Soe (So-ay)

We are in Soe, which was supposed to be a 2-hour drive. We were going to leave at 10 but – jam karet – we left the hotel at 10:30, drove over to pick up Vonce’s sister Fonny and her family and everyone got out of the car to say hello to Mama and Papa and wait for Fonny to finish packing. On the way out of town we stopped by “Paris Bakery” for Kupang baked snacks. Dan and I shared a brownie-sized item that Vonce said is a Kupang specialty. It was moist and wrapped in plastic. The consistency was like sticky rice, and it was slightly sweet and a tiny bit coconutty. After driving for an hour or so we stopped so Fonny could buy some fried snack cakes from a roadside vendor. Dan joked, “That’s why Indonesians take so long to get anywhere, they’re always stopping to eat.”

We drove for quite a while before detouring down a dirt road to stop by a river so we could get out and take pictures. It was a rapidly-moving river, but small. Fonny’s husband Johnny told us that he’d once had a maid from the area whose parents were both washed away during the rainy season, when the small river would grow to cover the entire area.

Meanwhile a man walked over to watch us. He just squatted down and watched. Indonesians do not have any problem squatting for long periods of time. They also do not consider it impolite to stare. Many people seem to spend their idle time outdoors watching everything. That seems to be their entertainment, more than TV. I haven’t seen anyone yet sitting on the porch steps reading a book.

Nearby was a van parked in the river. The locals lifted the tailgate and we heard a pig start squealing. Johnny told us that they were making a sacrifice and they might throw the pig’s carcass into the water as part of the offering.. They took the pig’s head and slit its throat, dripping the blood into the water. When it was done they washed off the bumper, closed the back, and drove away. I guess the pig was going to be someone’s dinner.

We stopped for lunch about 2:00 at a beach along the Timor Sea, 250 miles from Australia. The beach was full of locals. As soon as we got out of the car a group of men sat down nearby to watch us eat. I guess Westerners are rare on this remote beach. We watched the teens play “shirts and skins” soccer on the beach … Richard said, “Some things are universal.” I walked down to the waves; the sand was powdery-soft and the water warm. The local children seemed truly fascinated by us, though they were shy: They would run or hide if we approached or turned our cameras on them. The kids followed us from a distance as we walked down the beach. I got some truly priceless photos and by the end of our visit they trusted us enough to let us give them what was left of our liter of Coca-Cola.

If you are not used to mountain roads I recommend you take motion sickness tablets before you leave for Soe. They took those mountain curves quite fast. We didn’t arrive until after dark. Our hotel-keeper offered us a “deluxe room” for 400,000 rupiahs a night (about $44), or a “standard room” for 250,000 a night (about $27). The standard room consists of two twins or a queen bed, a TV on a desk and a sink, with an en suite bathroom; the deluxe includes a huge waste-of-space bathroom with a tub on an elevated platform. So as not to have to change rooms the next day, Dan and I took a standard twin room and pushed the beds together. All available rooms were on the 3rd floor; the stairs weren’t finished, the handrails weren’t completely in place, but the rooms were ready for guests. How different from America.

Dinner at a local restaurant: Two big bowls of white rice, 10 skewers each of beef and pork satay, a delicious green swiss chard-like vegetable, fried chicken, fried shrimp, and two other plates of vegetables-and-meat in sauce that I can’t remember, plus 8 drinks. We fed everyone for a total cost of about $17.