Life is good, but I'm still in the vast lobby of the nice hotel, and haven't crossed the street to the cheap place yet ;) I'm gonna focus on this moment today.

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I have been a little bit of a useless waster again though not entirely through my own fault, both money and time have slipped through my fingers these past few days just as they did in Singapore. It must be the heat; I'm still just one degree North of the equator and everything from movements, thoughts and moods to ideas, speech and reactive mental mumblings all have a somewhat quashed and muggy tint. So does my writing, it seems ;)

Four days in Tanjung Pinang for no good reason, I thought it would be quaint and novel and interesting and different, but really it was just same-same. I have ended up now at the place I disregarded in favour of Pinang, and gone and booked myself foolishly into a hotel of supreme extravagance, because I thought if one place in town has a travel agent, this will be it. Apparently it's just about the only place in town without a travel agent. Hey-ho.
I did stay the latter two nights of Pointless Pinang in the town's posh hotel too as I said I might; `the corporate stay`, as the LP calls it; and at least I can make a few notes from that, but it all seems a steep price to pay for a rather unneccesary diversion!

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Most of Indonesia is Muslim, and it shows. After a couple of nights with mosquitos, no possibility of hanging a mozzie net, and the ever-present smiling face of dengue fever in these parts I tactically opted for the luxurious hotel Laguna, and began poking around with things a bit.
First thing that brings home the religious presence, apart from the omnipresent wail of the Muezzin 4 times a day that in the first, cheaper place I simply could not avoid (so I played sympathetically annoying and loud heavy metal whenever it floated spectre-like through the curtains, as you do) was when looking through the drawers you find a copy of the Qu'ran rather than a bible. I don't know if that Giddeon fella was responsible for these as well (he does get around, that Giddeon) but it made me understand the reason for another little detail that had registered but so far eluded me in terms of any significance; an arrow on the ceiling of both hotel rooms, pointing diagonally towards one of the corners: that must be the way to Mecca, then.

Thank Allah the posh Laguna had posh double glazing and I couldn't hear the prayers of the unfaithful (well, if they were 100% faithful there would be precious little to pray about, would there?) and I was happily seated on the sixth floor as well, a good two storeys above the speaker-laced minaret of the mosque. They look pretty but they sound awful. I can think of many things to compare them to (most pop stars, pet birds, other people's children) in this respect but I wouldn't want to offend anyone ;)

Of course the extra danger of top-end hotels is the fact they come with room service, almost a sure tragedy waiting to befall, but this time I was fairly reserved and harvested from the menu only the most modest of dishes and then only when absolutely neccessary.
Apart from a couple of jugs of beer that kept calling my name in the night, and by the evening of the second day I was powerless to resist.
Still, it was cheaper than most by a long shot - and eating in Tanjung Pinang is bizarrely - amazingly - difficult to do. I thought you humans ate all the time no matter where you were.

Around one back corner of the town's oddly layered and twisting street system is a damned KFC, only 300 metres from my hotels (they were next door to each other) which surprised me as the rest of the town didn't look like it would support an expensive fast food franchise at all (It was an exceptionally grubby town all over; I took no pictures except of the sky) but apart from that your only options are seriously nasty-looking street warung (little mobile stalls with pre-fried food of dubious origin and with free flies), the KFC, or room service.

There was a supermarket as well and I did buy stuff to make food for two meals as soon as I found it (see? I'm not actually lazy and reckless by nature but practical first, realistic second, cynical forth and when third -lazy & reckless- arrives seconds later on the heels of #2 I just reach for the `takeaway` file), but there is a basic problem with hygiene when you can't wash your hands to make them clean before preparing anything - the water ISN'T clean and IS what makes you (well, me) ill all the time, but how do you get yourself clean when you have to wash the damn soap OFF're yerr fuckin' hands?! There are only so many bottles of mineral water one can bear buying just to pour down the sink, after all. Not mention it is a tricky procedure in the first place...

Corned beef in Asia is also not like corned beef in Europe. There appears to be some beef in the corned beef in Europe. Here it seems to be gelatine and animal fat and very little else - out of the can it spreads like a very loose jam, which isn't great for the appetite in any case - and I could hardly see any signs of mealy roughage in there either.
Even reckless amounts of chilli garlic sauce over the top couldn't make it actually taste nice and the beef and the sauce are about the same consistency.

The Peanut butter is equally disappointing and sickly: far too much butter, too little peanut, unwanted added sweating slime, and it seems to have been laced with PlayDough, from what I remember from my childhood experiments.
The bread was just about okay. It probably had some wheat and/or flour in its ancestry.
It took time and effort to create and eat some very unsatisfactory food (you try making sandwiches with teaspoons instead of a knife, Fisher-Price play products in the place of dietary foodstuffs), and even after manipulating half a loaf of bread into sandwiches I still felt as though all I had ingested was just fatty, buttery, possibly hazardous non-comestibles.
I feel pretty OK about getting some room service at the moment.

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The best part of the Laguna was that there was a desk at the proper height to write and draw at, and with some help from pillows and cushions a chair that was the right height for sitting at while labouring away at such things. I will never cease to be amazed at the ill-fitting, ill-supplied nature of hotel furniture and appliances (and can we please get more than one fucking tea and one fucking coffee per person per day in a double fucking room, JESUS TAP-DANCING CHRIST.)
There was, of course, television, but that is bad enough in the UK and there I mostly understand the words people use. I'm happier being totally ignorant of Chinese programming mind you, because sadly you can tell just how bad the acting is despite the complete barrier to all verbal communication. It really is that bad, trust me.

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So I tried in vain to find more diverting stuff while wasting 96 hours of my life; I went through all my films on DVD and the laptop, again, listened to a good deal too much Metallica (although not nearly enough Richard Cheese: I highly recommend the fella) and generally wasted my time.
The problem with the town of Tanjung Pinang was that there was nothing in it to distract me. I could have gone across the little bay there to what is apparently a delightful old Chinese temple that has been raised off the ground and is suspended in the giant roots of a banyan tree that has grown up through it, but a) I have seen Ta Prohm (and so shall you, soon :) ) seriously, nothing compares to that at all, and b) I went to check it out one day and on getting to the pier through the oldest, lowest-rent street around the locals were harassing me just a bit too much, and the boat they use to ferry people possibly would have sunk with my weight in it.

Half the space in the poxy miniscule little thing was taken up with the outboard motor (which looked sort of mid-board to me; it was hanging through the wood-plank hull rather than over the back of it) and they expected to get two people in there as well? Fat chance.
I weigh about 3 times as much as anyone else on the dockside there and they would only begin to believe me, I suspect, as we began sinking into the briny sea halfway across the channel.
And my Indonesian isn't good enough to argue this point and get, perhaps, a seaworthy vessel, so I wrote that idea off quite easily.

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Back at the hotel one night I found myself prowling the corridors which are, let me say, easy to navigate unlike the place I'm in now.
At the Goodway here in Nagoya, Batam I have to ascend a flight of stairs at the wrong end of the minotaur's labyrinth, and wind through approximately a mile and a half of corridor to reach my current room, mostly thanks to a temporary lift failure, but also due to the fact this place is so huge and is full of awkward ballrooms that seperate the place into various wings and divisions.
And I have to go through a metal detector to get through the front doors which is not a nuisance but only reassuring I suppose - although of course I could take the shortcut to the `back lobby` which is only 50 feet from my room's door and although it takes me onto the wrong street for an easy exit it unquestionably leads between the interior and exterior of the hotel and vice-versa without so much as a guy at the desk I've yet seen, let alone any kind of security. To think those danged terrorororororists tricked us by using the back door, durrr!

Fucking r-tards of a security team if that's what they're supposed to have here. I could do a better job in one week - but then I do have a criminal mind (in a jar of lightning under my bed).

Anyway I was a-prowling the corridors of the Laguna a couple of nights ago, scanning for beasties from another dimension, or at least something vaguely ethereal: WiFi networks.
I took the laptop and weaved (I also got plenty of beer from the supermarket) my way from the 6th floor to the 2nd, passed a good-sized and somewhat bemused conference of Malaysian types as I tracked my quarry around their open doorway, thinking I had found a signal that turned out to be a bit of errant rat shit on the screen or something, and roamed until I fully realised that, yes, this was a wireless twilight zone.
On my travels I found half the cleaning staff of the hotel clustered 'round a window into some fathomless administration area on the 3rd floor pointing and laughing at me; whether my fly was undone or my makeup was all squiffy or I just hadn't dressed myself at that point I don't know, but laugh they did.

I was up and down all over the place and felt rather a lot like a Ghostbuster actually, with all that scanning and typing while walking along, and guessing in a futile way at passwords of the couple of available - but alas secure - networks. Bill Murray would have been great company then in fact as I was feeling good and cynical by the time I knocked it off (somewhen about 3am) and let the staff get a break from making fun of whitey and get some sleep, too.

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The only other thing that occupied me for a bit - apart from a kind of jaw-dropping incredulity around midday every day at seeing the monsoon showers; man, it can seriously tip it down out here; and an ongoing irritation at the stingy coffee allowance - was gaping in sheer awe and even a little bit of professional respect at the laundry service sheet, more pertinently at the prices. Hey, I've done my share of outrageous overcharging and industrial riping-off to know the touch of a real pro when I see it.

For a half-load of my washing it would have cost about 120,000 Rupiah, or about £6.65 or SNG $16.65.
Even in Singapore a full load, twice as much, cost only SNG $6 to wash and dry, AND they didn't have ridiculous cutoff times like 10am to get it all back the same day, they just did it and delivered it in 5 hours or so anytime while there was someone working.
And at the sort of price they wanted for it in the Laguna I would want it scented with attar of roses and hand-delivered to my room one piece at a time on velvet cushions with a heavy gold brocade, by a stream of flunkies wearing the uniforms of the Swiss Guard and a letter of Papal commendation with every wash.
Honestly.

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Apart from that there was - still is unless someone installed a funfair since yesterday morning - really sod-all to do there, I spent every day looking for and speaking to with mild exasperation different travel agents, ferry companies and the like trying to get a boat to Borneo.

In the end I went to the pier in the afternoon the day before yesterday and got the price for a ferry to Pulau Batam, the previously-shunned neighboring island where I now find myself, just leaving a glorious but overpriced (for Southeast Asia) hotel, mourning the trickle of sterling that bleeds steadily from my bank account. I'm contemplating some semi-serious crimes to make up my funds (I could go into politics...) or maybe just resigning myself to working two or three jobs simultaneously in New Zealand.

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I'm here now, I gotta get me a plane to Borneo TODAY. Enough with all this timewasting; there are likewise times when you just have to trust the Lonely Planet (for better or worse; the latter being more likely; I do take thee, Lonely Planet 2006 edition ISBN 4635874956735, to be my lawfully wedded travel companion...) and this is one of them. They say I can get flights from this island to Pontianak in Kalimantan (Borneo) quite easily here, unlike the wretched Pulau Bintan, so I'm gonna hunt me one down :)