The Funny Side of Travel: Indonesia

As a writer when I travel I come across situations or see things that tend to tickle the lighter side of my nature and give me a laugh. It might be a road sign, a sign in the street, or a shop sign, even an occurrence that was funny in a scary kind of way.

Advertisements in newspapers are classic examples. Those of us living in the western world are accustomed to seeing the use of the English language written, well, almost perfectly. However in foreign lands, when the journalists of the country that you travel in attempt to write using the English language without being schooled in such, and subsequently have the article published in a newspaper or magazine, then the results can be quite hilarious.

Don't misunderstand. I would never demean anybody who attempts to master the English language let alone journalists who profess their knowledge to be of supreme mastery. But there are times (and the possibility of the printer's fault) when you read the paper or magazine that your sides ache and you wished that you never had the curry for breakfast or downed the Yak milk as quickly as you did.

Journalists are not alone in suffering under the hand of 'Oh that word will do', or, 'It looks good'. Advertising executives are just as bad, if not worse. However they use their (obvious?) mistakes to their advantage even though they, at first, considered it not to be so.

Shop signs are a classic. No doubt many of you have seen the sign in a shop or a café which read 'We serve Take-Away'. I must have seen it thousands of times on my travels. One year in Central Java I was sitting in a coffee shop in the small city of Magelang. There was a sign - 'We serve Take-Away'. The more I stared at that sign, the more I laughed. This caused much consternation from my fellow coffee slurper, Candika. I called the waitress over to my table.

"You have a sign there stating that you serve Take-Away. What does it taste like?." I asked quite innocently.

Needless to say, I received no real answer just a mouthful of words in a language I had never heard before. To my manner of thought, they served coffee and tea, small meals and other delicacies. But what did 'Take-Away' taste like?. I still don't know, and perhaps I never will. There are occasions when I think my sense of humour has more quirky turns than a road in a mountain pass in the Alps!.