So then the journey started. The one hundred people were divided into three buses. I was on the third bus. We departed by midday (12 p.m) and the journey was estimated to take about 18 hours. Off we go then, happily as ever, some watching the Pearl Harbour movie that was played on the bus' VCD player, some playing Cap Sa, and some just talking to each other. I preferred to watch the Pearl Harbour movie, as I never watch that one before. Time flies so fast in the beginning, but later on, we were bored, and time slowed down before us. Around 4 p.m, we were bored and tired, so we just slept.

The next hours were spent without any significant thing happening. The bus just went on the path towards Jakarta, stopping every two or three hours to let us stretch our bodies and go to the restrooms. About 7 p.m we were all hungry, but the restaurant designated for our dinner was still afar, so we started opening our packs and eat some snacks, crackers, biscuits, wafers, all that we can eat for the moment. At 9 p.m we finally arrived at the designated restaurant, but grief, as we were on the third bus, we arrived the most late. When we entered the dining room, the people from bus one have finished eating and the people from bus two have taken their dinner and were eating. It was a buffet-style dinner, so there were nothing much left for us from bus three to eat -_-. We just scraped and scavenged whatever were left on the buffet plates, and we ate a dinner NOT to our hearts' content (and also NOT to our stomach's contents). There was nothing else we can do but to move on again.

So the journey continued, and this time we went on in darkness, as we opted to turn off the lights in the bus so that we could sleep. But as the bus driver was rash and reckless, we couldn't get a good rest. The bus swerved left and right, sometimes halting to a sudden stop to make a loud screech from the tires. There were three times that we almost had an accident, almost ramming two cars and one truck. We could only sleep two or three hours before we woke up again, and the sleep was not good, our necks and our backs were very strained, but we had to endure it. Finally, about 7 a.m we arrived at the IBIS Mangga Dua Hotel in Jakarta. We rested a little and packed our belongings to our rooms. We could not rest for long, because on 11 a.m we had to go on again...

- To be continued in Chapter II : Darkened Days -


••• Thursday, February 12, 2004 •••