In 1973 Singapore didn’t allow people with long hair to
enter. So my brother Damien and I were ceremoniously sheared among friends in
Perth before our departure on an A.U.S. flight. AUS stood for Australian Union of
Students and everyone on board was a student enjoying cheap student fares so
you can imagine the party like atmosphere .
I passed the haircut inspection after having to turn a full
360 degrees twice to allow the customs officer to closely inspect my hair, but
lingered to see how one of the more senior passengers (he was probably all of
30) with very long hair would get through. He had tucked all his hair up under
a hat. He was asked to remove his hat and at that point he immediately started demanding
in a very loud voice that he would like to speak to someone from the Australian
embassy. He just kept repeating this over and over and eventually he was allowed
to enter Singapore with no haircut!
This was my first visit to Asia. I was 19. Singapore had not
yet gone through its economic boom time and the streets between Changi airport and
the city were lined with poverty. People dressed in rags living by the side of
the road; rickety market stalls lined the route, noisy dirty traffic flew past
without any apparent order. It’s that assault on the senses that many Asian nations
offer first time visitors that nothing can prepare you for. I remember staring
open mouthed at the chaos unfolding by the side of the road as we made our way
to the hotel.
That aside, the party atmosphere continued on at the student hotel most of
us were booked in to. We roamed between various rooms where the alcohol and marijuana
was flowing. One of the rooms belonged to the senior hippy guy who had bluffed
his way through customs and who was now sitting on his bed naked and cross-legged
rolling joints like an Indian holy man. There was a sudden moment of panic when we get a call to one of the rooms that the authorities were coming up to
investigate. People scattered back to their own rooms and all the marijuana was
quickly flushed down toilets, and windows opened to allow the smoke out. Smoking and possession of marijuana in
Singapore in those days was even more serious than having long hair! It turned
out to be a prank - one of the students had just decided to freak everyone out
with the fake phone call. It worked. It killed the mood completely.
Damien and I were planning to head to Bali in Indonesia. This
involved flying to Jakarta to catch the train through Java and then a ferry to
Bali. The flight to Jakarta was not a student flight. I was seated next to a
seasoned traveller who had been to Jakarta many times and wasn’t impressed that
his work had brought him back there. He called it a hell hole and said that if
I thought Singapore was bad I hadn’t seen anything yet. How right he was. There
are moments in your travelling life that you never forget. My first steps outside
Jakarta airport was one such moment. It was absolute mayhem. A mass of people
and traffic and noise in a chaos impossible to comprehend. As we stood trying
to work out how to get a bemo (taxi) I noticed a man lying in the gutter –
barely clothed and quite still. He could easily have been dead. And the traffic
flooded past just inches from his head. No one appeared to notice. Or care. The
opening lyrics to a Neil Young song played in my head: “old man lying by the
side of the road…. don’t let it bring you down…. it’s only castles burning….”
By the time we reached our accommodation for the night all
the women in the bemo were crying at what we’d seen. They guys I guess were
crying on the inside. I know I was. Jakarta was extreme culture shock. I think we spent a couple of days there. It’s all a bit of a blur. It taught me so much
in such a short time. I have never felt the desire to return.
Our next adventure was the train across Java en route to the
island paradise of Bali.
