February 6, 1990 - Biak - Journal

Biak

Yesterday I left Cousin Johnny in Honolulu. No more drinking at the Hotel Street bars. No more Femme Nuna Go Go. So far New York to Los Angeles Hawaii. I had picked up my Garuda tickets at Pan Express' LA downtown office. LA-Honolulu-Biak-overland to Jakarta and then Sumatra-Singapore-train to Bangkok, where I'm meant to pick up my onward tickets to Nepal, Paris, and London. Two legs of my trip around the world completed. More to come.

No more Hawaii. LA with volcanoes, but only one freeway. I stayed with cousin Johnny in his college dorm and his roommate, who was obsessed with Jamie Lee Curtis. Who isn't?

Johnny drove me to the airport. "What's in Biak?"

"I don't know. My travel agent had said that no one going to Bali ever got off there. My Uncle Dave had served on a destroyer during the Battle of Biak. He never went ashore. His ship kept the town under bombardment for a week."

"Japs didnt want to give up."

His father Carmine back in the East Village was a WWII buff.

That evening we said goodbye at the Honolulu airport and I boarded the Garuda flight across the Pacific. I had never been this far from The East Coast. 4700 miles from Hawaii. 9100 miles from New York.

The 747 landed on the long runway, low on fuel after a long trans-Pacific flight. Beyond the tarmac jungle and a small terminal. Biak, an island off the coast of Irian Jaya. 9100 miles from New York. It had been deep winter back there. LA and Hawaii had been warm. The tropical heat hit us, as we descecnded the air stairs. Once more on Earth. Hundreds of Bali-bound tourists stretched their legs, as black as night Melanesian musicians, naked except for a gourd over their penises strummed BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON on their guitars.

Their ancestors had obviously migrated from Africa sometime during the last Ice Age, when these islands had been part of Asia. A fat Christian missionary ignored them to be greeted bible believers. The tourists went into the air gift shop. A man of god traversed the tarmac to a single-engine prop plane. Biak was the epitome of remote, however the Christian was bound for a destination unknown to everyone other than the airport's traffic controllers, the pilot, and him. once in the craft the plane sped down the runway and took to the sky.

When I purchased the ticket from Pan Express I asked John, the owner, "What is Biak?"

He said, "It was where the plane has to stop there to refuel. In IrianJaya. The Indonesian part of Papua New Guinea."

A land of naked headhunters. The Asmats on the south shore of the island had eaten Michael C. Rockefeller. A rich man's son. The Metropolitan Museum had a wing of Melanian wooden scuplture dedicated to him. I always went there. No one else did. Just like here. Biak.

I passed through immigration to have my passport stamped for an Indonesia by a Javanese official. Good for three months. Biak and many islands through the vast archipelego were in the process of transmigrasi or shipping Javanese by the thousands to populate distant islands to deal with overcrowding on Java.

Exiting the terminal into the midday sun I put on my sunglasses and surveyed the street. Palm trees wavered in the air. Pick-up trucks and motor scooters cruised Jalan Mohammad Yamin. Across the street bordering the bay was an old Dutch hotel. ROUGH GUIDE suggested staying there and I heft my bag over my shoulder. I was sweating bullets by the time I reached the check-in counter. A room per night was $10. I paid for five nights and asked for a cold beer to be brought to my room.

A double bed and a overhead fan. Clean, but the tropics had been hard on the walls. Still the sheets were crisp and the beer came shortly. After tipping the waiter 2000 rupiah I changed into shorts and walked out to the deck. Cold beer in hand. I sat at the table and unfolded the Nells map. Beyond the lawn Yappen Island floated on a slate blue sea. Clouds rolled in from the west. The promise of rain on the wind. This was the Orient. I never had been here. Insipped the beer. Biak, Indonesia. So far away from everything. Why had I never come here before? Why had I gone to Paris? I took a long pull for the Bintang beer. No answers. They didn't matter now. I was here now. A light breeze wafted from the shore. The air smelled of jasmine. Night was coming my way. I turned on my Sony Radio to the BBC. It was my only contact with the Western World and I fell asleep happy to be someplace far beyond the reach of the West.