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India Round-the-World/John 3 of  7

India Round-the-World, July 2 - November 8, 1971

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4. [[4PM, 8/11]] Wake and have good sex and down for breakfast, careful that the check we sign is what we ate, to avoid the awful fuss of the other $3 apiece breakfast, and back to the room while John gets a typewriter brought up for letters. Then we sit down and coincidentally BOTH start with close to $2240 spending money (+$1860 plane ticket, that makes this a $4100 trip for each!) and we've both spent just $750, and that's 1/3 of our budget in just 1/4 the time! We talk it around and around and I even suggest we cut the trip short, but John insists we have to cut expenses by 50% to come out even, and I don't even HAVE to ask him if he wants to borrow money, because I said it before and he absolutely refused, saying I have much more money and earning power than he does and he simply has to make do with less. We go again and again and there's nothing I can say to him, except that I decide to write to Rita to send me a check for $1000 in Rangoon when I get there about the first of September. Also wrote 147-149 from 8:40 to 9AM, but then John wants to type so I settle onto the bed and read most of "The Rolling Stones," probably finishing it on the plane later that day. John had a couple of letters to mail and I wanted to buy stamps, so after breakfast we also went over to the post office and I bought one of each stamp with the extra cash I got from the bank, and I figure $50 should be MORE than enough, but surprisingly they have a $5, $10, and even a $20 stamp, unusual to have over a US$3 stamp in such a small country, even England having only a one-pound stamp with is $2.40, and only the US having a $5. Forget to take the envelope down, however, and I pack it all together and take it down with the airmail letter to Rita at 11:35 and sure enough the place is closed from 11:30 to 1:45, so I go around the back to get the package weighed and find it'll cost $1 for surface mail, and then upstairs to the telegraph office for the stamps and then back DOWNSTAIRS to give the package to the people since it won't fit through the slot in the front door. Back to the room at 12:15, not quite enough time, and pack very quickly to get downstairs at 12:30 for John to pay the bill (and both the $5 AND the replacing two for $5 breakfasts were on the bill), and there's the waiting truck to take us to the airport. Jounce along over the rough ride in the smooth back seat, and we're into the airport way before 1 and the flight is at 2. Read a bit and fume that the seats aren't assigned, then get to the gate to find we should have been stamped through immigration, but no one told us about it. Back for stamping and the parade's started to the plane, and get on the back while John gets the two front seats on the right, so I'm up to him and we take off VERY very slowly and soar out over the sea, with most of the rest of the island of Borneo on our left and greenish shoals on our right, along with many other islands. Have the snacks for lunch (John started day bay saying, "no lunch," but by noon he was starved and went out shopping for a can opener and some mackerel made in Communist China, saying he was going to have more lunches from cans to save money. We have snacks and read papers and look out at incredible clouds forming and he piques me by asking "What are you thinking about when we start bucking headwinds" and I snap "None of your business," then relent later to say that I was fretting about the flight. The trip is two and a half hours, and we seem to be getting more time changes than we need. Clouds pile up as they usually do and I'm hating the flight, feeling very nervous, but we're again in sight of land and we come lower and lower through great cloud masses to see canals and rivers and farmlands below, and we must be over southern Malaysia, because we cross a strip of water and are over an island, but from our window we see nothing of the city. Land and lug our baggage over to Garuda counter to reconfirm our flight to Djakarta tonight and to Jogja tomorrow, and he DOES confirm them, and then it comes up that the DJA-JOG IS a continuation of a morning flight, but they have no room on it. Fret and a guy comes up and says HE'S trying to leave TONIGHT and would cancel his seats tomorrow, and tonight's flight is full. We fuss back and forth with poor travel guy until things are squared away and the Irishman who switched with us says, "You guys made me so happy I'd like to give you a present," and he plunks a plastic vial filled with a brownish leafy substance on the counter, taking it from his leather pipe pouch. John says he doesn't want to carry it, since it means jail, so I pocket it, knowing we'll have to get rid of it by the time WE leave Singapore tomorrow morning. Long trek back to where we get a cab and John had told guy to CANCEL the Raffles reservation when called to find we had NO mail waiting for us, and then I went into an incredibly hot and sticky phone booth (getting a long distance one first, then not knowing what a dial tone was, not being able to dial, and getting hotter and hotter and more and more exasperated), trying to get Paul's phone number, but he hasn't any, and then get back the Raffles people to find the DOUBLE room is $65 and the SINGLE room is $45, and John STARTED by saying he wouldn't stay in the Raffles because it was too expensive, but in an agony of anger and frustration I said I would be willing to pay the SINGLE rate, since I was determined to stay there ANYWAY, so he need only pay the single/double DIFFERENTIAL. Finally he agreed he would give me $7US and I would pay the rest, WHATEVER it was. Taxi driver says he could CERTAINLY get a good clean single for $6 and John smugly said "I thought I could" and settles back in his seat. Traffic is heavy on the broad highways and we pass many ships in the harbor and great stadiums and monuments a-building. Can see no real built-up center in the town, but the map shows that Raffles is in the center. Pass the great monument and pull up in front of the white elephant that looks more like a French Riviera casino than an English hotel and doorman welcomes us and reception manager shakes hands with us and welcomes us in, and we're shown to---no, NOT a suite, we insist---a huge sitting room with dark old furniture in humid non-air-conditioned gloom, with a cold bedroom off to one side, a second ENORMOUS room, taking a whole half a wing. Say this is DEFINITELY too much, and they say they have a $55 room. Down through stairs and corridors to a smaller, though still huge, dark room that looks like it's in a basement but isn't, with torn bedspreads on the sad lumpy swaybacked beds. We say OK, and our luggage is moved down. Wait 15 minutes ludicrously for towels, and I roam baronial halls, lounges like football fields, restaurants like ship ballrooms, and a huge pool in a courtyard and shops on an enormous scale. This must be the BIGGEST old white elephant in the world. John's burnt because of the towels. Out and walk the very English esplanade and see the huge busy harbor and try the Victoria Theater for Malay Cultural Night, but they're sold out. Across old iron bridge over the junk-filled Singapore River, lined with restaurants, and along Raffles Place, through closing Change Alley and another arcade, where John buys shoes, and through very English streets to a trishaw that SAYS $2 for Mount Farber (Faber), then leaves us off at a nearby restaurant and says $2 for EACH. We finally give him $1f when he looks ready to KILL us. We're near Chinese sector, so we go down lousy crowded streets with INCREDIBLY old-looking shuttered concrete second and third stories, buy fresh pineapple dipped in local dirty water, look at the kids and old people and salespeople and taxis, and get to Sego Street but can see no death houses, only vegetable and fruit shops, hotels and restaurants. Catch a cab for the long ride to the top of Mt. Faber and leave cab go, look over lights over beer and fresh lichees, then I stroll to other park to other lights and we're 9990 miles from NYC, then back and he's "dead with fatigue and wants to go to bed without eating." He's concerned over money and sleep, and I give runner $4 to get cab and we ride down, when John changes his mind and says he'll join me for eating, and we eat in Queen Elizabeth Walk and the eating is good and we have Mie Goreng, egg and bean sprouts, and then tired to the hotel at 9, to talk lengthily to 11, I trying to tell him I have some wants TOO, and though I give in to HIM (even when he might not know it) he seems never to give in to me. We lay and talk and I'm dead tired to bed at 11PM.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5. Alarm rings at 6:15, but I was awake at 5, cursing the hard bed. John's, sadly, was even harder and we both hope that this hotel had better be the worst. Shower and shave and pack and get to the front desk just before 7, and I say no to an $8 bar bill for Mr. Drexler, but a $1.65 charge slips by, but I'm happy for the EXPERIENCE of the Raffles. Lovely old lady and I chat while she pays her bill and then we're into a cab which is unfortunately unmetered so we raise a stink when he charges us $4 when the fare FROM the airport was only $3, but he says he's a hotel cab and we don't bother to argue. Into airport to find that our flight to Djakarta is confirmed but our continuation to Jogja isn't. John explodes at girl and I calm him down and the same guy comes in that took us last night and then SHE and HE argue about the system, and we fuss and fume while I insist that we have to be confirmed (and dispose of the plastic vial: we had no way to smoke it, John wanted to drink it, but when it hit the water the smell was so vile that he flushed it down the toilet three or four times and I washed out the vial, and "casually" dropped it into a wastebasket at the airport). After long hassle and checking with people we get passes one and two for Jogja, confirmed, and we're into waiting room to undergo rigid scrutiny from obvious US GIs returning to Vietnam and hating us for our freedom. Awful made-up woman irks John and is staying at the Bali Beach Hotel, and there are some cute things walking around too. Try twice for seats and we get the wrong flights and then Garuda assigns at random and I say "I want right" and she says it IS right and they're the second pair of seats on the LEFT side of the plane. DAMN them. I have "Assignment in Eternity" with me to read, but can't take my eyes off the window. AGAIN there's a half-hour time change, but it's only an hour and a half flight. There are small islands almost constantly out the left window, and the "preferred" right seems cloud-obscured over the main bulk of Sumatra. Water is very calm and again the clouds get thicker toward the end, and I curse them but feel easier about flying than I did yesterday, telling John that, too. We have a rather good breakfast of omelet and toast and cheese, and for once I'm hungry and calm enough to appreciate the food, rather than just methodically clearing it off the plate. The islands get fewer as we approach Java, and we fly low over large arrays of fishing platforms in the sea and even larger numbers of sailing boats with sails JUST like the Egyptian dhow! Fly low over the perfectly flat city of tile roofs and land at the airport being told that we have to pass through customs there, since Jogja doesn't have them! I wondered if THIS could be one of the reasons they wanted to break our flights in Djakarta. When we got ON the plane there were special treatments when "our agent" saw us and ushered us in through the FRONT door, and here at Djakarta we were PERSONALLY escorted to the waiting room, asked to describe our bags and told most graciously to wait. John bought some Compari at the duty-free shop and I looked for a razor but couldn't find one. Look at Bali wood carvings and few people, and I read a bit and go to the john and then our baggage comes in, correctly selected, and we go through customs after REMINDING them that that's why we're THERE, and don't even get asked to OPEN them. Hastily BACK to the ship, again with all kindnesses, and we feel like VIPs indeed. Thankfully have no trouble keeping the same seats, though someone who's invalid in the back forces some poor guy forward into the last empty seat in the plane. The hour's flight to Jogja is beautiful because of the green diverted streams and miles and acres of straight canals laced by a few very twisty streams and oxbow lakes, and then the clouds set in, to be pierced by seven perfectly formed volcanoes in the green fields. Fly low over the southern coast, oddly enough, and duck under the low clouds to skim over neatly tailored fields interspersed with the palm groves that completely encircle each house in every little village compound. Everything is man-size and very neat, and Jogja is quite spaced out and suburban looking in the dusty light. Into the airport to wait about ten minutes before anyone is even THERE, then check our flight to Den Pasar finally and find there's no record of our hotel reservation here, even though it was made TWICE through Garuda, once in Hong Kong, once in Singapore. Since there's a free bus to the Ambarrukmo Palace Hotel, we decide to take it, and I put our hand baggage on board while I wait for our bags. A college student has latched onto us, and we tend to brush him off, but he persists, saying he's cheaper than the other tours, and can rent a car or jeep cheaper than the others, and we talk on more and more and finally, getting cheaper and cheaper, decide to rent a MOTOR scooter from his student organization, for what sounds like 400 Rp a day, but turns out to be 1500 per day. In bus to hotel with many others and pull the "Oh, you means there's NO reservation for us?" bit while listening to the four-man gamelan thrumming away in the spacious lobby. There's a flurry of some Texans and it looks like we might HAVE a room for only $15, when the reception manager says "But we also have private homes that you can stay in," we pause, undecided, "for $8 a night, including breakfast with the family," and we say we'll take it. He writes an address on the card and the student says he'll get a trishaw for us, and he now has a friend to help him and we pair off in the pedicabs with the luggage and begin the 10km tour of the city of Bicycles and Universities, getting filled in on sex films and history and only 100 Rp for each ride. Into the prow-roofed house and kindly people and large high-ceilinged bedroom and shared Indonesian bath of perfectly clean tile, and we say we'll take it. Our lovely student says he'll get his own personal Lambretta to us ASAP, and we're VERY happy with our new room and shower and unpack and get out at 1:30 and try hilariously to ride, and we take off for Prambanan. Mistake the road for Kalasan and go off on a long dusty exercise past happy waves, kids who laugh madly as we try to start our cycle after stopping (and I think I BREAK my next-to-little toe in a scrape for balance), little villages and fields and plowing and planting and lovely views, and back to main road at 3 for Prambanan, THEN see the baroque tower of Kalasan at the right. Pay to get in and look at little kids and bat-dropping-filled smelly ruins, but from the first it's impressive, particularly the inner-pyramid of lovely open space. Out to cycle and find the road to Sana, and it's smaller and squatter, more complete, and then to the spires and shops and crowds of lovely Prambanan. Buy a book that's not very good, and wander and wander the great carvings and ruins. To the top of a wall to watch the sullen sunset very early at 5:30, then compare notes with the enchanted John before going to the ticket booth to wait for the tickets due at 6, and at 6:30. Fidget while John waits at the 750 window, talking to the Thai-speaking people from Massachusetts, and get G10 and 11, quite perfect, from the Nitour remains. Around the back to find a candle-lit French-filled place for gado-gado, and it's so HOT and PEPPERY that I can hardly get the TASTE of it, and the warm beer actually tastes hot in temperature because of the ruined buds of the tongue. Hear the rehearsal of the microphones and panic, but get to our seats to find it not yet started. Gamelan, 35 strong, enters and bows, and the grand parade comes on, and I'm enchanted! Lovely stately warriors in Chinese Opera makeup and the wide-footed high-kneed warrior steps, and girls in tight tunics demurely carrying their incense. The gamelan is magical, the costumes and makeup flawless, the finger motions are in some cases just simply UNREAL. One guy had me gasping and poking John, just TOO great. I was sorry I'd forgotten my binoculars, but the SWEEP was lovely. The audience, however, was a different matter. Kids screamed, every adult chattered a full tilt with their neighbor, and everyone flashed and clicked and whirred with their cameras. Do away with the audience and it would be a transcending experience. It lasted just five minutes over the two hours, but the last half hour was rather tedious. Wait a bit for traffic to calm down, then retrieve our scooter for the 15 Rp parking space (they'd moved it, to our fright), and onto the dark roads. John drove to the hotel, where we had to get directions to where we were staying since we'd forgotten to note it, and I drove the rest of the way, my shoulders stiff and aching behind the neck from the tension of riding in the dark on a scooter that seemed determined not to start, and then not to stop once it got going. Back to the home, thankfully, at 10:45, and talk with the lovely old woman who'd been to NYC before, and we get in for another shower, and get to bed, happy, at 11:15, this DECIDEDLY a better day than yesterday.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6. [[9/12, 3:50PM]] Wake at 3 with an enormous pressure to shit, and into the john for a crap that feels as peppery coming out as it felt going down the first time, get back to bed to sleep and wake at 6 with ANOTHER gado-gado shit of painful bent and back to bed again. Up for a shower and breakfast of good eggs, even though they're cold, and toast and coffee and orange juice, greatly watered and sweetened but still tasty. WORDS ARE TOTALLY UNIMPORTANT! [[8/13, 8:25AM]] [But of course that doesn't work either. I went through all sorts of thoughts yesterday, and the extreme one of simple STOPPING seemed very appealing, but as soon as I MADE the decision I began regretting it, feeling guilty about it---what if sometime I WANTED to write? And then I thought to give up reading, too, and that REALLY put me uptight against the wall. But then last night I smoked, and instead of developing a trip I went through stages of childishness until I finally fell fast asleep, with the light ON, yet, so I MUST have been tired. Then on waking up this morning, it was clear that I should only devote a MINIMUM space, even one page, at least, maybe three at most, to each day I'm really not IMPRESSED to write, then fill out the bare bones when I TRANSCRIBE the notes, so that at least I'll have ONE typed page per day, yet INCORPORATING details. This ALSO solves the problem I'm feeling more and more; that is, that I don't have any time to write what I'm thinking NOW, I'm always rushing to catch UP. I definitely wanted to record conversations such as "Good evening, where are you going?" "Very well, thank you, and how are YOU?" but felt I had no TIME to do it. But then I decided that the TEN pages per day is really an ARBITRARY decision, and THREE pages per day is MORE than one typed page of 360 words, since each of THESE pages has about 140 words. So I immediately feel BETTER, and decide NOW to do just THREE pages at LEAST per day, giving me the chance to catch up quickly and give more VARIETY to the number of pages in a day. Also, yesterday was very frustrating on [also, I'm getting bogged down in backlists and writing-time lists, and I want to simplify THAT, too, but I STILL feel I want to record "the bare bones" of the day, and these pages seem right for a SECOND approximation, with the hope that MORE days will be more] a planning point, since the wrapping and the post office were so frustrating, then we have the 15 Rp parking fee hassle with the Bali Beach Hotel, and find that MSA won't check with JAL or Marpati on PART of their flight, and Garuda, representative for JAL, won't do THEIRS until we check with Marpati, which is in Den Pasar and they refuse to call them. Then we get to the beach and find that the reef is far out against which the waves break, and that the enclosed shelf is perfect for snorkeling and we don't have our equipment with us. THEN the cockfight to the death is a tiny bit bloody, and depressing. THEN we stop to look at the people in the Bali Beach Hotel and there are some of the sublimely beautiful "international gigolo" fellows: tall, well-muscled, lovely rested faces with perfect hairdos, magnificent tans, and an open investigation of YOU as their possible next source of income. Seeing all their lovely international muscles without the GHOST of a chance to touch or feel them, this is also depressing. And looking at the incredibly rich people who can AFFORD them, and afford to go anywhere they wish by any MEANS they desire, rather disregarding how long or short a time they will take, how long or short a time they will stay, or how expensive or cheap the means of travel is, or how many people or how few are going. I'm again consumed, not with jealousy of THEIR money, but envious of them because I don't have MORE than they do. So there are a half-dozen factors in the malaise I feel when I join John, who hasn't been in swimming either, and try to write. Then the wind is blowing and riffling the pages, and the table is not the right height, and I just don't FEEL like writing [now I'm writing on my KNEES, sitting against the outside of the Barong compound on STONE, eager to write even though the conditions are WORSE than those yesterday. And at home I can get as much as TWO weeks behind without having trouble catching up, but here each DAY takes at LEAST 45 minutes, so the 8 days I'm currently behind represent 6 hours of work, and I just don't see myself as HAVING that time. [And right at this instant I'm causing confusion among the tiny hawkers around the pavilion. With no fresh tourists coming in, they come close to me without saying anything, thankfully respectful of my writing and concentration, but they sit very close to me, watching closely for me to pause or look up and then, holding their wares in their hands, sitting down not six inches from me, watching, waiting to start their pitch, but I keep writing and they just as silently look for someone else to bother, pick up their goods and move away, not having said a word] very good. The nephew of the doctor's widow comes with us to get gas for us and shows us where we can get the gudug that's so good, and then we're on our way to Borobudur. Road is long but we have confidence in our scooter until it starts bucking, running away, and stopping suddenly, and John decides the motor is being strained and overheated and we should never go beyond third gear. The approach to this Borobudur is unimpressive, and the first view is from below, and since it ISN'T a towering structure it merely looks small and squat, so we have to mount the first terrace to get an idea of its intricacy. (see p. 2261-2) Write notes on the book that I bought that I read aloud to John, and the transition stage particularly appeals to me. It's warm and infested with tourists and not even as great looking as Prambanan. Down to shops for beer and look at the salesmen and their humming tops that caused the eerie tone I heard from the top, then stop at Mendhut for a lovely exterior of a dancer with beautiful webs sending off different colors in the slanting sun. Back into town without eating, stopping to look at a few of the many stone-carver's places, and shower and tell the woman to have Indonesian food ready for us in the evening. Dash to Ambarrukmo Palace at 6:15 to find the tickets gone already but the bus still waiting, get two cushions for ease and ride out in a crowded bus, and it IS a distance. In at 6:30 and get tickets F15 and 16, even better than yesterday and go around for some sato soup to still the hunger, and WITH binoculars the play is even better, particularly the large dark brown eyes of Rawana, enormously expressive and painfully choreographed so that the overall effect of his character is great physical beauty, wisdom and grace of movement, and an unearthly precision. Rama, the hero, was too insipidly feminine to be appealing, with his too-weak face and pretty-boy makeup. Out to the bus to find it crowded, but the driver gets out and about six of us push in anyway and we're standing in door wells and squatting and sharing seats and the ride back is even slower, worried about balance and tipping over at every half-fast turn. Back to the house and have a lovely meal with chicken and coconut, and chat with the woman about seeing the older capital of Thailand, and it seems we have enough information to spend a couple of weeks there. Charmed by the meal and the woman and get in for a final shower and get into bed, ready for the train to Surabaya tomorrow, all arranged by the lovely nephew who's always ready to help. [Decide to try it with FOUR pages per day, so that the HEADING rate can go from 5 to an EVEN 2].

SATURDAY, AUGUST 7. [[9:15AM, 8/13]] Wake at 6 and go to the john before the alarm rings at 7:15. In for breakfast and pay off the student with a 500 Rp tip, and give the nephew the same for his great services. He comes to the train station with us on his scooter as we go by trishaw, and I look at all the fabulously folk-art painted fenders. He buys tickets and takes us to the very car, helping us put our luggage down, and then only leaving. Train leaves even BEFORE 8:30 and we're through flat farmlands, one boy of about ten waving at us totally nude, and the sunlight glints off the golden stream flowing from between his legs as he cheerfully waves at the train. Talk at some length with the pleasant couple across from us, but we have trouble making ourselves understood on the matter of how LONG the cemeteries REMAIN with the bodies, since we figure the crowded island will become one large graveyard. Ride and ride, and I get down to reading when we get bored, and John finally gets into "Man Who Sold the Moon" and then at 1 we decide to eat, sitting next to a French couple who flew to Singapore on a chartered jet whose fellow passengers we encounter through Java and Bali. Have Nias Rawa, or something, rather bland and tasty, with furry brown hairy coconut-husk type stuff that's very odd. They're scheduled for bull fights on Madura and we ask if we can trail along to get the information. OK. Back to our seats to find the couple gone, and the scenery is the same except for the tall volcanoes that parade outside our windows for hours at a stretch. Finish "Assignment in Eternity" and start on "The Star Beast" during the long ride, and we get into Surabaya at the ONLY stop (not the first stop, as we were told) and there's a horrible din of people shouting for taxis and we find the French, who say the information is at their hotel, the Wisma Pringadoni, and we get a cab for 500 ("that's what they're paying, sir") to follow them, and find to our amusement that their LETTER from NITOUR, CONFIRMING their reservations, is wrong. The military seems to have taken over and they're moved to another hotel. It's getting close to 4:30, and we're told that Tretes is 80 km from town, and the ride will take two hours! There MAY be a bus or train, but we don't want to RISK being late, so they START at 4000 and come down to 2500 for the trip. Off through the flat, boring, but nicely residential, with SOLID spacious buildings, town and into the crowded country, traffic jam and all, and despair getting there when we see a sign that Tretes is only 50 km away, and we advance on the tall volcano and its sister cone very quickly, seeing the sun set at 5:30PM into the rosy haze of a dust bowl, and get to the hotel Dirgahaju about 6. Expect a rather small crummy place, but it's high on a hill with nothing above it, expansive and spread out with an outdoor pool and dining room, huge four-compartmented swimming pool, then up more steps through flowering bushes to small cottages of four each, and they only have twelve rooms for a vast amount of public space. Arrange to eat after and get down to the Ramayana on a crowded cab for 80 each, but the performance is not nearly as good as Prambanan and photographers clamber over moat-side until our clapping DOESN'T disturb them, so we join them, crouching in knee-aching squat during the 1 1/2 hour play, including the second and part of third day from Prambanan, with red BODIES nice flames and the only high part. Back to a lavishly meated meal that we think is a la carte, and to bed in noise at 11PM. [[[And now, to adhere to my ideas of having a COMPLETE table of contents of the trip, which means that each day MUST take two pages, I have to put in FILLER: this from the back of "The Rolling Stones," which I found only today when I decided I'd NEED filler, and this is an observation written on the train ride from Kota Kinabalu to Beaufort in Borneo on August 3: Now I know WHY there's nausea from riding backward. As in any motion, the eyes get ACCUSTOMED to the motion, and when the motion STOPS, the eyes TRY TO CONTINUE the motion. So you're sitting backwards, at one g of gravitational force, APPEARING to move forward, so your stomach should be held BACK by the motion, but it's NOT, so the one g feels like LESS and you're nauseated. Then the train RESTARTS and it ACTUALLY becomes less than one g, and you feel even WORSE.]]] [[[This from the back of "Assignment in Eternity," written on the day I've just finished transcribing, August 7: "Women in the fields who look longingly at passing train---the limit of their wishfulness. Planes are so high and so distant as to be out of the range of their dreams completely. Out of this WORLD.]]]

SUNDAY, AUGUST 8. [[9:30AM, 8/13]]] Up to the horrible din of the music from the pool area, and John goes down to the pool, ripping his bathing suit on the slides. At 7AM: I say, "Hello," and the servant answers with a cheery, "Good EVENING, sir!" I'm enervated by the music, even though the breakfast is pleasant and we take a short trek through the woods beforehand. I numbly sit and read for much of the time, and write 149-152 from 8:45 to 9:20, then read some more, then write 152-157 from 11:45 to 1:15, rather annoyed when lunch that I SPECIFICALLY ordered for "one o'clock" comes up at noon, interrupting my writing plans. New tenants come in and out, all playing their radios loudly and staying INSIDE their rooms in the best "American-bored" style. [I'm so happy my BLACK pen ran out, with its leaks that had to be wiped off on the cruddy Evergreen Hotel sheet that kept my writing schedule.]] I finish reading "The Star Beast" and begin "Tunnel in the Sky," then write 157-162 from 4PM to 4:50, and then down to dinner on the early side in order to get to the souvenir shop before the Ramayana performance at 8. [Forgot, yesterday coming BACK from Ramayana we get approached on the street by a guy who went into a shop to get a translation of a number and came back to say he'd take us to Tretes for "a hundred." Get up to Tretes and pay him and have him RUSH AFTER us, saying that he'd MEANT to say "a thousand." We don't even bother to talk about it, going so far as to put down another 60 to bring it up to the fare we paid DOWN, but he hung around while we ate and even came up to hang outside our window. Then to top it off, this morning the father was back to say that the trip to Surabaya tomorrow at 6AM is STILL on, and the contretemps from last night is forgotten.] Oh, in the afternoon we took a walk across the stream up to the falls, very nice ones, where I fell on a wet rock and got my boots soaked, and also laughed at the old man who built a house and a gate across the path and tried to get money from us for passing that way, and then we walked up the OTHER road in the hot sun [[[6AM, 8/14]]], besieged by tanned wrinkled men trying to get us to rent their ponies, beckoned by saleswomen to buy their wares, and shouted at by shiny boys in some sort of private swimming pool on a hillside. We walk way to the east, trying to find a way back, laughing with boys riding on cunning wooden coasters, but decide to go back the way we came, sweating and tired in the hot sun. John buys a coconut head, a rattan basket and was shopping for a batik when they said they didn't cash traveler's checks. Out to festival and this time there's only one photographer going onto the apron halfway through, but even with binoculars there's not much to watch and we leave before it's over. Sat before in the bar for a beer and John bought other pieces of material, while I watched a family of tiger cats. Refuse the same guy for 500 Rp, and finally get a cab going up for the proffered 150. To the top and to the desk to find my passport and two $20 traveler's checks gone from my jacket pocket! Down the hill, hardly daring to breathe, and find they'd fallen out of my pocket when I shut the car door, the two checks just about to be blown away from the passport. Triumphantly back to the hotel and pay the bill with an ENORMOUS feeling of relief at my incredible luck, thank GOD. There were other hotels on the hills, but everything was MADE to fleece the tourists, and the general reaction overall was that it was interesting to see this section of Java ONCE, but there's no real need to ever return.

MONDAY, AUGUST 9. Wake in the dark at 5 just before the alarm rings, and we finish packing and are ready to go at 5:25, and the driver and his son are there as well as the room boy who practically constantly attended us, and we give him an additional 300 Rp tip which he professionally accepts by thanking us without even checking to see how much we GAVE him. Cool down to Pandaan until the sun rises at 5:45, coloring the volcano peak red, and down through VERY busy streets [reminds me, coming up the road I saw a magnificent body pedaling a taxi, head thrown back in effort, showing a beautiful masculine chin-line against the sky, dark eyes narrowed in effort, lovely black hair curly and crisp, and felt frustrated sadness that this BEAUTY is condemned to a lowly unappreciated existence in a jerky Java town] [and then the note in the back of "Tunnel in the sky": "There is material for 100 slides of trishaw fenders, 100 slides of bicycle loadings, 100 slides of trishaw loadings, 100 slides of man-with-crossbar loadings, 100 slides of woman-carrying-on-head loadings, which would be taken with great care for shape and balance and color and form, and shown very quickly, so that it might even appear that the same PERSON was carrying and wheeling the different loads, giving a surreal blur to the things being carried, summing up the street traffic in Java.] to get to the airport as planned at 6:30. Old Chevy has to have outrider on right to check passing on roads, where the steering wheel should be on the right, pushes to start, and going under the hood to switch to reverse. But there IS no flight this am OR today ANYWHERE. They try to say that the schedule's changed, but they quiet down when the NEW schedule has the SAME flight. We fume but there's nothing to do but demand a free ride to the bus station. Some confusion when we enter the Bolehole entrance and we were told Woronkrom, but there's a bus leaving for the ferry at Ketopah at 7:30, and we're over to the stand to investigate cookies and palm-leaf wrapped rice snacks and coffee, and get refused for handling money with my LEFT hand, accepted from the right. Detour to the incredibly smelly john, then back to the bus to our "reserved" seats on the right so as to be out of the sun and we take off. Watch the village pass with their nudes bathing in the streams, and we leave Surabaya at 7:30, with the next stop being Sidoh in 23 km and Besuki at 154 km at 11:30. The view gradually pales and I finish "Tunnel in the Sky" and start "Time for the Stars" at some point during the bus odyssey. The road alternates between villages and town and farmland, and 100 km out there comes a knocking from the front end that stops the bus, and after 10 minutes sitting in the increasing heat, we're told to leave the large comfortable bus and pile into another, older bus on the same line, overcrowded even sitting 3-2 in the narrow seats, and John and I and about four others have to stand in the aisle which is narrower than my hips. Pause at lunch for a beer and bananas and talk about my fashionable bells with chatty kids pushing away the peddlers, and back on to left aisle seat to watch the strange waterlogged coastline of East Java with its forest groves buried under tides lapping at the very road. There are high mountains to the right, and about 2PM we can see the hill of western Bali, and we bumble along hot dusty road to get to Ketepan, just north of Banguangi, and out at the deserted ferry office, piling our trunks down from their straps at the top of the bus, and find that the next ferry leaves at 4. Across to a shop for hot gado-gado and warm orange drink, and talk to two Chinese brothers, Harry and Freddy, on a bus of medical students riding 24 hours from Semarang to Den Pasar. We find no hotels in Gillimanut, so John agrees to ride bus to Hegara to find a place. Bus offloads noisily, and spare tire had to be put back on, so it's 5:30, after sunset, but this time we pile in three to the seat again for the ride. Talk about sex and travels and Pantasila and agi-no-moto (which is only Accent) and the race and women problem in the US and the Two-China policy and Nixon and Vietnam and schooling and tourists, and we're passed Negara and John OK's going through to den Pasar. Talk and talk and one guy gives me his photo and girl gives us shell necklaces, and we're over-tired by bumpy roads over narrow bridges under construction that scarcely hold the bus, not made safer by knowing the ONE driver drove the whole twenty-four hours. Students doze and talk and sing, nodding heads and arms and legs against each other in the most appealing way. Into Den Pasar at 9:30 and out on a corner, I search for taxi at Hotel Bali to take us to Hotel Shinta and they have a room for $4 a night, but next to generator and roosters, so I wear ear plugs after I return from going off for an AWFUL sate for dinner and Balinese DRAMA in Kesimah until 11:30.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 10. Wake early to the continuous crow of roosters and have good sex, then out for breakfast of three slices of bread and four little bowls: sugar, apricot jam, bits of chocolate, and the same brown shredded substance that we find on Friday to be shredded dried BEEF, called abon. Send a fellow to rent us a motor scooter for sightseeing and get settled into a new room just off the hall away from the barnyard and the generator, small, but WITH an electric outlet for my shaver. Then, after shaky test drives up and down the road, off to find the Wesleyan Gamelan school in Ubud. Get lost and have to stop to ask directions in a couple of places and pass through Mas after stopping at a random temple to look at the carvings and merus and split gates and bells in the tower. John bought a garuda statue fast this AM for $21 and NOT his trousers. In Mas two or three paper towers and black plush bulls greet our eyes, and we hear there's going to be a cremation of a king and three other people tomorrow, and we look around at the funeral gamelans a bit before continuing on toward Ubud. Stop at an art gallery in the rain, but the prices are high and the quality of the western-directed smoothness is too low. Across to wood carvings, and buy two for Mom and Rita for 1100, after starting with US $4 apiece. Back toward Ubud and look for a restaurant at noon, and decide on the Hotel Memtir rijstaffel for 900 Rp above John's protestations, though he says he wants a good meal. There's chicken and beef and pork and heart and eggs and vegetables and rice and noodles in seven dishes with the meal, a sweet custard and cashew fruit for dessert, as well as bananas and an orange apiece. French people all around again, particularly a thin short-suited fellow with a very attractive face. Continue to Ubud and to the top of the hill for Mrs. Blanco's private temple of nicely carved wood and stone, and I slip on the step and fall hard on my ass and legs. Down and around to another hotel and there's the gamelan, and we're invited to a rehearsal at 2PM, and they go on and on playing, and it's idyllic sitting in chairs under the roof in rain on the flowered slopes, listening to the 15 Americans on various gongs and drums and the strange crash of the cymbals that I hear for the first time. Out at 3:30 when I doze, stop at the cremation ground for tomorrow, and back to town to the Mandala shop, meet Robin and Jill and the fat fellow, buy a piece of batik for 850 with 7 colors and John buys a coconut carving and we're down to the Ketjak to find that it started at 5, not 6, and then review the 36-piece pink King's gamelan, the green kids where John joined in at the small place, and the non-uniformed but great-beated group in the "garage" of the northern one. No place to eat so we have gado-gado and fruit at a stand for only 60 Rp, and talk to another "dweller" in a lovely beard and bright eyes. There's a masked comedy in the king's palace, the priest goes back and forth sprinkling water, urinating in the ditch, leading prayers and offerers, tied pigs and chickens and geese squeal and chirp pitifully and everyone moves back and forth and explains things to us and there's high fraternity. We leave, tired, at 10 and pass a trance dance that we watch until WE fall into a sleepy trance, and back to the hotel COMPLETELY exhausted at 11PM, but John is happy to have found performances that AREN'T on the tourist's normal round, and his opinion of the possibility of the art remaining unspoiled on the island goes up, though if they put new roads in and publish new schedules, we don't know how long the island can hold out.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11. Up for sex and out for breakfast with a couple from Gilimanut who invite us to their "small home," and then out to the Barong and Kris Dance at Batabalan at 9. The barong is a winning monster who plays with his feet and tail as a baby pup would, and the whining son is replaced by howling dancers who push great daggers sideways into their breasts and there are awful marks of sores which are strangely gone when we go backstage for John to try on one of the masks to VERY funny effect. And they DID spill the blood of a decapitated baby chick. [8:10AM 8/14]] Then decide to bypass the trip to the post office in favor of continuing up to Mas and seeing what's being done on the cremation. Up and park near the Mandala shop and look in on the non-playing gamelans and then down the side road for the FOURTH gamelan, even smaller than the other three, and again an altar piled high with gifts and splotches on the ground that might be blood from offerings but which was more probably betel juice spittings. Out to the road again to see the children take up one of the smaller towers, running through the streets with a shout and a scamper, and other kids from the sides splashed up water in waves from the gutters, either as a joke or to cool off the straining bearers. They took off down the road as a living predecessor to the staid wheeled vehicles of the Gion Festival, and kept up a pace such that by walking at top speed I barely got in front of them by the time they pivoted with a shout and turned up the hill. The grounds are crowded with natives and tourists, and shops along the side with the kids and woman lined up in the shade like a distant gallery forming a living backdrop for the incredible scene. Bull after bull came up the hill until there was the tiny square surrogate for the child, an anomalous red dragon/lion/bull, and seven black bulls of various sizes and erections. The red bull had a drawing of startling pornography: a fat man feeding a woman a cock-like fish and pounding a stake into her cunt. Then the gamelans came in one by one, playing for all they were worth on gongs and drums slung from slings around their necks and suspended from poles, and with two in the grounds on opposite sides, the king's gamelan came on at an actual trot with a lively march tempo, followed by the towering nine-tiered funeral pagoda of the king, almost at a run, with three people riding on the sides, and I stood on the top platform in a dither of joy, tears of wonder filling my eyes, shivers running up and down my body, a supreme moment of exotic beauty and grotesquerie. I remain in an exalted state for a number of minutes, my head turning from side to side to take in all the wonder and glory of people in colorful clothing, shouting and playing children, tourists in outlandish robes and beards and cameras and runners going through the crowd, and finally all the bulls are hoisted into place, the ramp is put up to the tower, and the body is laboriously hoisted from the coffin in the tower BEFORE the top of the bull is cut off, so that stand and sweat on the creaking bamboo and shout warnings at each other. Some of the smaller bulls are set afire at once, and I clamber up on one turfed platform to see the body taken from the palm basket, where it was put when they dug it from the grave [[7AM 8/15]] that now lies open, unwrapped down to the brown dried flesh around the bony skull, and then covered it with ceremonial white cloths. Then came the offerings, batiks more beautiful than John saw in the shops, silk handkerchiefs and palm decorations, and pots filled with hot water which was spilled on with blossoms of frangipani or hibiscus, and then the pots were thrown to the ground, and if they were not broken with that, they were pounded with a bamboo pole, since they couldn't be used again. After layer upon layer of cloth, gifts, offerings and water were heaped on, a silver-papered coconut was placed over the top, possibly to symbolize the head, and then the top of the bull was put back on and secured by a bamboo pole tied to opposite supports of the bamboo canopy. Then offerings were heaped around the platform and the whole thing was set afire. All of the food had been taken away to be eaten later, so the offerings and the kindling stuffed underneath, also carried up from town in the parade, usually sufficed to make a hot fire, and the bull would go up in flames, except for the gold-trimmed head, and poles poking from beneath would find nothing to poke down from the body of the bull. Afterwards, even before the bull stopped smoking, it was pulled down and apart and the wood was discarded and the ashes were sifted for the charred fragments of bone, which were collected on a palm platter and then buried. The towers were set afire with the bulls, but they were toppled before the fire really got started, and the flames beaten out. The king's tower, however, was difficult to start and had to be relit a number of times, but finally a hot fire started and it shop up the structure, roaring, as up a chimney, causing everyone to scatter from the heat, and bits of flying fire flew from the top, and then it broke in the center and the top swayed down, then the unbalancing caused the whole thing to topple and the red flames and black smoke roared up stronger than ever. As a climax, in error, the bull was so hot that the canopy ABOVE it caught fire and blazed, too. John [[[[THIS IS THE FINISH OF BOOK TWO AND THE BEGINNING OF BOOK THREE]]]] had gotten very tired and hungry by 2:15 and had gone back to the cycle, so I walked back and found him lying there, and I wasn't terribly hungry for I'd eaten four bananas. Back to the hotel and John takes a nap while I write 162-167 from 3:55 to 4:45, and then feel like continuing to do 167-172 from 4:45 to 5:30, at which time John is up and we decide on the Segara Beach Hotel for dinner. [[3:45PM 8/15]] Ride out to Bali Beach Hotel and around the corner and down the road and there's only a Segara VILLAGE Hotel they say is the same. Into the nice tree and lantern filled open-air dining room and John orders fish and I have tjap-tjay goreng with pork, but the whole thing turns out more shrimp than any discernable meat. Who comes out but the French family, who lives there, and they jokingly tie napkins as bibs around our necks and they're going to Tandjung Sari to eat. Legong salesman comes up and sells us two 550 Rp tickets for the Sanur performance, and we eat and drink brem and get out to walk beach, which puzzles me since the surf breaks FAR out but the beach seems very wet in close to the beached fishing outriggers. Watch the awful strapping process for the flat-torsoed dancers and then out front to the two best seats of the twenty, and read about Sanur. Performance is pretty awful, but the first Legong dancer isn't TOO bad, and the French invite us to their cottage for tea, quieting suddenly when all hotel employees appear to be offering at their in-hotel temple, and they bring two cups, which John and I have, the wife goes to bed, I speak French about Paris and New York with Jean-Christophe, we exchange addresses (Jean-Christophe, Daniele et Alexandre TIC; 10, rue Royale, Paris 8, telephone 26-57080), then out at 10 for the ride home, getting tied up in the Drama festival at Kesimah, and back to the hotel to smoke a joint, and I'm so tired all I do is fall asleep from it (or is this the night John and I have sex---anyway, we DO the FIRST time I smoke.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 12. Up late and don't feel like writing, so we have sex again and shower and have breakfast. [Bali's Kuta Beach is a flop sexually---oh, there are two mixed couples which have sexy guys swimming nude, and the nude guitarist from Vermont passes some time with his apparently infinitely-folded cock, and we rode some nice body-surfing waves with a lovely nude who stayed fairly clear of us and put on white shorts and walked firmly away after he left the water, and the two Frisbeers from Boulder with long hair and little appeal, but hydrographically it was great, waves coming in two series: one close in, one far out, and later the water rushing back out to the west formed a lateral wave, with colliding wave fronts about four feet high when the two met. The sun was quite hot, but John bulled through the whole day in it, except at 4, when he went to "town" to find a cold beer.] Then, sadly, we decide we have to mail things, so pack up mesh bag and get to the post office to find it all has to be wrapped, and this after being told "No" in five banks, that they can't cash Barclay's traveler's checks. By chance our hotel manager is in the final bank, Negara Indonesia, and tells us to go to the Toko Timer for paper, and they manage to ferret out string and cord and paper and cardboard for everything and refuse payment except for a Touch-Me. To post office and amazed that my ENVELOPE costs 480 Rps, over three times as much as in Singapore, and I close my eyes after the LENGTHY battle over MY taking the responsibility for "something having happen" to break the solid wood, and John's heavy package is 2700, and he says he'll carry it along! Get stamps, but not all of them and devaluation causes problems with figuring. Out of the place TERRIBLY tired at noon, and we decide to follow up the Elim restaurant sign and have a GREAT meal of COLD beer, fried prawns and beef and vegetables for me, and the bill is something like 550 for GOOD food. Out finally to the Bali Beach Hotel for reservations and look at beach and reef far out and lovely boys around pool, and wait until 2 for the Garuda office to open, but they're NO help at all. In disgust back to the bike to find a 15 Rp parking stub that John explodes at while I stand grinning sourly, and out to Sanur again at 2:45 for three, then two, then one cockfight, none better or worse than the other, except the second was a draw, the French woman's guide told me about weight vs. spur-position while she recorded the sounds of the betting and the squacks of the dying cocks. John leaves, bored, and I join him for two glasses of beer which he drinks both of except for one oily sip for me, and I write page 172 at 3:50, then stop in a terrible funk. Wrote about THAT before. That lasted until we went back to the hotel to sit around a bit waiting for dinner time, and laughing at the 75 Rps quoted for postcards, even though I splurged on ten 75 rupee stamps for them. Then drive down toward Tandjung Sari and the motor goes, goes, then dies and stops and we can't start it, and the lights barely go on at all---the battery's dead. Try starting it by running, but that doesn't work. [[4:25PM 8/15---the sun's gotten caught in clouds, and the rays stream down from beneath and between to illuminate a stately file of singly and doubly sailed fishing boats going across the empty sea, and the colors fade from the hot yellow to the cooler brown and pink tones of twilight. The locals seem to turn out in force and the beach is dotted with family groups and larger, but still the salesmen don't quit: batik, coconut, drinks, wood carvings, even a shifty-eyed guy wordlessly showing me supposedly-gold rings from one hand. An Olympian group of well-muscled Balinese boys with bathing trunks or the tightest of short-shorts play soccer with a ball that comes very close to me, then the group passes. Shouting kids build stupas in the waves, to have them washed down to even shriller shouts. A window in the clouds at the north horizon permits a striking contrast of sails: dark in front with the sun behind, bright white to the right where the sun strikes the slanting sheets. Sails, far out, become triangular map-flags against the hazy purple of sunset. The far-right clouds are sullen bruise-red with the weight of darkness and sun, but the straight-out vista is old gold tinged with brown, touched with pink, and unnamed hazy color obscuring the pale blue of the sky.] [1:25, 8/20] Decide there's nothing to do [I have as flash of Somerset Maugham: here I sit in the dining room of the Suriwong Hotel, listening to the thunder cutting through the Simon and Garfunkel "Bridge over Troubled Waters" and "El Condor Paso," while the waitresses and guys chatter back and forth in Thai, and then they play "Cecilia" and I'm back in Washington dancing with limber-legged Art. Lovely memories. Here I sit in Bangkok writing of my memories of Bali, before flying off to Rangoon. Great!] but walk the bike over the dark roads to Tandjung Sari, through billows of thick smoke from the lime-curing kilns, and that's why the women were gathering shells at the beach. Order brem, much better than this afternoon, and have the best peanutty-chocolaty tasting satay yet, with an order of VERY dry fried rice that we really don't need, along with salad. Boy says the battery IS dead, and he'll rent us a cycle for half a day for $2, and TRUCK the dead bike to our hotel when he picks up his for tomorrow's business. We give him 1000 in gratitude, finish, and get off on his bike, getting back very tired at 10:30; smoke and sleep.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13. Up fairly late and have enormously prolonged, lovely sex and get out to breakfast and meet Penny Pank with whom we schedule a truck with the new hotel manager in the Shinto Hotel truck. Write 172-179 from 8:25 to 9:35AM while waiting. I ask to see Puri Puseh after we pass it, but not too late for [and they play the WHOLE Simon and Garfunkel album!] the Elephant Cave, and [[[NO, this is the ROCK CAVE, it's set into one of the most incredibly terraced, secluded valleys in Bali, Every inch of space is used, and there is set after set of waterfalls watering]]]] we go through the carved mouth into the inner sanctums and there's not much to see and we're back to the truck to see Penny off pricing things and John gets involved in pricing beer at something below 200 Rp. Onward to Gianjur and John and I BOTH wish they have reproductions from the great painted roofs of the Court of Justice, but the guide says it would just be too expensive to do. Yep, it takes money to make money, and there seems to be nothing more than the VERY few photos in the guidebooks, but the details of the astrology skirt, the common customs, the battle scenes, the hell, the heaven, all in great skill and patience and craft and "Bali-ness." Up to Besakih and the clouds are around the summit, and again we see lovely terraces and finally stop with a view of the sea and watch a stone carver, then up to the saleswoman for batik and fruit and slices of breadfruit, and we're into the temple with the required sashes furnished, and the merus are almost infinite in flat black fuzziness, of nine and seven, five and three and one roof, but only the bare bones of construction show inside, though there are ruins of palm and flower offerings everywhere. There are temples on every side, too, and the vistas go off on every side and we hear about the last eruption in 1963 that just came to the edge of the ancient temple. We stand and absorb the silence and the oldness of the place, then it's getting hot and Penny's finished with her shots and we're back to the car where she has fits over three oranges for 150 Rp. Down the road searching for a place to picnic and we stop at the stone cutters to find a restaurant a-building with a fine view, but the box lunch is ONLY four thick sandwiches filled thinly with the four BREAKFAST things, and I can eat all but one, but John and Penny have one and none, sip the HOT Seven-Up, and gorge on bananas. Back to the car and THEN to the rock caves in the incredible valley, and we're guided around to hovels and caves and tombs, and I race up three hundred stairs to shop, but the carved bones and horns are so large and lovely I don't have the heart to bargain: anyway, what would I DO with them? Depressed by what I COULD have if it were only possible to CARRY it all, but where would I DISPLAY it---and why? Into car, sad, and find we won't come close to Pedjung, but we DO, and back in Bangli we visit an old steep temple (without the bronze records) and we see a line of girls carrying offerings and follow son foot (followed by truck) to see an enclosure with about 800 men at a huge cock fight, and altar after altar HEAPED with baked-rice formed lattices and cakes and towers, and fruits and foods and flowers and woven palm leaves and lovely patterns of buttons and bones and ribbons and flowers, and loads of kids, too. Back dazed to car and back to hotel at 5, to shower and get out to John, whom we'd seen and smiled with, and he was with Gilbert in Patna's restaurant, and we have beer and fried noodles, great, and fried fish, tasty, and to the verandah surrounded by guys listening, so we're out on beach to all attack John, and John leaves in disgust, and I do John and try Gilbert but he pushes me away, and we smoke, avoid being arrested by beach patrol, and back and chat a bit and John drives back in anger while I feel VERY high and he doesn't blame me, since HE wanted John too. Bed at 11:30.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 14. Up at 6, unable to sleep longer, and decide I really want to finish the second book of writing, so I get out to the dining room and write 180-190 from 6-7:30AM, when I go back to the room to actually DO 190, and while John showers I number the pages of this THIRD book, feeling that I've now written OVER half of all I'll write on this trip! Out to breakfast and hear Penny talking about her tour TODAY, so I go over and say we'll be willing to share another truck with her, and she said HER guide will be better, and we plan it all out and get started at 8:15 and drive fairly directly to Tampasikring, where we're sorry more men aren't bathing nude in the waters, but after Penny leaves I think I see the erect member of one of the guys floating just under the water's surface and the bodies are nice to watch anyway. Older girls swim in shifts, and we're around to the enclosure in back: Marvel! The spring turbulents up through black volcanic sands which shift and move under the varying jets, forming an ever-changing picture of mud and sand swirls and patterns of flowers in the upwelling water. Fish swim back and forth and the water is marvelously clear and pure, and we enjoy story of Japanese who wanted to catch and eat a sacred fish and was found dead a few hours later. Back to Lake Batur and again besieged by kids that actually PAW their customers and I paw them back and shout "No" finally and they look hurt, and I'd rather have shouted at their PARENTS. Then there's a puff from the side-cone and a second later a steam-vent roar---our FIRST action! A few more smaller puffs come out and we can see actual ROCKS thrown out by the smoky blasts. Incredible! The villagers, of course, quite ignore it---happens all the time. Back in and down to the hotel where we pick up scooter about 1, and we go in to eat at Elim, great sweet and sour pig, prawns and noodles and crab, very good. Around to shop just after 2, but they're closed, and then up the horrible rutted road to Sangeh, and at the road construction we stall and he has to start us and John walks to the end of the awful part. Buy peanuts and get ASSAULTED by the troupes of monkeys and they cling to legs and GRAB at the bag, and at the main, green-covered temple one actually bares his teeth at me in threat, and I'm not willing to see how much added heat would cause him to bite. Back onto cycles and down a worse road, and I'm weaving and John's complaining and I hit brakes for rock and rock slips and we skid and down we slide, I on knees and John managing to stand. Dust myself and assure everyone I'm OK, but John strides off to vent nervous energy and back on to Mengwi, where we see the water temple and nice wood carvings at sundown, then back to Den Pasar for cards and he shows me the place for the marionettes and I'm back with John to find the Babi Guleng place closed so we settle for Hotel Pemetiutan, and have AWFUL sate and I have ZUURZAK, a funny combination fruit drink, and a VERY hot vegetable soup, and decide to bypass the puppets since AGAIN we're tired, and see the Bali Hotel Legong, good one at last, 7:45-8:45, through most of which John dozes, and back at 11 to crawl tired into bed. Up at 2 to shit, and it's my first diarrhea, and then I'm up again at 4, and at 5:30, and I take a pill at last.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15 [[4:20PM, 8/20]] Tell John about my plight and he's very considerate and cuddly, but since it's obvious to me that I'm not going to come, and he certainly wants sex, I go down on him and use saliva until I want a better surface, then get down the Baby Magic and he comes all over the place. Then we're up and to breakfast and into town to try to get the plane schedule arranged for tomorrow, and then we continue at about 11AM out to the intersection, where there IS no sign, and end up at Kuta Beach. I've described it previously and I either swam nude or lay in the sun until John said I was getting very red, so I went up into the shade, sitting first uncomfortably on a coconut shell, and then on various parts of my legs and butt finishing off "Time for the Stars" and feel very much into the plotting, so much so that I tell John afterward that "It's funny, but when I was in grade school, I though there'd never be such a thing as a day in which I didn't think about God. Then I gradually forgot about Him and came to a "nothing phase." Then I had the LSD and as time goes on I find that every day I tend to think about attaining Nirvana, and the TRANSITION I felt after putting down the book and coming back to myself on the beach definitely HEIGHTENED my idea of the illusory nature of "reality" and the "actuality" of the "nothingness" that some call death that my body will relax into whenever I FIRMLY DECIDE that I've had enough of living. Of course, if I die accidentally, which is to say UNWILLINGLY, I'll have to be reborn again and continue to contribute "my" part of the effort of holding this world of illusion in "being" with our thoughts. "Waldo" could have been SO good if it had gone that EXTRA step to say that EVERYTHING was in the mind, and if WE ceased to live, the ILLUSION would cease. But Heinlein, above all, seems SUPERFICIAL. He glitters and shines, but he really doesn't go very DEEPLY. He's a better FANTASIAST than PHILOSOPHER, unlike Bradbury and Watts and Huxley. By then it's 4 and I'd written 190-193 from 3:50 to 4:15, John goes for a cold beer and we watch the sun go down at 5:15, and then onto the cycle having decided that the BEST meal is at Elim, and there's a fantastically SOLID peppering of small moths just after sundown, so that LITERALLY DOZENS of moths a SECOND hit my chest and face and thank God for glasses. John clings and hides his face in my HAIR. We get to Elim and wash, and eat chicken and pork and noodles and it's all very good, but I'm getting TIRED of Chinese food. We also have lots of brem and John's quite high and I'm driving and he sings and rocks back and forth on the back of the seat and shouts out directions to me and tells me to slow down with very exaggerated fear---and I say it's just like honking at people: they hear it so much they don't react at ALL unless there's real DANGER, so I won't react to HIM, either. He doesn't like it, but can't think of what to reply. Later he says that I should put myself into the hands of the jet pilot, since there's NOTHING I can do about flying the plane, even if something goes wrong. But when he's on the back of the bike I'm driving, he DOES have a say, an element of control, and he DOES use it and DOES experience fear because he DOES have something to do with it, and he says I should follow his advice. I wish I could but I can't. We get back to room about 7:30 and shower and smoke the last joint, and I sit up in bed and get very dizzy, then sink down to sleep, putting in ear plugs, completely oblivious of the flying we have to do to Djakarta tomorrow. [Today, 12/29/72, I sorted through stuff for written information, and found I'd missed THIS from Borobudur: (1) Only treetops visible, (2) Monotony, after first interest, but see surrounding ground. (3) Eager to get to top, see lower layers and hills. (4) the top. Letdown. Fixing up notes. So far ABOVE squares it's hard to keep direction. I ascend into (facing) the sun. The circles of stupas are DIFFERING distances from sides of four stairs. In the first gallery, the figures FILL frame, with little other décor. Second gallery, figures SMALL, much décor: trees, temples, etc. The third gallery is like the first. In the fourth gallery, everyone is on clouds, seated in niches, very airy. And some of the repair-work that was tearing the place apart prohibited me from seeing OVER HALF the lower courses of the great Borobudur: all in all, rather a disappointment.

MONDAY, AUGUST 16. Up at 7 and cuddle and both come nicely, then up to pack most of our things and have breakfast and arrange for the truck to take us to the airport at 1PM, saying we WON'T be eating lunch in the hotel. John buys brem for the trip and we fiddle ways of paying for the bill, and still have enough left for Djakarta, which I've convinced him we want to see for at last ONE night, and the hotel manager gives us the name of Hotel Menteng to stay in. Then we decide about 9 to go out for a walk and the day is hotter and more humid than any we'd seen yet, and even the pretty Bali girls are sweating as they carry their loads on their heads. We walk down to a large road going off to the left and wander down it past small houses and streams and rice fields and people washing cars in streams and more little villages with roadside stands and waving children and owners, and temples and roadside offering-posts, and we slowly go on and on, soaking in the tranquility, but very glad we're just tourists and don't have to live here. See them building a temple to a two-piece gamelan, and a boy invites us back to see his cute friend the woodcarver, and we see his room and hard bed and three English books and proud graduation certificates on the wall and he gives us his address. We walk as slowly back, since the road goes to Lukluk, far from anywhere, and back to finish packing by the time we wait for the car at 1. Silent ride to the airport, which is crowded, and we're into rear window seats on the right and I start reading "Double Star" to pass the time more pleasantly than watching all the awful French waiting to leave, or listening to the recorded gamelan music. Onto hot plane at 2:30 and get to Djakarta at 5 without having any kind of a meal. Flight is horrible as the take-off turn was TERRIBLY steep, the plane wobbled awfully from over-steering, and we seemed always to be turning or flying in the only area of turbulence in the sky. Along southwest coast of Bali, seeing the two volcanoes above the clouds, and I keep telling myself that we're actually HEADING BACK, but I grow to HATE this Garuda pilot. Short water and then the clouded coast of Java, and then INCREDIBLE volcanoes with perfectly sheer craters with mottled areas giving forth smoke below, and I watch in fascination, then we're over strung-out Madura and Surabaya and over sea, then down and land at Djakarta, keeping up flaps too long. I get luggage while John goes to check on flight and completely freeze out all the pesky guys asking where we're staying and if I want a taxi. German chats and finds a hotel for $1 a night and will find "a better one" tomorrow, and we get in cab for 700, going through the horribly crowded town until we get to the hotel, and find it's $4.50 a night, which we think is expensive until we see the OTHER rates, from $25 for the Indonesia Hotel, and we're in and settled, and there's lightning in the sky as we find the Goliga restaurant on the map and walk down awful dark streets and then take a pedicab to the Raffles-barren and completely empty copper-roofed place with chandeliers off and fluorescents in the corners giving an odd light to the faded white tablecloths. John gets hot chicken curry and I the rice table for $50 and the beef and tongue and things are good, but the satay is incredibly bad. John wanted to find the Cozy Corner, the gay bar, and I said NO. Fireworks start from the Fair and we hire cab that takes us to the Golden Torch, and there's an amusement area that we pay 50 each to get in, then only I ride 45-second rickety roller coaster and then to the fair, mainly industrial, and we walk till we get tired, mislocate the exit and walk and walk until the most beautiful pedicab man in the world takes us back to the hotel while we crane around to get glimpses of his legs. Back to hotel at 9:30, pay the bill, taking the Singapore $1 and the $20 Malay to do it, and fall into bed with the alarm set at 6:35. I'd copied excerpts from the Menteng Hotel menu into the back of "Double Star": Sramble Egg; Pocked Egg; Would you please to keep quiet after 10PM for to take rest; We would like to continuelly upgrade the qualify of our services; Yuices (orange yuice, tomato yuice); Foched Egg; Additational 21% service charge."

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17. [[6:50, 8/20]] Wake just before the bell rings, and then it doesn't ring. Up to pack very quickly and John showers and we're out at 7:00 to take the cab that's been told to wait for us at the desk last night (of course, that's not the way to say it). Agree that it's 600 to the airport and then find there's a 50 Rp charge for the car entering the airport. John explodes and we grab the bags from the back and stalk angrily into the terminal. I calmly read my book while John bucks the crows and gets two awful seats: left aisle seats in the last row, but at least we're on the flight. Each bag weighs 21 kilos because of my books piled in and because John's carrying his gift, and they say we have to pay overage and we grab suitcases and prepare to lighten them and suddenly everything is OK again. I guess they realized we just weren't going to pay them. Through the airport tax place and get rid of our LAST Rp, and into the familiar waiting room where I read despite various wailing kids. The flight scheduled at 8:15 finally leaves at 9AM, JUST as I finish "Double Star," and get on the plane to start "Door into Summer" since the plane has 28 rows with only 24 windows and the German isn't about to give up his window seat in our row. The idea of a three-hour flight is not welcome, and early in the trip the "Fasten Seat Belt" sign goes on three times and I'm fearing a new record of four when things get better, but not before I'm boiling at John for ordering another cup of coffee just after I hasten to gulp the last of my milk while we're practically in free fall. Finish about half the book since we're mostly over sea, and look at flat, klong-lined land as we prepare to land in Bangkok. Get out of plane, greatly relieved, at noon, and I get luggage while John tries to get his package mailed. I sign up for a limousine at 20 Baht per person, and they all laugh when I say Suriwong, and only later find it's a "two-hour" PROSTITUTE hotel, as well as a legitimate one. Into long ride for town after John balks at paying $9 for postage and hotel looks great, though the staff doesn't seem particularly gay. We shower and get out, deciding first to check Angkor, no, and then go to the museum, and it's GREAT from 3 to 4, with thrones and barge models and carved ivory and great temple models and good cold Fanta. Closes at 4 and I buy a book on art, and we wander south, through heated Chinatown, and go past the Giant Swing without knowing it, into the Wat Sutat, and the huge Buddha inside is made more impressive by the acres of tiny paintings on the sills and columns and windows and we fell awful stepping in all the bat shit. Out about six and back to the hotel to shower again and get to the Patpong to eat, since John found someone who said it was good (Oh, taxied to Niagara Hotel after finding its address at the Miramar, but IT wasn't very gay either, and I got mad at John for ALWAYS demanding to see ALL the gay places at ONCE.) We get charming waiter who gives us tongue and pork and chicken soup and vegetables and curries and WON'T let us have food "we won't like" and get out to walk down to the Sea Hag, in back of the Europe Hotel. The Thais are absolute FLITS and I go to the jukebox to get rid of a pesky 30+ one. John senses my peeve and moves to the bar to talk to a leather-type and I decide to stay when a tall lovely Caucasian comes in, and others do too, but they stick in their own groups. I finally leave after they fly around to mad Thai music and someone trots up behind me on the street: "You were in the bar, join me for coffee?" I like his sandy hair and blue eyes and form-fitting shirt, and we have coffee and it's pouring rain, we can't go to his place, so we hire a room for 45 baht in the SURIWONG! We're wet, so it's easy to get all our clothes off, and we don't even bother to lie down, but stand at a distance, feeling each other's bodies, fondling cocks as they get hard, and he's some sort of body-admirer, since he flexes his arms and puffs up his chest for me, and we look at each other in the mirror for long periods of time, and I realize he's very narcissistic, so I fawn over him and lick him all over, and he's quite eager to come, but I won't let him quite yet, and he's playing with me very well, and we stand looking at each other with pleasurable agony in our eyes, and then he signals that he wants to come, and we stand up close, feet planted far apart, knees buckling under the pressures, whacking away at each other, filling the air with gasps, and then we both shoot at the same time, spraying the floor area with semen, and stand, panting, feeling each other's slime, and then we wash off and step towels around the floor to get rid of the slime, and leave the room a fair mess, but he assures me they expect it, and I've had TWO rooms in the SAME hotel in one night. Just LOVELY sex from 1:30-2:30AM!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18. [[9:35AM, 8/21]] Up at 6 and talk long about last night, and John thinks he's slipping because "his" guy left with another, and my shits are getting somewhat better, though I decide to keep taking the pills for a bit to ensure that they don't come back. Decide today is the day to see the Imperial Palace and stupid guy at the desk tells John that foreigners DON'T have to wear jacket and tie, and I insist to John that my previous visit, the book, and John ALL agreed we HAVE to, and John takes along the canvas bag into which we BOTH put jackets and ties. Taxi to the place for 12, but it's the wrong place and we're into Wat Po for the Reclining Buddha at 9;15. Wander through the grounds and watch monks photographing each other, and amusingly, they don't tell themselves to smile, but they assume the lotus position and look grave, managing to wipe the grins from their wide mouths. John's very impressed with the 180-foot monster, and we peep about in the other temples and look at the literally HUNDREDS of other Buddhas interspersing the classrooms and then across to the Royal Palace, but the guy directs us the wrong way so we walk around a bit more than half the huge white-walled enclosure. It's getting very hot and humid and we DO have to put on our coats and the entry today is 15 baht, which I don't care for. Listen to the guide in front of the central palace and then wander off to the left to the coronation room, and we're both awestruck by the brilliantly-lit diamond railings of the Coronation Throne, one of the richest sights in the land. Around corners and past buildings to the Emerald Buddha and I use binoculars to see the fine gold clothing and many Thais in shirtsleeves kowtow their respect. Sit and soak in the serenity, then out for the stupas and prangs and the small model of Angkor and see them putting pieces of glass onto new wooden painted forms for the temples in preparation for the Queens Wilhelmina and Elizabeth who are coming shortly. I love the click-push, click-push of the workers and gather pieces of colored mirror for my collection: fragments of the Royal Palace! Also walk around a crumbling temple and pick up bits of porcelain from them, too. Out and back in for the Dusit Hall and its red ceilings and lovely throne, and out an noon. Taxi to Tourist Organization for information until 1, then walk to the Royal to find no beauty shop for John and walk more looking in the terribly hot sun and finally walk around to the museum at 1:30 to meet Bob at 1:45 and we taxi to his restaurant where we have seven or eight dishes, mostly lovely, of all conceivable ingredients, and we leave at 3:15 for taxi back to hotel for John to take a nap while I read "Door into Summer," and nap for a bit, too, feeling terribly tired and wondering if the whole trip is really WORTH it, but I know I only had six hours sleep at most on Monday and only 3 1/2 hours on Tuesday, so I'd have to sleep 11 1/2 hours to even come to an average of 7 hours for the three nights, and I FEEL like doing it. We get down for small snacks, John for a crab-filled salad and me for a cheeseburger with awful purple papaya-cured beef and then back up to shower and wash and Bob comes in at 9:30 and we go to it quite quickly, but I can't seem to get it up by watching. John grabs too hard at Bob's cock and balls, and again he doesn't imitate but only goes along with everything and the Baby Magic's flowing freely and I work on myself and John and Bob kiss and I'm in for a bit, but then out again, and everyone begins jockeying to come and I do myself, then John hands off Bob and I pump away at John and we all lay exhausted and dripping and we talk for another hour and Bob leaves and we fall exhausted into bed at 11:15. I'd hoped it would be earlier but it just ISN'T.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19. Wake at 8, thankful for a lot of sleep, and John and I have sex AGAIN until about 9, and then we're down for breakfast and back up to the room to poke about and I make up a list of things that I want to see in Bangkok to carry us through the first of September. Have trouble fitting things into the schedule such as Jim Thompson's house, but in general it seems we gave too much time to Bangkok since we can't see Angkor. At 10:30 we're out and walking back down to the Europe and the Oriental for the dance program, and the hotel is spiffed up like the Peninsula, looking not at all like it started in 1887, and out into the garden overlooking the river and get put into the ONLY two seats in the corner on the grass, on comfortable rubber-rope chairs rather than hard wood. Refuse drinks two or three times and John doesn't like it already. Cute guy has 16mm film camera with a huge lens, shoulder rest, and WAIST support unit, while his Thai wife has an elaborate reflex. W.w/ The "boy chases girl" dance with six girls is unbearably coy, and the girls drop their poses as soon as they're through, and amble out like at home. Then there's a monkey dance where the dark fellow keeps adjusting his headgear and waistband and wrists, and a phony boxing match where every blow lands, another dance equally bad, a sand fight with a few nice tumbles, and a "folk dance" very like the one in the bar on Tuesday, and the dark guy is a good DANCER, pity he wasn't a better monkey. Disgusted at noon to the river, and get loaded with boat requests, into the air- conditioned lounge to look at the map and decide on the Gold Buddha. Cab lets us off at the wrong place and we see plated nothing, then get directed across the way for the glittering object, and buy fifteen postcards for one baht each. It gets more and more cloudy, which makes the day comfortable, and we cab to the Golden Mount, walking past all the closed temples below it, and climb to the top just as it starts to rain. To roof to look around and downstairs as rain starts in earnest and have a welcome cold Fanta and look out at Wat Arun under some sort of reconstruction trestles, the tall hotels away to the west, the Standing Buddha head and shoulders next to the Hotel Thai and we don't want to go THERE, and the Giant Swing and Royal Palace and lots of klongs. Down at 1:30 and get to Suan Pakkad at 2, wander through great objects, nicely described in the booklet, but HOW did she "find" so many lovely pieces unless she STOLE them or they PLANTED them for her? Out at 4 after great Lacquer Pavilion with inferno with heads, tongues lolling, in place of crotches, and Rama getting sacred cow dung from some bovinthromorphized cow. Plenty of peace and flowers and carp and gardens and a CUTE guide who spoke little English. Hungry next door to find it only a dinner-dance place, and across to the Chao Phya Hotel where John stops in the john and announces that now HE has the shits. Everyone's American and we have GREAT tropical special of ham and cheese in bread fried in egg with pineapple mustard and John has an omelet and two glasses of milk, and I finish with a chocolate sundae, and when we go pay the $1.95, they INSIST on it in American dollars, and the bill says "US Army Open Mess," and the Great Seal is over the dining room and the whole THING is Army! Out and John's tired and wants to go back to the hotel, so I come with him to get binoculars and get out at 5:10 when I see it starts at 5:30, but it starts at 6. (See boxing PROGRAM for all the notes about it.) "Clinching is fine, as long as it's not on the ropes." Lots more jogging, feinting and missed kicks than in demonstration. Lots of locals, and they bet like mad, sounds like Bali cockfight. Does BLUE corner use RED towel to fan fighter to instill anger? Betting, of course, produces partisanship and lots of rooting and excitement! There's kneeing to the kidneys in clinches, too. Boxers turn around fully sometimes when kicks miss. Knockdowns are frequent more from lost balance than fatigue. Scrappy fighters, cutely muscled like swimmers. Sometimes there seems to be as much danger from crooking a toe the wrong way in kicking and messing up the feet and the balance, as there is in being hurt on getting hit. Much discussion and walking back and forth, talking loudly and shouting. Except in the hundred-baht ringside seats, to which the bleachers only furnished a colorful backdrop. The clinking cymbals and thumping drum go continuously during the rounds, sometimes increasing in tempo, EXCEPT when there's a knockdown and then they stop with electrifying silence, and the voices and shouts and air seems strangely empty, hushed, and expectant. Blood! There are no mouth guards so in fight #2 the blue guy has his lips puffed and red and bleeding, and there's blood on the white ring, on the tan opponent's back, and on the chest and neck of the wounded. But there seems to be a BIT of rooting for the unlucky, since the blue guy is CHEERED when he hits a few good ones. At first all the selling was to the rich ones at the bottom, but later we get it up top, too. The blue kept gamely on, and the fourth round was slow and uninteresting, except that he survived to fight a fifth, giving the customers their full money's worth of gore. Kids watched fascinated, wide-eyed and unblinking, adult men appraised the blood flow with eyes that gleamed a bit too much, women grimaced and winced and mushed their hands around their faces and blinked from under lowered brows over pursed lips, or else giggled and hugged their knees. Red won two, too. Finally, over 200 at ringside, maybe 300 in 60-baht seats, 300-400 in 30-baht seats, or stretching it a bit, 1000 in all. At slow times the protecting arms DO tend to weave in time with the music's double-headed, thong-tuned drum, finger cymbals played by plashing top one on and off bottom one, and a little black piccolo flute, reedy and plaintive and tootling. Possibly each corner is one athletic club, the blue deferential and untrained, the red cute, professional, and determined. There's a lot of punching after the bell, two or three jabs, but no one seems too alarmed. The third red fighter has a shorn head, almost as if he'd just come from his three-month stint with the monks in the saffron robes, a sad transition. Guide said 5:30; it actually started at 6. SAID to be two hours, but if eight fights go five three-minute rounds with two-minute pauses, that'll take three hours, 20 minutes, and at 7PM the third fight is just starting. They DO wear mouth protection in the third fight, and yet the mouth is still puffy and red on the blue guy. Shouting in cadence with kicks and knees and punches, from ANYONE, rather cheery. Spitting is incessant, spattering on the concrete floor between my feet, and people crouch down almost in front of me at the screen for a better view, and I feel like shouting, "OK, everyone just keep AWAY from me," but I realize I'm NOT in a reserved seat. RESERVED seating, it seems to me, is just about full to capacity, more than 250 now, not 200. Finally blue wins one, #3, though there seemed no difference between them. Now there's purple robes, gold robes, and the place picks up a bit of CLASS, YEAH! The next red one's an absolute doll, and the "German or Dutch" pair from the Golden Mount seem to be looking at me and talking more and more, and I think suddenly of Glenn May. Um. The red guy pulls up his trunks so far his bottom of cheeks is visible, and the white bindings around his crotch are visible when he kicks (just as the blue bathing suit is visible under the blue jean short shorts of the German boy) and the crowd acts up a chant that makes him grin and shake his head and blush after he DECISIVELY knocks the blue guy motionless---flat on his face. Don't know WHAT THAISMAI is on trunks. After four MORE knockdowns in the third round, red is awarded the decision; first NOT finished fight. The main event is pretty good: pretty boy in blue backing and filling, but acting contrite and winning, the guy in red is mad as hell and frowning and advancing as fast as he can at his pretty, elusive opponent. More good boxing in two rounds than in the first four fights. Audience love it, too. Audience is unabashedly FOR blue in the third round, shouting in joy when he kicks, and even when he MISSES, and groaning in pain when the guy in red connects with the pretty blue. American baby-blue eyes wide with envy and bloodlust and joy of contact, flesh against flesh, ACTUALLY licking his lips in eagerness. Fourth round even MORE incredible, blue HOLDING head and kicking up with his knee, supporting himself off ropes and off corner to give leverage to his kicks, clinching when willing and able and seeming the victim when he's clinched, kicking and kneeing and even butting heads on one occasion, everyone watches the red's face to blink out. At the end the referee didn't even BOTHER to check the officials' rulings, he just raised the blue's hand (somewhat in disgust) and walked off with a serious look on his face. Many tourists left the rich section at this point, since it's 8:05 and they have their $5's worth. Now comes the 120-pound heavyweights, I'm tired of sitting, and tired of thinking of things to write, except when the baby blues blink HYPER-fast so they won't miss ANY of the action. Blue in the sixth is another doll, actually using the same kneeling-stretching exercises they used at the Oriental this morning. Now there's a lot of looping arms around heads and wrestling around, once even taking both tumbling to the canvas, taking the referee along WITH them as a side effect. Couple times a wild kick has ended with the heel of the boot hanging awkwardly from the top rope while the poor kicker hops around to keep his balance. WILD ticking and tripping in second round, and blue knocked flat, falling on knees refusing to give up, finally referee stops it declaring red the winner. Clinching rampant, holding heads practically the whole round, while referee tells them DISGUSTEDLY to break and box at pauses. Half of 100's empty by 8:30, 60's jammed and standing at all railings. First fight BOTH has charm, then only ONE would wear arm-charm, then by fight five NO one was wearing armbands. Atheists! K. Hutchesson is the first to have his name in OUR letters across his blue trunks, and he delights in kicking the feet out from under his red opponent. Red fights so defensively, hands WAY up framing his frightened face, clenched in upon himself until he grimaces when hit and goes into a flurry of punches AFTER the bell rings. In round three they appear to be doing a high-stepping German peasant dance, arms clenched around each other, alternately raising their right knees into their opposite's left kidneys, and vice versa. I begin counting rounds, ass sore, eye ridges sore from the pressure of the binoculars, tired of the betting shouts---just wanting to get back to the hotel and relax, and there's only 6 rounds left! To stop the INCESSANT pummeling, finally the referee grabs the ropes on either side of the struggling duo and STOPS this action with his entire BODY. Then they again wrestle to the ground, and one "accidentally" digs his knee into the chest of the poor guy on the bottom. Again the audience is undoubtedly for the one in blue---only 5 rounds left, at most, and of course, at LEAST two, probably more. Last round is a real romping battle, more hits per square inch than ever before and the concrete seats ring with rhythmic cheers. Blue is declared the winner and he falls on his knees and kowtows before the referee before flinging his arms above his head in victory. And now for the LAST, it looks FUNNY to see them in SHOES, feet in little wooden boxes of rosin. Finished boxers, puffy-faced and bruised, watch the subsequent battles. Red has it all over blue, and when I glance at the clock at 1.5 minutes, I look back to see blue on ground and red winner at 8:55PM. John'd gotten a haircut and we in bed when I got back at 9:30. Ordered him soup and toilet paper which he ate a bit of, and I finished it as he slept and I finished reading "The Door into Summer," showered, and got into bed at 11:15.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20. Wanted to wake early but woke last at 7:30 and finish breakfast at 8AM and get cab to the landing next to the Grand Palace at 8:25 and negotiate for two-hour ride for 90 baht, and we're so quickly past all royal barges I really don't see them until too late, and we gape at new speeding boats with long streamlined shapes and splashing wakes. Up the main canal for a long while, then turn left and it gets smaller and smaller and kids begin to wave delightedly at us and we see people washing their hair and washing dishes and clothes and themselves and their teeth in the river, and saw them selling raw vegetables and cooked meals and pots and pans and fruits and watched dogs and cats and geese roam water's edge, and saw the temples and casket makers and boat builders and shops and houses along the way, and John again says that water trips make him VERY relaxed and he's enjoying himself despite his intestinal rumbles. Motion him to stop at Wat Arun anyway and through the crowds to the ruined lower concourses of the temple, and EITHER I remember through the rosy glasses of "first exotic trip" OR it's deteriorated terribly since I last saw it. Dirty and moss-covered and crumbling, it's not like ANYTHING spectacular. Back quickly to boat and land at 10:25. Stop for two cold Fantas and he SAID two baht, but John gave him a 5 and got 2 back. Oh, well. Suggest the snake farm and traffic is horrible but we get there at 11:10 and see them picking cobras off trees to milk the come-like fluid from their clenched jaws, and then to tackle eight-foot king cobras hooded to strike and hissing and the crowd oohs each time "like at fireworks" as the Frenchman puts it. Into the awful inner display of discolored pickled snakes, and then out to find they're going through the feeding AGAIN, and the newer tourists flock around to get shots of the red-eyed, grim-faced handler endangering his life just for their benefit. Then it's 12:10 and they're closing and we walk slowly back to the hotel for lunch and I have a good special club sandwich of ham and egg on one side and chicken and lettuce and tomato on the other. John has soup and toast and ice cream and I sign the check while he goes back to bed. I take the book down to the dining room and ignore their watching me to mark down small summaries to help me remember which Heinlein book was which, and fritter away time until I set myself to it and write 193-198 from 1:25-2:15PM, and get VERY sore of hand, then start reading "6xH" and John comes down to chat with me and goes back upstairs to relax and read "Double Star" which he says he finds entertaining and finishes that evening, then I force my cramped wrist to write the illegible pages 198-202 from 4:20 to 5PM, sitting on the chair in the lounge, and a few cute Thais come in and out, an American comments about the "dirty old man's" good business "everyone's screwin', huh?" and someone who looks European sits reading a paper and glancing at me speculatively, and though he appears to have a nice body I'm just not turned on at the moment, feeling strange about sitting in a hotel LOBBY all day in BANGKOK. Sure I was OVER a week behind, but I could have gone to the museum and written in the night. Anyway, John said we could go to the restaurant of MY choice tonight, and I showered and wrote 202-204 from 6:50 to 7:10 and we walked down to Chez Suzanne, and the French bread was GREAT, though the inside was a bit gummy, the cream of vegetable soup rather dull, the kidneys a la Suzanne VERY urine-tasting, the red wine like Almaden. John accepted the whitefish and mussels, and he liked the coffee ice cream and I adored the egg a la russe and coffee, and the bill came to 245 baht, nice. LOVED the doe-eyed guy with PERFECT profile and GREAT body in body shirt of yellow, but his WIFE was pretty, too. Back at 9 and finish "6xH" and tired into bed at 11:10 AGAIN.