Despite the previous day's exertions I was wide awake before 5:00. Got some diary-writing done and read a little more of Paul Theroux's engrossing trip around the mediterranean.

I had booked the taxi for 7:30, which gave me just enough time to wolf down a little breakfast. At the airport I bought a cassette for the camcorder and a guide-book on Bali (just in case I ever get there!). We were waiting in the departure lounge until just after 10:30, which was the departure time. Some of my fellow passengers looked like figures from the gory battle scenes in the Singapore National Museum, pirates and sea-raiders, with dark weather-beaten faces, long black hair and thin oriental moustaches. I could just imagine them crawling up the ship's rigging with daggers between their teeth! Then there were Chinese housewives with large plastic bags full of spices and household goods, and earnest Japanese businessmen.

The announcements over the intercom and on the plane were exclusively in English. This can have its disadvantages--it was announced 3 times on the plane that a large green bag had been found, and the owner should go and pick it up. Only after the bag had been manhandled by the steward the length of the plane, did a Japanese guy who couldn't speak English notice that it was his bag.

This time the stewardess looked about 13, probably the younger sister of the one on the flight in. The view from the plane as it was coming in to land was hundreds of flooded paddy-fields--I was sure the plane was going to land on water.

Surabaya airport was small and security was tight. Once you got through customs you were out of the building and confronted by touts, taxi-drivers and porters, all struggling for your business. I was well and truly out of Singapore now. After fighting my way to the little bureau de change I changed a 50DM note, a left-over from Christmas, which I reckoned would be enough to keep me going. The exchange rate was about 7500 Rupiahs to the $US (the rate varied, I saw 7800 offered in Bali, and you got more for higher denomination dollar bills).

Taxis were lined up outside the airport building--I then took the next available one to the hotel Narita, Jl. Barata Jaya XVII. The taxi driver drove all over the place, taking side roads and back lanes, driving through what looked like people's gardens and goat tracks. As the roads got smaller and more inaccessable, I recalled the horror stories of tourists being abducted and killed by taxi-driver gangs in Thailand. I was mentally preparing myself for a gangs of armed robbers when we unexpectedly turned into a main road clogged with slow-moving small cars and vans, motorcyclists and trishaws. In fact I think the hotel was quite close to the airport and he was taking me on a roundabout route. He charged 30,000 Rupiahs, a good day's wages.

After the opulence of Singapore the area around the hotel looked very poor. All along the side of the road were dingy little stalls selling snacks, cigarettes, lighters, interspersed with trishaws with sleepy-looking drivers. This area alone looked poorer than any I had seen on the trip so far. All the more surprising to find a fine hotel here, 4-star probably, and only 130,000 per night for a small suite. This worked out at about US$17, and I kept checking it in my mind, thinking there had to be a catch.

The room was excellent, bags of space, furniture, TV, minibar, etc. A call came through from Pupi, and we arranged to meet in the hotel at 7:30. I took a nap and by the time I woke up it was dark. I had some time before Pupi was due, so I went out to try to find some Nivea cream for my dry skin. The area looked really poverty-stricken--all along the darkened streets, prey to the noise and fumes of the manic traffic, were little ramshackle stores with cigarettes, water and a few odds and ends, interspersed with deserted eating-houses offering the same fare. The trishaw owners were still dozing on their machines. Threadbare roadside stalls were lit up with flickering oil-lamps. Long stalls selling nothing but durians. At the corner of the street, where it turned onto a flat bridge, a mangy-looking herd of goats were tethered, their no less mangy-looking owners nearby under a makeshift lean-to. I found a little shop with sachets of cream and was happy to have made it through the never-ending lines of traffic back to the comfort and security of the hotel.

There were 2 women in the reception area when I came down after being informed that Pupi was waiting. Neither of them took the slightest notice of me, and I was praying that Pupi wouldn't turn out to be the first one, a matronly woman with Indian features. She didn't.

Introductions over, we took a taxi into the city centre to the Surabaya Plaza, a modern shopping mall. I came across a number of different fruits that I had never seen before, not even in Malaysia--rambutan, duku, kelengkeng, durian, manggis, and had some Java chicken (fried (goreng) with spices--kunir) and rice, with sambal sauce and lalapan (a green vegetable). Then a trip to the station to pick up a ticket, which we couldn't do because the reservation desk was already closed--we'd have to return early on the morrow.

When I was in Germany I heard a haunting song called Surabaya Johnny, by Kurt Weil.

If you have RealPlayer installed, and speakers, you can see and hear the German singer Dagmar Krause perform this song, by clicking on "this link.".