My calmness infuriated him, the more I relaxed into my chair the more his shiny forehead sweated. 

What calm peace and tranquillity I felt being in a tiny white walled room furnishing my skills of deceit, cunning, and evasion to petty authority and uniform. 

After leaving the ferry and lining up to enter Indonesia, my turn at immigration went south when the young clueless immigration officer ran off to a back room with my passport in a hurry. 

I stood there, bored. It wasn’t exciting or funny. I was just bored and I wanted the day to end. The ferry ride across the Singapore Strait was an uncomfortable one of constant near-doom. I wanted a bed, not a stupid fight over entering Indonesia. 

The uniformed manboy returned with my passport and ticket and asked me into the back with him. 

“Ha, really?” I said, amazed. 

There was a group of uniformed manboys laying around on a sofa in a lounge area.

A FIFA video game home screen buzzed on a TV and a few small cubicles ran along the walls. It looked like a dirty back office of a dirty company. 

In the center square cubicle I faced off against an old cranky fuck who tried to intimidate me. No matter how logical my answers were, he wasn’t interested. 

After five minutes of back and forth sniping he slammed his hand on my ticket and passport, “You go back to Singapore!” 

As I took the return ticket and my passport and left the tiny square I spotted one last chance to turn things around and end the bullshit. 

I casually sat down on the sofa in the lounge next to a friendlier looking uniformed manboy. I used my knowledge of the geography of Indonesia to make up a convincing trek around the country. Through the art of persuasion and hefty amounts of charm and compliments that hit the patriotic buttons, I turned him. 

As the old crank fuck entered the lounge, my new ally convinced him to drop the games and move aside. 

I won. 

The option was there, the easy option to bow my head and sulk back off to Singapore, forever wondering, what if? 

But no, not I. I calmly ignored the petty rules and conventions of the bureaucratic world and entered Indonesia to continue my journey instead 

Twenty minutes later I was too happy from the victory! to care that my taxi driver had not driven me to the hotel that I booked. He had instead chauffeured me to a much more expensive one to collect his cut. 

Dirty bastard, but I didn’t care. I was tired and ready to forget the world and enter dreamland. I booked a room at the front desk instead of taking a taxi to the hotel I should have been staying at. Dreamland was far too important right now. No more bollocks. I needed dreamland. 

In the room I turned the TV on and James Bond lit up the darkness, one of Brosnan’s efforts. Earth, BradEarth, nobody tells me what to do. 

_ 

I was dealing with a stupid money issue. 

Western Union had put a security block on my cash transfer. 

Money was a fucking bitch of a cunt of a fuck of a shit of a piss of a pussy of a dick. 

Fuck money. Fuck it now. Fuck it then. Fuck the bits and the greenbacks and the coins. 

Land and fire and flags in the damn dirt. These things light up the soul. Make the atoms dance. But money is just an annoyance. Whether you have it or you don’t. It’s an annoyance.  

I had the money I needed right now trapped. Money being held hostage by institutional bureaucrapic abuse. 

Maybe money isn’t so bad, maybe it’s just all the other crap tape that surrounds it that’s bad. Fucking bureaucrapic crap tape. 

I had switched from the expensive hotel to another less expensive one further away from civilization a couple of days before and now had two problems. The money issue and I needed to find a new hotel, this one was now fully booked. 

I just wanted to extend for a night, go upstairs and solve my money problem, but no, it would be a much longer day than that. 

I didn’t know when exactly I would have the cash, so instead of booking another hotel I didn’t know, I decided to head back to the expensive hotel, use their WiFi and figure it out there. 

With hardly any rupiahs on me I threw my backpack around my shoulders and set off in the direction of the hotel. 

I was expecting to walk the complicated route, but then a magical and colourful mode of transportation entered my view. 

He pulled up in the small pink van yelling Indonesian at me. He had a group of girls in the back that looked like they were either schoolgirls or young nuns. 

It’s a weird world when you don’t have enough money in your pockets to jump in one of these shabby taxis without negotiating, the schoolgirl nuns ended up paying more for the ride than I did. 

I arrived at the expensive hotel and bummed some cigarettes and smoked some sweet nicotine. 

During my first stay at the hotel the scum that were about to reveal themselves seemed anything but so. The bellhops and security guards were all friendly and talkative then, no real hint of anything sinister. 

Today though I was about to discover the very dark side of certain parts of the tourist industry in Batam, that sin that I had read about. 

The gang of bellhops and guards were more than alright with me staying in the lounge and were as friendly and talkative as last time, sharing cigarettes and talking football at the taxi stand as the taxis and cars came and went. 

But the mood was about to turn. 

I went back inside after a cigarette and was waiting in the lobby while the receptionists ran around, making calls, trying to decide if the scheme I had concocted to pay for a room would be okay with their management, when one of the bellhops came up and started talking to me. 

I could tell he was building to something, about to make a pitch, I thought it would be about a nightclub or an escort service he was peddling but it was much darker than that.  

“You like girls?” he said nervously, one eye on me and one eye looking out to see if anyone was watching. 

“Yeah, I do.” I replied, somewhat taken aback by the question. 

“You like little girls?” moving his hand to his waist and showing me what he meant by little. 

“I can get you some, just come to me, any girl you want, just come to me.” 

I paused, not knowing what to say. 

I stared out towards the door then looked at him and gave an, “Oh really.” with a roll of the eyes, hoping he could sense the disdain in my voice. He didn’t. 

When I got up to my room and collapsed onto the bed the phone rang, “Hello Mr. Brad, is there anything I can help you with tonight?” it was one of the taxi guys who had been informed of the earlier conversation. 

“No, nothing, I’m going to sleep!” I said, I hung up and thought about how to get far away from the place in the morning. 

‘I should have told them NO as clearly as possible.’ I thought, I guess my contempt and disgust were not culturally translated. 

‘These sick places really do exist then.’ 

‘Fucking peados.’ 

I went to sleep. 

In the morning I finally solved my cash issue, got a fresh wad of Indonesian rupiahs and booked a new hotel. 

This hotel was where I would spend the rest of my time on the island. 

The room was a nice one with a large comfortable bed. It had the usual stuff and things you’d expect in an okay kinda hotel room in Southeast Asia. It had a real winner of a feature though – a separate area with a desk and chair in front of golden curtains. 

I loved that nook. 

It felt like I had ordered my people to build a temporary cramped yet palatial office, quickly constructed in a makeshift bunker after my sovereign empire had been overrun by intrusive swine. 

On the edges of my sovereign empire I would plan the counterinsurgency. 

I would sit in deep thought in my nook. 

And. Then. I would pounce. 

slicing. the. swine. to. death 

I smoked, ate a lot of room service, video called every day and night with my girlfriend and watched hours and hours of Nat Geo and the Discovery Channel. This was my time in Batam. 

It was a weird month. 

On the last day in the hotel I was in a reflective mood. 

I took some time that morning to think of everything that had happened since I arrived in Asia from Mexico. Ultimately I had grown up a lot. 

I originally planned to simply stay in Asia a few months. It was a year and a half I had stayed with the time spread over five countries, three of them lived in for three months or more and now it was time to leave. 

I experienced a great amount and had a cherished collection of memories.  

Far too many awesome times to contain with any quick summary. 

It was time to leave now though, try something different again. 

I ran around the room collecting everything I needed to take with me and went through my bag to get rid of some of the clutter. 

I quickly checked through the heap of paper, receipts, tickets and free travel guides, old lighters and pieces of broken plastic, glass and rocks. I cleared away the dust and dirt from my bag and threw the pile of trash away. 

My home was looking like it needed the hotel cleaners to get in there and give it a tidying up. 

I stopped rushing and made some milk tea from a packet that I found in my bag – kindly given to me by my girlfriend when she had visited in Singapore – and thought about things. 

Leaving Asia, finally. Not since Mexico had a day like this arrived. 

I came down from my room and saw the expectant looks of the two receptionists, they stared at my fully packed backpack, “Extend?” a question they had asked me every morning for around a month. 

“No, I’m checking out, can you call me a taxi?” 

They spoke some Indonesian to the bellhop. 

They now had broad smiles on their faces. 

“Where are you going now? Back to Singapore?” one of the receptionists asked me. 

I imagine everyone at the hotel had wondered why I had been there, what I was doing, I had only rarely left my room and this was their first chance to quiz me. 

“Perth, Australia.” I said, he realized I needed a taxi to the airport and shouted out again to the bellhop. 

I stood there as the driver hurriedly finished his lunch and then I was off through the chaotic Indonesian traffic and three flights away from the western shores of Australia.