Manis the Malang pony (Indonesia)

I was private tutor variously to some Indonesian teenagers whose parents were either related or good friends, and also rich enough to send them to Singapore for their education. 

    They kept saying to me, “You must come to Indonesia, and we’ll show you around our country!” 

    So I went in December (1973), which is Singapore’s equivalent of the end-of-school-year, long summer break in the West, as the school year starts on 02 January — being in the tropics at 1˚N, it has no discernible seasons, just dry or rainy, or hot, very hot, unbearably hot. 

    With it being the school holidays, train tickets from Jakarta to Bali were all sold out, but we managed to join a package tour which happened to have four vacancies going. 

    The route there and back was overland: out along the northern part of the island of Java, and back along the southern part. One of the places near the eastern end of Java was Malang, our last stop before Surabaya where we’d be catching the ferry to Bali. 

    Malang is up in the hills, rather like Cameron Highlands near Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, so it’s pleasantly cool (particularly appealing for a tropics-bred girl). I saw apples on the tree (instead of in the market) for the very first time in my life. 

    I also rode a horse for the first time in my life. There wasn’t much to do in Malang, so the tour guide arranged for us to have a horse-riding experience on the morning of our departure. 

    “Horse sitting” is more appropriate a term: we were helped onto our own horses by our respective grooms (yes, one groom per rider!), who then walked alongside us, holding on to the reins, as we wove our way through a forested patch. 

    Being only 5ft 1in (1.55m) in height, I was given the smallest horse — a pony called Manis. Manis means “sweet” in Indonesian (and Malay), and she was indeed sweet: docile and gentle in temperament. 

    At the end of the “trek” through the forest, we came out into the open, to the bottom of the road rising up the gradient to our hotel. 

    A chap in my group on the biggest steed suddenly shouted, “Race you!” and charged off up the slope. Manis took up the challenge on my behalf and gave chase — and overtook that big horse! 

    Judge not a horse by its size. 

(Malang, Java, Indonesia, December 1973)