Surabaya is a strange and unusual city for sure. After seeing the Soviet era submarine serving as a tourist attraction and the Sampoerna museum dedicated to cigarettes I didn’t think it could get any stranger.

Then I learnt of the cancer museum.

Yes, you read that correctly. Surabaya has a quite small and unassuming looking museum dedicated to cancer and it’s one of the most bizarre, not to mention sobering and somewhat eerie, places I’ve ever visited.

This impression was probably amplified by the complete absence of any staff. I walked into the entrance area and the front desk was empty. I shouted hello a few times into the building interior and received no response. I waved at the CCTV camera to see if anyone might greet me. No response. I hesitantly ventured through the ground floor of the museum towards the sound of a football match that I could hear playing on a television set in the courtyard to the rear and side of the building.

The men sat watching the football match looked like your average Indonesian labourers and not people who would staff a museum. I didn’t bother to disturb them. My Bahasa Indonesia is still too limited to engage in conversation with locals for any extended period and they appeared to be deeply engaged with the match. Why bother them right? I returned back in to the museum interior unsure of the situation.

Was I allowed to be there? Would a museum be left un-staffed like this? It clearly wasn’t closed otherwise the door would have been locked. Truth be told this isn’t the first time I have experienced this during my travels in Indonesia (as people in the country can be very laid back, relaxed and there appears to be a high level of social trust from what I have seen thus far) but in that situation the staff returned from dinner.

During this visit there were no staff. None whatsoever. The museum was unoccupied except for my presence during the entire visit. This was quite unusual and given the function of the museum and its exhibits I can’t deny that it also felt a little eerie too.

The building itself looks like it was a small medical facility and, given its layout and internal decor, that’s probably not an inaccurate impression.

As I walked within the interior of the museum I was reminded of doctor’s surgeries in the UK where I grew up as a child in the 1980’s. The rows of chairs accompanied by information boards and medical warning notices situated on the walls felt like throwbacks to that era.

There was one one minor, but highly significant, difference though.

The doctor’s surgeries I visited as a child didn’t host jars filled with diseased organs and human tissues infested with different types of cancer. The sight was somewhat reminiscent of the jars of small animals suspended in formaldehyde that I remembered seeing during my high school biology lessons - except these were tissues masses extracted from humans.

From squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma to thyroid cancer, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and colon cancer there was a wide variety of diseased organs/tissues and their causative tumour types on display.

It was quite sobering to stand there looking at these exhibits realising that the diseased tissues within them had been removed from patients who were now long gone. People like myself who had been formerly filled with life, who had once walked the face of this earth and been part of families and communities. Who were they? What was their story? How many people still alive remembered their time on this planet?

Was this their remaining legacy - reduced to anonymous and non-identifiable masses of cancerous tissue? It was a gruesome and disturbing train of thought but the sight of such exhibits really does reinforce the fragility of this gift we call life and, despite all our pretensions to the contrary, how truly mortal we really are.

Make the most of this blessing while it lasts folks.

I have also heard from many Indonesians that I have met just how prevalent the rates of cancer have become in that country. Why this should be the case I can only speculate but it’s a worrisome trend that concerns many people I have met.

Fee

The museum appears to be free to visit although a donation box is situated within the entrance area.

DO make a contribution should you visit.