And another:

Nick and I had just come back from our trip to Biak. Funny - I was just reading my archives and realized I said almost nothing about Biak itself, only truncated bullet points that said basically squat. Let me be very late in telling you: our trip was crazy. The snorkeling trip was insane; we were half-mad from hunger and there was a storm on our way back which threatened to overturn our speedboat multiple times and flooded us so severely that two people were bailing water out nonstop for the entire two-hour trip. As for the fireworks, we both were still recovering from food poisoning at the time, but tried to eat goat satay anyway, for the celebratory feeling and all. It did not work. Nick locked me in our hotel room by accident when he went out to see the fireworks, and by the time he realized what he'd done and came back, I was beyond consoling. So what do you do when you're that worked up? You step outside, dodge bottle rockets, hope your head doesn't get shot off by fireworks gone askew, and offer your uneaten goat satay to fellow firework-dodgers (although no one else but us was actually dodging. They all had an admirable stoicness [stoicity? nah..] about them that suggested that whether or not a firecracker decapitated them was God's business and God's business alone). Surprisingly enough, someone took the satay.

Anyway, we arrived at the Sentani Airport from Biak and had a hell of a time getting on the right taxis, so our trip back home took way longer than it should have - longer than the plane flight itself, actually. By the time we got downtown, we were starving and Nick in particular was in a terrible mood. We got out of the taxi at Gelael, the indoor market, and it was mostly deserted, in fitting with the Indonesian habit of taking off not only the main holiday (New Years) but a few days surrounding it as well. The mostly ancient Papuan women who set up their vegetables in neat rows on blankets in the parking lot weren't there, except for one who sat hopefully gesturing at her three scraggly carrots and pile of shaved cassava.

She was either gesturing for our benefit or for the benefit of an extremely drunk and weaving Indonesian guy who was mumbling and tossing firecrackers at random into the street. We were the only people in the lot. Nick and I, lugging our suitcases and our bad moods and our empty stomachs, were headed towards the main entrance of Gelael when the drunk guy suddenly appeared in front of us and tossed a firecracker right at my foot. It (ear-splittingly) exploded about an inch away.

For some reason, this incensed Nick to a degree I've never seen in him before or since. His anger provoked the oddest series of responses - he was so angry he had no idea where to vent it. After twitching and shaking for a a fraction of a second, he eventually lunged at the man, shouting in a mongrel Indo-glish about how screwed up it was to throw fireworks at people. And he slapped the man's hand. Slapped it! His hand! More than once! For a few seconds, I thought Nick was going to chase him around the parking lot, slapping his hand and lecturing him on firework etiquette, and actually he sort of did, but he was thrown off his rampage a little by the man's outpouring of heartfelt apologies in his own version of Indo-glish. Nick backed up, refused to accept any apologies, and kept backing up until he was inside Gelael. Once inside, he yelled a little bit more while peeking out from behind the door, as if Gelael was some sort of passcoded labyrinth that only bules could enter. And sure enough, the drunk guy, for some reason, acted the same way. As we turned and began to do our shopping (me incredulously questioning Nick about what had gotten into him, him still to angry to answer) the drunk guy pressed up against the window shouting his apologies ever louder, but would not set one foot inside.

If a trip was capable of having mental disorders, this one (to Biak) would be diagnosed manic-depressive the second it walked into the office. No inkblots, no portrait exercises of the soul, no long multiple-choice tests filled with bubbles. I can run it down in two columns: the happy, exciting column and the terrible column, and, chronologically, they stay equal and extreme. Behold:

☺: Upon arrival in Biak, which is dumping rain like mad, we run into a nice man that happens to also be our neighbor in Jayapura. He offers to give us a ride into town.

☹: Nick somehow manages to use one of those American expressions to accept his offer that means yes but sounds exactly like no. The man climbs into his car and drives away alone.

☺: The taxi fare turns out to be Rp. 1500.

☹: But we have no idea where we are going or whether there are any hotels.

☺: We run into a coworker’s sister while we are wandering aimlessly around town (having arrived there mostly by luck). She takes charge of us and leads us on a tour of every possible hotel in town.

☹: The hotel we like won’t let us rent a double room because we aren’t married.

☺: The sister tries to bribe them. This is funny even though it doesn’t work. We find a better hotel, lie about our marital status, and are subsequently given a double room.

☹: Now I have to think of Nick as my husband. Creepy.

☺: We take a walk down to the beach and find a beautiful grove of palms. We decide to explore.

☹: The palm grove turns out to be a graveyard. The villagers are visibly upset that we almost trod on their dead. One of them walks over, looking menacing, and…

☺: …after some friendly conversation, offers to drive us to a good beach in East Biak the next day.

☹: He flakes.

☺: But as a direct result of his flaking, we meet another man, who, upon discovery that we aren’t rich tourists, offers to take us along for free on a snorkeling outing to the outlying coral islands he’s going on anyway with a couple of Russian tourists the next day.

☹: It rains, so no snorkeling trip.

☺: We find a nearby restaurant that serves shrimp and squid, Chinese-style. It is indescribably delicious.

☹: It gives me mild food poisoning immediately, waits a day, then gives Nick severe food poisoning.

☺: We run into Snorkeling Trip Guy, who’s actually really nice, at the fish market. He lends us a snorkeling mask and puts us on a public taxi to East Biak, where we find a gorgeous beach positively encrusted with nearly untouched seashells and a nearby cliff to dive from.

☹: Then there’s a gigantic thunderstorm.

☺: New Years Eve fireworks!

☹: New Years Eve fireworks shot haphazardly by drunk people out of backyards, off roofs, down streets, at people, etc! Bottle rockets sweeping policemen’s feet out from under them! Truckloads of people with firecrackers all clamoring to throw them out the window at the same time!

☺: The next day is sunny and we are able to go on the original snorkeling trip.

☹: But unfortunately it’s New Years Day, and everything is closed – supermarkets, tokos, warungs, everything. This means we have no breakfast and can’t pack a lunch for the trip. We are so hungry all day we almost die.

☺: In my delirium, I don’t remember that I always get seasick. So I don’t get seasick. I am able to pay attention to the swarms of flying fish that skim the air around our boat.

☹: The Russians are Supertourists. They don’t like the snorkeling area. They have a sneaking suspicion that the boat driver isn’t a certified Snorkeling Operator or something. The woman walks around in her bra and underwear, unaware that she’s being entirely culturally inappropriate. There is a lot of yelling and complaining. The sun hurts them. They know better than the boat driver which way is the correct way to go. Etc.

☺: We catch our plane home without any dramatic fuss.

It starts and ends with smiles, right? So I guess it was a success.