleep amid whirring ceiling fans, the strains of karaoke-singing sex-workers and the grunts of the short-time, hired pleasure emanating from the room next door.
I’m back in a city, comforted by the familiar sights and sounds of sleaze and sin.
At the end of the day, I’m more brothel boy than bush barnstormer. But that will come as no surprise to anyone, including, I suspect, Ray Mears.
Too bloody bad!

VOICES OF THE FOREST:

http://www.asiaworks.com/videos/our-work-recoftc-thailand.html

http://www.asiaworks.com/videos/our-work-recoftc-nepal.html

http://www.asiaworks.com/videos/our-work-recoftc-cambodia.html