By Neil Beck

It was 1972.  I flew in to Yogyakarta Indonesia on the last flight from Denpasar Bali at midnight.  Heading for a youth hostel I grabbed a bijaj at the airport.

I woke up the teenage manager (?) who showed me to his best room.  It was an empty dormitory with 6 beds.  Unbeknownst to me, there was a prized grandfather clock outside the room which announced is presence every fifteen minutes…all night.

I was here to see the temples at Borabudur but that would have to wait. I was determined to find a different place to stay. I walked into town and saw the Hotel Merdeka.  After checking the price (my highest priority in 1972) I asked for a room.  They told me they might have one but would know very soon.  They asked for the name of my hostel and said they would call within the hour.  I wandered around the town for a few minutes then headed back to my hostel to pack up in anticipation. 

Sure enough, the manager of the hostel knocked on my door and told me I had a phone call from the Hotel Merdeka.  I walked with him to the office and he pointed to the phone where the receiver was back on the cradle.  I picked it up and, of course, just heard a dial tone.  I asked him if he had a telephone book.  It was 1972.  The phone book for this city of 350,000 was about 30 pages long.  He handed it to me and I looked up the Hotel Merdeka and dialed.  Busy Signal. 

Holding the phone so he could hear the busy signal I said “Hotel Merdeka calling us.”  He smiled in disbelief.  How could I know that?  I hung up and sat there.  The phone rang.  His eyes opened wide.  He looked frightened to answer it.  When he did, his mouth opened in a wide smile and he shouted “HOTEL MERDEKA.”  In his eyes I had performed a miracle of ESP.

They had a room but the sad end to the story is while walking to the Hotel Merdeka I passed the Garuda office to reserve my flight out three days later. 

Good thing I did, because the clerk advised me that unless I caught the flight to Jakarta in 2 hours, I wouldn’t get out of there for two weeks.  Apparently this was Golden Week when Japanese tourists flood the island and grab every available seat. 

So, I did and I never saw Borabudur but I did teach a teenager something about telephones.