The Dancing Midget of Lombok

Lombok, the volcanic island east of Bali in Indonesia, has many sights to behold. It has villages of bamboo huts shaded by palm trees and fronted by beaches of multi-coloured outrigger fishing fleets. It has a huge, smoking volcano called Rinjani and apparently it also has rampant ‘illegal’ gold mining.

Lombok also has a beach town called Sengiggi, home to an open-air pub called Papaya with 2-for-1 Bintang beers during ‘Crazy Time’ from half nine to ten pm, and the tightest 7-piece cover band I’ve heard in years. The pub also has a dancing midget.

As the hulking Samoan keyboardist belts out Irene Cara’s Flash Dance hit ‘What a Feeling,’ all three and a half feet of him carves it up on the dance floor, cigarette in one hand, a fluttering bank note in the other and like a bandage, his head encased in a wide white headband emblazoned with the Japanese rising sun. The only other moving thing on the dance floor is a greying blonde perm in a black, bat-winged one-piece jumpsuit with a low V-neck framing a heavily wrinkled tan. With dance moves birthed when even I was wearing a narrow leather tie, from behind a pillar he’s playing ‘come-hither’ with a top heavy post-war German bombshell across the bar.

Next up for the 7-piece is Kool and the Gang. The midget slides effortlessly into a Usain Bolt running-on-the-spot move complete with cigarette and flapping bank note and the greying blonde perm is spinning his captured prey like a top.

It’s five minutes to ten and time for more Bintang. Crazy Time indeed