Washing Off the Grime After a Long Week

It's super hot and humid today. I just got home a little while ago and the first thing I did was get naked and take a cold shower. Well, a shower. Cold isn't a choice. In my house, there is no hot. Now, I feel fresh and clean and absolutely exhausted. I've been working and traveling a lot lately and my body is starting to feel it. That is not even in the same zip code as being a complaint. I love the travel and I have even more planned for next month. But I mention it because when I woke up this morning, I thought it was going to be a rough day. Then, I walked into my first classroom and a boy saw me and said, "Yes!" (as in, yay, the teacher we like is here). Talk about a motivator.

I don't go out of my way to be liked in the classroom. I'm not there to be their friend and if a student screws around, there are consequences. But it's nice to know that I'm managing to do my job and have at least some of the students like me. Sometimes, older students will tell me I'm the best teacher they've ever had. While it is awesome to hear, I don't quite believe it. I'm still pretty new at this whole teaching gig, but one thing I learned right off the bad is how quickly the students can get attached, which leads them to think you're the best thing since sliced bread. I did say that it's still nice to hear, right?

I have a weekend chock full of plans and then another full week. Except for Tuesday. Tuesday is a holiday and I'm looking forward to sleeping in and then doing something fun in the afternoon.

Ramadan started this week. At my school, most of the staff and one of the teachers are Muslim, so that means they can't eat until the sun goes down. It's announced officially on television each night when it's okay to eat and it's a little bit fun. Maybe it's not as fun for the ones who are observing the fast. I'm eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner like always. But so far, it feels kind of festive each night around six when they announce it's time to eat. Everybody goes straight for the food. It's tradition to start with something sweet and then have a meal. The best part about Ramadan (speaking only for myself) is the week and a half of holiday we get when it's over. I'm heading to Bunaken Island off the coast of Sulawesi and I'm hoping to see a dugong while I'm out snorkeling. It's near the top of the list of best coral, snorkeling and diving in the world. So, I'm super psyched!

For the second half of my holiday, I'm going to Kuala Lumpur to hook up with some family and friends from the Midwest that will be in KL for Idul Fitri (end of Ramadan). After my week and a half of holiday, I have to return to work. But only for a week. After a week, another friend is coming to visit for the last week in September and we're heading for Bali. Happy birthday to me!

I'm tired. But I'm so, so very happy.

Life's a Beach

There are few things that make me happier than being in, on, or near bodies of water, large or small. My favorite childhood memories are of spending time with my cousins at my grandma's cottage in northern Michigan. Some of my favorite high school memories are from days spent with friends at Union Pier on Lake Michigan. And there is nothing like an August day at Tower Hill. Seriously. Nothing.

Favorite memories in Indonesia is a competitive category. I have taken, and intend to take, trips to so many fun and beautiful places that it will be difficult to narrow it down. But Pulau Seribu will be on that list.

I've taken three trips to Pulau Seribu since I arrived in Indonesia, and I wish I'd taken even more. It's a chain of islands just off the coast of Jakarta--two to three hours on the slow boat or one to one and a half on the fast boat. The accommodations are simple, clean, and cheap; boats are easy to come by; the people are just lovely (and are starting to recognize us from previous trips); and the food is fresh. So fresh, in fact, that this trip, because our table at the restaurant was right next to the fish tanks, I got to watch as a man netted one from the tank containing the first fish we ordered, threw it on the floor to flop around for a minute while he netted one from the tank containing the second fish we ordered, and then returned to the kitchen with both. We then heard two hard strikes with some kind of mallet. At least they don't have to flop around until they suffocate. The fact that it was traumatic didn't stop me from eating them when they appeared, head and all, on my table a little while later. I don't know what that says about me.

The restaurant floats in the middle of the sea, attached to the bottom somehow. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes to get there from the island where we always stay. This time, we took a small boat that didn't have any lights. To be out in the middle of the sea in almost total darkness was amazing. It was cloudy, so the moon didn't light the way. But the islands and the restaurant have flood lights so I could make out the shapes my friends sitting next to me in the boat. As we were driving over, there was a moment of panic when I thought we were going to ram into another lightless boat. But the driver saw it somehow. Once I calmed down, I thought how nice it would be to spend the night on a boat, out in the middle of calm seas, surrounded by darkness and the absence of land-based sound.

I think I might have to investigate a boat trip.

Blech

I am sick and I want to whine about it. It's only the second time since I arrived that I've been sick (unless you count tummy issues, but that's different). The first time was right after I got here--I had a cold most likely contracted during my 36-hour journey. This time, it's a gross virus that makes my throat hurt and makes me achy. I had to work all weekend because my school had an open house and now I've lost my voice. I'm definitely feeling sorry for myself.

On Saturday night, I went to dinner with some friends at a Caribbean-themed restaurant with Latin music and dancing. I was so excited. I haven't been dancing since I arrived in Jakarta and I haven't had too many opportunities to hear music that I enjoy. The restaurant was a huge disappointment. The food was mediocre, the music, while mostly Latin, was mostly Latin pop instead of Latin dance, and besides me and my friends, there was only one other table of people in the entire place. It made me sad.

Next weekend, I'm heading back to Pulau Seribu for a much-needed weekend cruising the islands. The weather has been so hot and perfect lately and I haven't been to the beach in a few months. It is time!

Forty Hours to See the Sun Rise

One of my housemates is leaving soon. She's been my friend and travel partner since I arrived in Indonesia and I'm very sad to see her go. She's only got a couple of weeks left and there was one place she hadn't been to yet that she really wanted to see: Mount Bromo. Bromo is an active volcano in East Java that sits inside a massive caldera with two other volcanoes that are dormant. Bromo's top was blown off at some point and sulfuric steam rises out if it, making the air smell yummy.

Bromo is a famous spot to see the sun rise because the clouds and fog form a sea-like blanket for the peaks as morning breaks. On a good day, it looks like this. We, unfortunately did not have a good day, but more on that later. First, the journey.

Java is a big island. It's 51,000 square miles big. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. I had to look it up. But I know it's big. We can get from Jakarta, on the north coast, to Pelabuhan Ratu, on the south coast, in three to four hours. But to go from west to east takes much, much longer. Especially if you're traveling by train.

We'd been trying all week to get the train schedules but the beautifully-designed Web site isn't updated and you can't get through on the telephone. So, we turned up at the station at 7:30 pm and crossed our fingers that we would get a seat on a very full train, which we did. Our train left central Jakarta at 9:30 pm on Friday night. When traveling by train, there are three different fare choices. The first is economy. It's ridiculously cheap (a few dollars to go hundreds of miles) and, as a result, also ridiculously crowded. People are packed in like sardines, standing, sitting on floors, and hanging out the doors and windows of the un-air-conditioned cars. Brave souls sometimes sit on top. I suppose if you can managed not to fall off, it's probably the coolest and most comfortable seat on the train. The second choice for a ticket is business class. The cars in business class are also not air conditioned and the seats don't recline. But the windows open and they don't overbook, like in economy. It costs about $16 for a one-way ticket and my travel partner had taken a business-class night train to Yogyakarta survived, so we were going to try it. But the business class was sold out.

So, we went with executive class. The tickets are expensive--$33 one way--and there is no doubt that it is the most comfortable option. It's air-conditioned to such an uncomfortable degree that every rider is provided a blanket and pillow. The seats recline and there is ample leg room, along with a foot rest. I slept a good deal during the ten-hour trip that took eleven and a half hours. Trains to Surabaya and back, as I learned last weekend, are notorious for running late.

Surabaya is the second largest city in Indonesia, after Jakarta, and, like Jakarta, there does not appear to be all that much of interest to the average tourist. It didn't really matter to us, because it was only the first stop on our journey to Bromo. At the train station, our first order of business was to find a place to sit down for a minute . The train finally arrived at about 9 am and we were ready for coffee. Our plan was to study the map while we drank so as to plan our next leg. It's not the best idea to spend a lot of time advance planning while traveling through Indonesia because things never turn out like you expect them to. For someone like me, whose planning skills border on the obsessive, it's been a difficult lesson to learn. But I'm trying.

Of course, as soon as we walked through the station doors into Surabaya, there were a hundred or so men shouting at us. "Taxi, miss? Bromo? Bali? Where you go? Taxi? You need taxi? Bromo? Yogya? Taxi?" We told them, "No," in several different ways, in Indonesian, and started walking away in no particular direction. It's difficult to pause even to look around and make a decision which way to walk, because as soon as you do so, you'll be surrounded by a group of taxi drivers or tour guides, offering assistance that you don't necessarily want.

So we ended up walking out to the main road and circling back around to a small, roadside, outdoor restaurant where we ordered coffee and tried to figure out how to get to the bus station using public transportation. An old man sat down next to us and asked us where we were going. He was nice and we chatted with him and the ladies who were serving coffee for a few minutes. People are always impressed when we can speak Indonesian to them. But the questions are always the same, so it's easy to commit the answers to memory! "Where are you from?" "How long have you lived in Indonesia?" And finally, "Do you need a taxi?" Of course, the old man wasn't just being chatty. He wanted to take us to our next destination.

Taxis in Indonesia all have meters. But the drivers will sometimes try to arrange a fare without using the meter. From the airport in Jakarta to my house, I don't have such a problem with this, because I know about what I would pay if the meter were on. But in a new city, I always feel like I'm getting taken advantage of, so I prefer the meter, even if it means I'm going to pay more. And, as the old man was talking to us, we were still trying to figure out how we might take a city bus from the train station to the bus station.

By the time we finished our coffee, we had given up. We declined the old man's offer, since he wouldn't agree to use the meter, and went in search of a taxi. The gang in front of the train station had disappeared, hanging out somewhere until the next train arrived, so we hailed a cab from the street and were on our way. At the bus station, buses to Probolinggo, leave constantly. One fills up and leaves and the next empty bus pulls into the station. We got there just as one was filling up. There was only one seat left and there were two of us. My instinct in these situations is always to wait for the next bus. But in Indonesia, there always seems to be another place to sit. Since my friend got on the bus first, they ushered her to the empty seat. Me, they turned around and guided to the front, where a porter's seat was mysteriously unfolded, just next to the driver.

My friend thought this was cool and she was somewhat jealous. It's true that the seat was comfortable and I wasn't crammed in, like I would have been in the back. I also had a great view out the front window of the bus. I could see the scenery and I could watch, for three hours, as the driver ran motorcycles, bicycles, and other cars practically off the road, as he laid on the horn and made unbelievably unsafe decisions about passing, all in an effort to make up time. We'd spent the first hour in a traffic jam, which made hours two and three a bit traumatic. I'm sure he has driven in the same seemingly crazy and erratic way many, many times. But I'm equally sure that I saw my life flash before my eyes multiple times. I visualized myself flying through the windshield as we collided with oncoming traffic and, as I often find myself doing in Indonesia, I thought of my mom and how horrified she would be if she knew how unsafe the roads are here. But, we made it to Probollingo, where we were ushered into a mini-bus.

The mini-bus left the train station with just six passengers and I was absolutely shocked because I had been certain that we would be stuck there until the next bus arrived and we could stuff at least 18 people in. I shouldn't have worried because we drove to a mini-bus terminal of sorts, where we waited for a couple of hours until we had 20 passengers. The trip was uncomfortable, but it only lasted about an hour, and finally we had arrived at Bromo. The hotels are all at the top of the caldera. We were lucky to arrive at about 4:30 pm. Counting time from when we left our house on Friday night, we had been traveling for twenty-two hours. We were dirty and hungry. As we got out of the mini-bus, we were met by another old man who took us around to the different homestays, a cheaper option than hotels and, as it turned out, our only option since all the hotels were booked for the weekend.

In Indonesia, there is always someone who appears to help you when you are looking for a place to stay. The first time I went to Pulau Seribu, I loved it. Just as I was starting to stress out about where we would sleep, a man appeared and took us to a room. But this practice definitely has an annoying side and as I learn how to speak the language and how to find information on my own, I am starting to get irritated by it. The problem is that once a man attaches himself to you, no one else in the town will help. If you try to talk to someone else, the man will appear and tell that person that you are his.

In this case, our man showed us a very expensive room first. There is no question that it was a nice room. It was clean, the bed was comfortable, there was a western-style toilet, and there was hot water, which is almost unheard of. But it was $35, which is bordering on highway robbery. But after that room, when we told him it was too expensive, he took us to an ever-worsening array of shitholes. Sure, they only cost $10, but I'd have to spend at least another $25 on products to de-lice myself after sleeping in them. We kept asking to see more rooms, hoping to find one for about $20, but he just kept taking us to the $10 rooms and each was worse than the next. It was now dark and we were tired, hungry, dirty, and getting frustrated, with him and with each other. And the bastard knew it. He knew we'd eventually get tired of seeing his crappy rooms and take the expensive one, which we did. Because we had no choice. No one else would help us because he claimed us first. It totally sucked.

But on the plus side, we had a super comfortable room with a hot shower. So, I'm over it.

We'd been able to see the sunset over the caldera (first picture above) before it got dark. It was so beautiful and I was so excited about seeing the sun rise in the morning. Once we got settled into our room, I took a shower. We found a place to have dinner and then we went back to the room and went to bed. I think I was asleep by nine-thirty.

Here's the way the morning works at Bromo: the locals wake up at some completely insane hour to get ready for the tourists. The tourists wake up between 3 and 3:30 am. The jeeps are already lining the roads into the national park. We opened our door at about 3:45 and there was man standing outside, ready to sell us hats, scarves, and gloves, which made us laugh hysterically. I mean, he was outside our door, lying in wait. The early bird gets the tourist, I guess.

Too bad for him that we knew ahead of time that Bromo was cold at night. Yeah, I know I live practically on the equator, so I don't get it either. But cold it was. On our morning, I think it was about 50, which is better than 40, the coldest it seems to get. I didn't bring a lot of cold weather clothing with me. But I do have a hooded-sweatshirt and a wind-breaker. I was wearing both, along with a nice heavy cotton scarf I bought in Cambodia. Shoes and socks, of course. It felt like a morning in October at home. Crisps and cool and the slightest bit uncomfortable, but not too bad.

We piled into our jeep and left at 4 am for the one-hour drive straight up to the lookout point, where we waited another hour for the fabled sunrise. It was super foggy, which I thought was normal, because all of the online pictures of the sunrise show the mountaintops peeking through the clouds and fog. And that is what happens on most days. Unfortunately, not our day. On our day, the sun never came up. We finally gave up and headed back to the jeep at six.

Our second stop for the day was down inside the caldera where we could walk across a pretty vast plane of volcanic sand and up the side of Bromo to peek into the crater. Since we only had an hour, my friend took off for the top. I knew I'd need more than an hour to make it and also that I'd be back--because I want to see that freaking sunrise--so I contented myself with wandering about half way up and also exploring the Hindu temple situated at the bottom.

The place is crawling with tourists, which also means it's crawling with vendors. There are lots of men with horses that you can ride to the base of the stairs to climb up Bromo. I could have done the trip in an hour had I paid to go up on horseback. But the horses were the size of a pony I had when I was three years old. And, armed with the knowledge that my next opportunity to shower was twenty-four hours away, I decided that I didn't want to smell like horse all the way back to Jakarta. I think it was a wise choice.

We explored the caldera for our hour, returned to the village, grabbed our backpacks and got into another minibus for the trip down. At Probollingo, we avoided getting ripped off by the guys that wanted to sell us bus tickets at inflated prices and got on a bus that left ten minutes after we arrived. We got to Surabaya with five hours to kill before our train. So, we pretended we were Indonesian for the afternoon and we headed for the mall where we ate fast food and frozen yogurt and wandered around.

Our train back was business class and it left at 5:30 pm. The trip was supposed to take 12 hours, because the business class trains make more stops. It wasn't uncomfortable and it wasn't too hot. There were fans on the ceiling and the windows were open, so at a few points in the night I was actually chilly. I managed to sleep on and off, being woken up at every stop when the vendors come on the train and stick food and drink in your sleeping face. We got to our stop at 8:15 and got home at 8:40 am. For those of you keeping track, that's twenty-three hours from Bromo to home-o.

So, I traveled forty-seven hours--to see a sunrise that wasn't. Another Indonesian travel experience, but I learned my lesson. Next time I go to Bromo, if I only have a weekend, I will spend $100 on a plane ticket so that I'm not dog tired for a week after. Or, I'll spend three or four days there, so the train travel is spaced a little further apart.

Cambodia

Sorry about waiting two months in between posts. A few people noticed, which made me feel good since it means people have been reading. June just sort of got away from me. I watched a lot (A LOT) of soccer. It was fun being in a country that is soccer-crazy. I know that lots of people in the states were watching too, but here it was on everywhere. And I mean everywhere-in every restaurant, in every bar, on all sorts of big screen televisions all over town (a la Times Square) There's even a small park about a block from my house where they installed a television so that people could come out and watch together. It was pretty fun. We are five hours ahead of South Africa time here, so the earliest games were on at 6:30 p.m. and the latest didn't start until 1:30 a.m. As a result, I spent a lot of the last six weeks sleeping late and being generally tired.

But last week, I finally went on my long-awaited trip to Cambodia. My aunt and uncle met me in the capital of Phnom Penh and we went together by bus to Siem Reap to see the temples of Angkor Wat. Before going, I knew that Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure in the world. And I knew that the site was considered the eighth wonder of the ancient world. But here are some things I didn't know:

• there are three enormous temples: Angkor Wat, Bayon, and Ta Prohm;
• in addition, there are dozens of smaller temples, of which most are bigger than most temples in the world;
• Buddhist monks still use the temples for prayers;
• many of the temples are inside the confines of Angkor Thom, which was the royal city during the area's 12th century heyday
• after the trip, Cambodia and the temples around Siem Reap would move to number 1 on my list of all-time travel experiences.

Now that I'm back in Jakarta, I will do my best to write more frequently. I'll be traveling a little less between now and the end of August because in September I have three big trips planned. I've been here exactly six months. In some ways, I can't believe it's gone so fast and in others, it seems like I've been here forever!

If you want to see all my pictures of the Cambodia trip, you can check them out here.

Jungle Love

I just spent four days on the edge of the Sumatran jungle in a village called Bukit Lawang. The village relies heavily on tourism because it is the home of an orangutan conservation and rehabilitation center as well as a national park. It is also one of only two places in the world where you can still see orangutans in the wild.

We left Jakarta on a 7 am flight, which put us in Medan about 9:30. A driver from our hotel met us there and drove us three hours to Bukit Lawang. From the drop off spot, we had to schlep ourselves and our bags another half-hour along the river to our hotel, the Jungle Inn.

Our rooms were amazing. We had two rooms, joined by a walkway between our patios and with a private view of a waterfall coming down the rocks behind the hotel. Also, my room had a gigantic rock that formed one of the walls.

Once we checked in and had a delicious lunch of pumpkin curry, we set out on our first hike, to the Bat Cave. Apparently, thousands of bats live there. I went on the hike but didn't decide to go into the cave until we got there. It was a pretty difficult hike, through a bit of jungle, down into the rocks and then up the rocks into the cave. So, I figured I'd come that far, I might as well go inside. Lucky for me, the bats were either hiding or too far inside.

When we got back to the Jungle Inn, I thought I was soaking wet from sweat--I wasn't and I wouldn't find out what soaking wet from sweat felt like until I went on the real jungle trek--so we rented some tubes and I jumped in the river in all my clothes to go tubing down a couple of rapids. In retrospect, this was a bit of a mistake. I only brought four t-shirts for four days and the one I was wearing when I jumped in the river never got dry again.

On Friday, we got up early, had a quick breakfast, and set off for a trek through the jungle in the hopes of seeing orangutans in the wild. We'd considered doing the overnight trek. There was a part of me that really liked the idea of trekking for two days and staying overnight in the jungle. And there was another part of me that thought there was no way my knees and feet would make it through two days of trekking, and that even if they did, there was still the problem of sleeping in the absolute darkness of the Sumatran jungle with all manner of bugs and snakes and who knows what else. It's a good thing that was the part of me that won the argument.

We trekked for a couple of hours. I went with three friends and there was another couple added to our group, so that was six trekkers and three guides. I was the oldest and the most out of shape so I went a little more slowly than everybody else. But one of the guides was always with me, trying to help. I always want to do it myself though, partly because I'm stubborn that way but mostly because I'm a total klutz and I can find my balance better without somebody grabbing at my arms and trying to pull me along. It ended up being okay because it was a tough hike for everybody, so while I was going along at a steady but slow pace my friends could stop and rest and have a drink of water while they waited for me to catch up. Plus, we would stop periodically while the guides went off the path and into the bush, looking for the orangutans.

There are both wild and semi-wild orangutans living in the jungle. You can tell the difference because the wild ones are scared of people and the semi-wild ones are not. The semi-wild orangutans started out as zoo animals or as pets or were maybe trained to be in animal shows. They were eventually sent to the Orangutan Center for rehabilitation into the wild.

The first orangutan that my group saw was wild. I was too far behind and missed it. Apparently, they caught it as it was running away and they gave chase with one of the guides. We came up on the other guide and he was laughing, saying that they could chase it all day but it was gone. He called out to find them and we started walking off the path in their direction. For one moment, I lost both of the guides and was standing in the middle of the dense jungle, off of the path. I wasn't particularly scared, but I didn't really know what to do. So, I called out and they were back to collect me in two seconds. We walked a little further on and found the rest of the group. That's when things got a little crazy.

When we started the trek, the lead guide told us the rules. He explained that we'd all walk up into the jungle (and boy did he mean up...and up....and up) and then we'd take rests while the guides split off to look for the orangutans. Then, when they found them, they'd take us to them but we would walk very slowly. He told us to get our cameras out and carry them because it wasn't a good idea to unzip a backpack in front of the orangutans since they would think we were unpacking food and might become aggressive. Also, we were told we absolutely could not touch them since we might transmit a human disease and especially since we were all wearing mosquito repellent. And under no circumstances were we to feed them. The point of the rehabilitation center is to make sure that they can live on their own in the wild. He told us that the guides carried food and sometimes had to feed them in order to stop them from being aggressive with tourists, but that they avoided that if they could.

So, picture the nine of us, all off the path, in the jungle bush. Then, from nowhere, all of the sudden, there were a bunch of other tourists and guides and somebody shouted, "They're over here." Remember how our guide told us to go slowly when we spotted them? Yeah? We didn't. Six people who were, to that point, being very careful about where they put their feet, were suddenly sprinting through the jungle to get to the orangutans, and I was one of them. Luckily, it was a semi-wild female who wasn't spooked by all the people that appeared out of nowhere. She had her baby with her and they stayed up in the trees, looking down at us.

Then, the other tourists, who apparently had guides who weren't as awesome as our guides, pulled out freaking bananas and started to feed her. I definitely had mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I understand why we're not supposed to do it. Ultimately, it's not good for the orangutans to depend on food from humans. But on the other hand, she came right down to our level and it was unbelievable. I couldn't stop shaking and I almost started crying. We watched them move around the trees for about a half an hour until we were ready to move on in search of more.

After we'd been in the jungle about three hours, we got to a place that went up some more, only this time someone had built huge cement stairs. I started up with everybody else but then the guide mentioned that it would be about two hours of climbing up the stairs and then we'd have to go down. My knees are shot and stairs are the worst! Climbing up is hard, but I can handle it. Climbing down is downright painful. I thought about it and decided that after two more hours of climbing up, I'd be so tired that I ran the risk of seriously hurting myself on the way down. I also wanted to be able to enjoy the rest of the weekend with full use of my legs. So, I bailed. At that point, we were luckily only about 15 minutes away from the river crossing back to the hotel. So, one of the guides took me down and then ran back up to the group.

I got back to the hotel about noon, peeled off my sweat-soaked clothes, took a shower, had a nice lunch, read my book for a little while, and then ventured back across the river to the feeding platform at the center so I could watch the afternoon feeding. Twice a day, the rehabilitation center provides a meal of banana mush (bananas and milk) to any semi-wild orangutans who want to come and eat it. They say it's mostly mothers and babies who come to get a little extra to supplement what they find in the jungle. Unfortunately, it's the fruit season now, so none came to eat in the afternoon. But there were plenty of macaques. Those are little gray monkeys that can be very naughty. They were everywhere along the river and playing in the trees around, and on the roof of, the hotel. And apparently, they go to the feeding to get the scraps the orangutans drop. I was, not surprisingly, the last one up the path. I stopped at one point for a breather and I noticed a trail of monkeys following me. As I turned around, the all froze in place and the lead monkey became suddenly interested in the trees around him. It was so funny. It was like he didn't want me to know he was following me so he pretended to be looking at something else, just like a little kid. Natura-ally, I kept turning around to watch the scene play out over and over again for the rest of the way up the path.

One the way down, the ranger pointed out one of the 14 most deadly snakes on the planet, sleeping in a tree. I'm glad I saw it after I'd exited the jungle interior.

I got back to the hotel and my friends had arrived. One hurried off to get a massage and another took a nap. So, two of us sat in the restaurant (open-air, of course), and enjoyed a late afternoon beer. I sat with my back to the river. My friend noticed the trees moving across the river and said something about monkeys. I turned to look and all of the sudden we saw two orangutans, moving around in the trees. Right there, from our hotel. It was so cool. We learned later that they have a nest there, so most mornings you can watch them leave and most afternoons around four, you can watch them come back.

We hung around our hotel for the rest of the day, relaxing and playing cards. There was no reason to go anywhere else to eat because the food was fantastic. On Saturday morning, I took a walk down to the village to shop for postcards while my friends did a little sunbathing. I joined them for about a half hour when I came back. The sun is pretty hot at noon right on the equator. A half-hour was all I could stand.

Later in the afternoon, two of us went on a rafting trip down the river, through the village and into the farmland. I never imagined there could be so many shades of green. This time, there were two guides with us, one for the front of the raft and one for the back. The raft was three tubes tied together. There were rapids, but the water was low, so they were nothing serious, and we enjoyed a leisurely trip to a place where we climbed out of the raft and into a truck that drove us back up to the village. From there, we had to make the trek back to our hotel again. I'm glad we stayed where we did, but each time we walked back, I swear it was further away!

Sunday, we did a whole lotta nothing! I read in the sun for a half hour and then I was hot so I went swimming in the river. After that, I read in the shade. At three, it was time for us to leave. We said good-bye to our friends at the hotel and schlepped our bags back down the hill to the car that drove us back into Medan to catch our flight.

The weekend was a whole series of "I-can't-believe-where-I-am" moments and today I keep wondering if the whole thing was a dream. I'd like to go back someday but I know I probably won't. There are too many other things to see in Indonesia and it was a pretty expensive trip, by Indonesian standards anyway.

I'll always remember seeing the orangutans, which was the reason I wanted to go. But even more importantly, I'll remember the people of Bukit Lawang. In 2003, the river rose 10 meters in a flash flood that destroyed all of the buildings and killed over 300 people--I think that's about half of the population. The guide that stayed with me on our jungle trek lost his wife and son in the flood. Everyone in the village must have lost someone.

Just imagine that. Imagine losing half of your town--your family, your friends, your neighbors--gone in the few minutes it takes for a raging wall of water to rush through a village. Seven years later, the village is rebuilt and the tourists have returned. If you didn't know about the flood, you'd never guess. The people are warm and friendly and welcoming. Even though they didn't show the tiniest bit of sadness, my heart aches for them. I'm not sure I'd have the resiliency to recover from such devastation. But they go on, obviously proud of their village and their jungle and more than willing to share it with anyone who happens to visit.

The Great Angkot Project of 2010

I'm kind of a big picture person. I like to have a plan and I like to be armed with as much information as possible before I execute that plan. What can I say? Knowledge is power.

In Indonesia, I sometimes have to live way outside of my comfort zone in this regard. Partly, it's the language barrier. When I don't understand most of what's being communicated, it's difficult to get a big picture perspective. And, partly it's the culture. There's a habit that I find frustrating where a person will only share part of the story. At work, it might be about why a student is missing class. The student's parents will call in and talk to the front desk. The front desk will give me one sentence: "So and so is sick." If I try to get more information, they shrug their shoulders. If I ask a yes or no question, I sometimes think that they are giving me the answer they think I want. The same thing happened when I lived in Korea and it used to really piss me off. Here, I can deal with it, partly because I expected it (because of my previous experience) and partly because the people exhibiting the behavior are so warm and friendly it takes the edge off.

Still, moments like these can be frustrating and as I become more of a resident of Jakarta--and less of a starry-eyed foreigner--I'm starting to notice more. As a result, I often launch little information gathering projects. I study maps and bus routes. I take pictures and make little notes to myself about the things I see. Neurotic, maybe. But useful.

In the spirit of learning as much about my surroundings as possible, last Saturday, I initiated a new project--to draw a map of the angkot routes in my suburb. I think it would be impossible to map all of the angkot routes in Jakarta--and anyway, most of the time I venture away from my area, I take the bus or a taxi--but there are four main angkot routes running around where I live and no map to tell me where each begins and ends.

So, I got up early and set off. I took a taxi to the mall, which is where drivers from all four of the angkot lines sit in their empty little angkots and wait for passengers. The taxi driver told me the mall was closed, which I knew. But he was concerned that I didn't know what I was doing. In one respect, he was right. During mall hours, there are always two or three angkots from each route sitting in front of the mall, waiting. It didn't occur to me that when there are no people exiting the mall, they wouldn't bother to wait.

But across from the mall, there was one driver, all alone in a number 13. I made my move. I took my Jakarta city atlas and one of four colored highlighters out of my bag and walked up to the driver. I told him (partly in Indonesian and partly in pantomime) that I would give him 5,000 rupiah if he would use the highlighter to mark his route. He understood and he agreed. Then, he didn't want to take the money, but I insisted. It's only 2,000 for a short ride in an angkot, but 5,000 is the rough equivalent of 50 cents.

When he was done, I was feeling pretty good about myself and my idea. There was a number 4 angkot parked across the street, empty, so I approached. The driver looked at me intently as I explained what I wanted, pointing out to him the streets highlighted in blue, where the driver of the number 14 had marked. He nodded understanding. So, I handed him an orange highlighter. And he wrote his signature.

I tried not to laugh as I explained again what it was that I wanted. Again, I pointed out to him the number 13 route that had already been marked in the atlas. He heard "number 13" and told me I had to cross the street to catch it.

At that point, I decided to just ride in his angkot to a place near the bus station where I knew that several number fours waited for passengers. Before we reached the location, he told me I had to get out because he was getting something to eat.

Okay, so at this point, I'm one for two--a little deflated, but still feeling okay about my project. A number 30 was coming down the road, but it had people in it. So, I decided to climb aboard and highlight my own route. Unfortunately, this task was impossible because the driver left the main road and traveled through a twisty-turning series of streets with enough room for only one car. We had to stop frequently to let a car by that was coming from the other direction. Kids roamed freely, people were outside, cooking or sitting around. It was a neighborhood so different from mine, where people stay in their gigantic houses locked behind iron gates. After about twenty minutes, we came to a place where there was a line of angkots waiting--the beginning of the route.

At that point, the driver tried to make me get out, but I was now the only passenger and I saw my chance. I explained to him what I wanted. He got uncomfortable and called out the window for someone who could speak English. This nice man came over and tried to help. His English wasn't great, but he could understand my Indonesian/pantomime routine, so he told the driver what I wanted. Except he told the driver that I wanted to ride along and draw the route myself when I would have preferred to have it drawn for me. But I'm nothing if not flexible and my schedule was clear, so I climbed into the front seat so I could see where we were going, asked where our precise location was on the map, and got my highlighter ready.

Turns out, the route of the number 30 is super long. It leaves my suburb and heads for another area of the city, further north, all the way by the docks. My driver got out soon after we left the neighborhood and a new driver got in. I had to explain all over again what I was doing. It took him a really long time to understand, even though I was sitting there with a map and a highlighter. Eventually, he understood though, and he took me all the way to the end of the route and brought me back. The 30 is the angkot that I take every day to work, so when we got back to my neighborhood, I thanked the driver and jumped out, deciding I was done for the day.

On Sunday morning, I considered trying the number 4 again, but I was reading a great book (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and I went to a coffee shop instead so I could finish it.

This weekend, I have plans to spend the weekend in Kemang--a sleepover!--and the weekend after that is my awesome trip to Bukit Lawang. But before May is over, I figure I'll have the angkot routes figured out. I probably won't use them any differently than I do now. But at least I'll know that I'm not missing any important piece of information!

Sumatra, Here I Come!

I have a four-day weekend coming up in two weeks and I have booked my ticket to Medan, in Sumatra. From Medan, I will take some form of vehicular transportation for the three hour trip north of the city to Bukit Lawang. There, I will spend three days and nights trekking through the jungle and visiting orangutans in their natural habitat. I'm so excited, I think I might wet myself.

Oh My God, I Live in the Suburbs

How did this happen? I swore I would never, ever, ever, EVER live in the suburbs. I mean no disrespect to those of you who do live in the suburbs. I understand many people find the suburbs to be the best of both worlds. I'm simply not one of them. And now I find that I live in an honest-to-goodness suburb. Crap.

It's not like I didn't know that my school was located on the outskirts of Jakarta. It's just that Jakarta is huge and before arriving I thought of it more like Los Angeles than Chicago. In Los Angeles, everything is a suburb, so technically suburbs equals city. And I gotta say, I was perfectly happy with that explanation. In my three months living in said suburb, I have found that it can meet my basic needs. It's easy to get to work. There are a ridiculous number of malls where I buy necessities and find entertainment. It's green and pretty, if you ignore the trash and pollution. Yes, I've seen parts of south and central Jakarta, but usually I'm either in a car or it's dark out. So, while I realized that my part of the city had a different feel, I wasn't able to make an apples to apples comparison. Plus, I was still kind of starry eyed and overwhelmed with every new thing.

Now that I've had some time to get settled in, I'm starting to notice the little details. Like the women who live in my city dress like suburban moms. And they all drive SUVs. And their kids are massively over-scheduled with things like piano and badminton and English lessons (Yes, I realize if there were no English lessons, I wouldn't have a job). Okay, so that's fine. I just figured that was all part of the culture of Jakarta. And partly it is. But this weekend, I discovered Kemang.

Kemang is an area of the city that is a long way from where I live. I'd heard about it--mostly that a greater number of foreigners lived there--but I'd never been. On Saturday, that changed. I hung out there in the afternoon, and had a chance to stroll up and down the equivalent of the Main Street. It feels different than Kelapa Gading. Very different. It took me about five minutes to figure out that's because it's urban. Which means Kelapa Gading is not. Hence, my realization that I live in the suburbs.

It's okay though. Kelapa Gading still has everything I need and now I know about Kemang. If I had to compare it to a Chicago neighborhood, I'd go with Bucktown. It's got plenty of boutique-like stores, restaurants and hip bars where you can hear live music. It also has a sports bar where I had a Twilight Zone moment. We walked in and everyone was white. It could have been any sports bar in any English-speaking country in the world. There were Americans, and Brits, and Australians and Canadians and probably some Irish too. And basically only the staff was Indonesian. It was weird but it will probably be a fun place to watch the World Cup games. We ended up at a place called the Elbow Room--no connection to the Elbow Room in Chicago--where we heard an excellent band while enjoying reasonably-priced cocktails.

It made me so happy to be in a place where I can look around and realize everybody is cooler than me. It also made me think about Chicago neighborhoods and how there are a lot of parallels to be drawn. My neighborhood, for example, is Oakbrook. Kemang, like I said, is Bucktown. The people are urban and there are lots of cool things to do. Jaksa, where I've been hanging out sometimes on the weekends, is like Rush Street--which explains why it kind of bores me. It also explains why people there drink so freaking much. Ancol, on the water, is like Navy Pier and Grant Park--tourist traps and open-air festivals. Each neighborhood has its charms. But I can't wait to spend more time in Kemang!

Update: I just read another blog where the writer called Kemang a suburb. Pshaw, I say.

Two Incredible--and Different--Weekends

Two weeks ago, I had a cold. It lasted about a week but by the weekend, it was better. Last week, I had a stomach virus. I missed one day of work and didn't eat much of anything for four days, but by Saturday, I was feeling all right. It's no fun being sick, but at least the illness have the courtesy to leave me in peace for the weekends because that is when the real fun happens.

Last weekend, I left Jakarta on a bus in the middle of the night on Friday, which was technically Saturday. We met at 3 am but didn't leave until about 4 am. We drove to a tiny village about two hours from the city where we were extras in a commercial shoot.

They started filming at about 7 am, on the bank of a river where they had set up this elaborate picnic scene. Across the river were endless rice paddies with mountains as a backdrop. My part in the first scene was to stand in the river, with water up to my knees, and pretend to catch fish (with my hands). There were eight of us trying to catch fish while the rest of the foreigners were lounging around on the river bank, enjoying the picnic. They had the fish in little cages with open tops, so we could easily pretend that we had some crazy hand-eye coordination skills.

For about two hours, I followed the director's instructions, moving around, being excited about catching fish. Then, we had to play in the water for another hour while the crew moved on to filming scenes on the riverbank and we were just background. By 10 am, my part was done. So, we moved back up into the village, which was really just a couple of houses and another elaborate set that the crew had constructed. They pulled another group to go off and do something else and I was free to nap.

Unfortunately, lying in the hot sun on a bamboo porch is not ideal for sleeping. After about an hour, I gave up and went for a walk. At some point, they fed us. Then, after lunch, they took more people off to film another scene. While the camera crew were gone, the building crew got to work turning our little makeshift huts into a serious party scene.

Because of the language barrier, it's sometimes hard to understand what is happening around me. I had an agent--or at least the person who had recruited me to be in the commercial--but she was off sleeping somewhere so I couldn't ask her when we'd be done. But as the crew was working on putting up lights and lanterns, it became clear that the scene was meant to be filmed in the dark. So, I settled in for the long haul, contenting myself with chatting up strangers and going for walks. It was pretty cool being there, seeing the village and seeing how a commercial is made. I was tired, but managing.

Finally, at about 5:30 pm, the sun started to descend and they gathered us all together for further instructions. The scene was a barbeque that the village was throwing for the tourists. We were about five minutes away from beginning when the rain started. You can tell when the rain will be heavy because the first drops are extra large and they fall with a loud plop. The first drops fell and everybody made a beeline for the covered patios. There we sat for about an hour and half, miserable, tired, and wondering if we'd get to go home. We heard that if the rain hadn't stopped by 8 pm, we would get to go home. So naturally, at about 7:45 pm, it stopped. It took them about an hour to reset everything and then we spent another six hours filming various scenes at the barbeque.

The rain had been heavy, but I still couldn't believe it when I walked to the river bank. The bridge that you see in the first picture above had washed away completely and the place where I had stood only a few hours earlier, up to my knees, was now completely raging. There were a few families stuck on both sides of the river, wondering (I guess) how there were going to get back to their houses.

I've rarely been as tired as I was on the drive home. The road was so bumpy, it was impossible to sleep but my muscles were done supporting me. So, I sort of slumped over and waited for it to be over. As tired as I was, I'm glad I did it. It was great to see what life is like outside of the cities and I met some cool new people too!

I have to say, though, that I much prefer what I did this weekend, which was take a boat back out to Pulau Seribu for another two days of sand, swimming, and snorkeling. During our first weekend, we were content to let the boat take us from place to place, but this time we just wanted to find a beach and relax for a while and then go to just one snorkeling spot. It turned out that there was really nice coral right off of the beach, so we just swam out and got our snorkeling fix without ever going anywhere else.

We had dinner again at the floating restaurant and we spent Sunday morning on the same island where we met all the kids last time. They were there again, but our jet skiing friends were not. No worries though. This time, we hired a boat that stayed with us until we wanted to leave so we made it back in plenty of time to catch the boat back to Jakarta. Pramuka Island is fast becoming a comfortable and familiar place for me. I can't wait to go again!

Crap, It's Hot

In the space of a week , it went from being between 87 and 89 degrees every day to being between 91 and 93 degrees every day. I wouldn't have thought that 4 to 6 degrees would make a big difference but it does--at least to me.

When I got here, I was so hot and sweaty all the time and it felt gross. At home, I generally don't sweat, even in the summer, unless I'm exerting myself, so to have the back of my neck and my hair damp all the time felt icky. Luckily, it only took about a month and my body adjusted and was back to mostly not sweating. Walking places would make me sweat, but once I got somewhere and spent ten minutes in the air conditioning, I was good.

Now, however, the rainy season is officially over and the dry season has begun. It's still raining a lot. But now it's even hotter and I am sticky all the time. I imagine in a couple weeks, I'll be used to it again but this week has brutal. I think partly it's because I have a cold so my head is full of goop. Whatever it is, it's been compounded by some water problems. First, on Tuesday morning, our power went out. I understand that I should expect frequent power outages during the dry season when everyone is running their air conditioning more often. Ours turned out to be a circuit breaker, but we didn't figure that out until after getting home from work on Tuesday evening, which meant on Tuesday afternoon we had to find a place to take showers. Our water pump is electric. When it doesn't run, neither does the water.

So, we loaded ourselves into a taxi and headed for our friends' apartments. Problem solved. Until last night. We got home from work and were greeted by a laundry room flood caused by a broken water pump. Someone from the school came over to look at it, but it couldn't be fixed until morning. That meant no showers and no ability to flush the toilets. Also, we couldn't do the dishes, so I imagine the roaches and ants had a pretty good evening.

This morning, someone else came to fix it. He's still working on it. I went to my friend's house for a shower again but, boy, was I cranky about it. Mostly, I was cranky because I felt bad all day yesterday from my cold and I was sweaty and clammy and when work was finally over I was looking forward to getting home and washing the grime off before climbing into bed. Oh well. Best laid plans and all that.

So, this week has been a little weird. I've been sleeping a lot because I don't feel good and I've been cranky. Also, my first round of classes is ending so I'm a little bit sad about that too. I've had 80 students for almost 12 weeks now and over the next two weeks, they will all move into different classes with different teachers. I feel like I'm just starting to get to know them, too. It's kind of a bummer. But also kind of exciting to get a whole new group of students.

One other weird thing happened this week. One of the Indonesian friends that I've made is a commercial casting agent and she asked me to come to a casting on Sunday. I have less than zero desire to be in a commercial but she's so nice I didn't want to say no. So, I went. I stood in front of a camera and did what the people behind the camera told me to do--pretend to be an excited tourist, fishing and riding a water buffalo. It felt weird and uncomfortable. I guess it didn't show because I got the job. On Saturday, I'm going to a village outside of Bogor to shoot a commercial. I'm consoling myself with the fact that I get to spend all day in a village with my camera and will only have to be in front of someone else's camera for a small part of it. And also, I get paid. It's still weird though, right?

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

As of the date of the latest census, in 2000, there were approximately 200 million people in Indonesia. Of those, 86% are Muslims. So, it makes perfect sense that Good Friday should be a national holiday.

Of course, I'm only joking. Indonesia's constitution grants religious freedom and the country is mostly proud of its reputation for religious tolerance. Most of the people on Java, where I live, are Muslim. Bali has a large Hindu population. Places on Sumatra and Flores are largely Catholic. Other places on Sumatra and Sulawesi have many Protestants. Atheism isn't recognized as a valid choice, so I don't bring up religion very much and when asked, I generally say that I was raised as a Christian but am not religious.

That said, I certainly do not mind having days off from work because of Muslim, Christian, and Hindu holidays. There are only two months of the year that are holiday free and twice--once for the end of Ramadan and once for Christmas--I get an entire week off. Last month at Nyepi (Hindu), we had a free Tuesday so naturally we had a barbeque. This month, it't Good Friday.

Taking full advantage of a day off is important and, yesterday, I had the good luck to be invited to go along with some friends to a safari park outside of Bogor. I'd seen the park before, on the way to Cibodas, but since the only way to see the safari is to drive through in your own vehicle, it wasn't an option. But my friends have access to a car and driver, so off we went!

Riding in a comfortable cross between and SUV and mini-van while an experienced driver worries about negotiating traffic and directions is a luxury I could get used to. We left early and missed most of the holiday traffic so the trip only took a couple hours. It was well worth it.

The road to the park entrance is lined with kids selling very fresh, very orange carrots. We bought three bunches and off we went. The drive through the safari park took about an hour and a half and we saw a multitude of different types of deer and antelope and water buffalo. Many of the deer and antelope roam freely between the slow-moving parade of cars, begging for carrots at the windows. The first elephant enclosure was fenced in by a wide stream, but if the cars got close to the edge of the road and one of the bigger elephants reached out with her trunk, she could grab the carrot out of a hand. The camels could too. The zebras walked right up, took the carrots, ate them, and stuck their noses right into the window to get more. There were bunches of little monkeys--the kind Ross had on Friends--and they were freely moving around their area, but they didn't come up to the cars. They also preferred oranges to carrots.

About half way through the trip, the car entered a gated area where the animals were sectioned off, at least from each other. Before entering, we were warned to stay inside the car and keep the windows rolled up. First up, lions. They were all sleeping on raised platforms and didn't look too interested in the cars, so we rolled the windows down half way and snapped some photos. I don't imagine anyone would be stupid enough to get out of the car but there was a park ranger nearby sitting in a jeep, presumably with a tranquilizer gun just in case. The tigers were equally uninterested and so we rolled the windows down again. They also had black bears, which looked like they'd be more at home in North America than the tropics. The bears were allowed to roam between the cars. We rolled the windows down to snap, but as they walked closer, the windows went up in a hurry! At the hippos' lake, I took a picture of the largest hippo as we drove by. His mouth was open and in the picture it looks like he's about to take a bite out of our car. But he just stayed there, by the water's edge, with his mouth wide open, waiting for the cars to drive by and the carrots to be thrown in. Hilarious!

After the drive was over, we went on foot into the other section of the safari which was part zoo, part amusement park. The rides were mostly for kids, so we headed for the baby zoo where we got our pictures taken with tigers and a baby orangutan. Then, we had a bite to eat and explored the other animals. There were exotic birds flying around in an aviary, close enough to touch, lots and lots of monkeys, a creepy reptile house, an enormous Komodo dragon, and another picture station where we got to hold a python and another, older, orangutan. For the record, I had my picture taken with the baby tiger, the baby orangutan, and the adolescent orangutan. The python was too big and scary for me!

I didn't care that much about the pictures, although I'm glad I have them. The best part was getting to touch the animals. The tiger wanted to play. The baby orangutan was curious and, just like human babies, immediately wrapped one hand in my hair. The adolescent orangutan was friendly and weighed a lot. At first, she sat on my lap but then the trainer had me stand up and hold her on my hip. I couldn't believe how heavy she was.

There were elephants all over the park. Some of them were in the enclosed area on the drive. Others were available to ride through the park, with a trainer of course. We came across the paths of several during the drive. The trainers have taught them a neat trick. They put their trunks into the windows of the cars they are walking past. At first, we thought they wanted carrots, but they don't. They are looking for money. When you put the bill in their trunks, they immediately lift their trunks and give the money to the guy on top. It's a riot. In cars that didn't have the windows down, they hopefully knocked on them with their trunks. When we ran out of small bills, we closed our windows. The next elephant to come by trumpeted his disappointment when we didn't open up. The way an elephant grabs something small, like a bill or a carrot, is to close the very tip of its trunk around the item. When it grabbed from my hand, I got to feel the tip, which is moist and slimy but so cool. At other places in the park, elephants were hanging around with trainers and we got to touch them. The rest of the skin is dry with wiry hair sticking out everywhere.

The whole day was just another to add to the list of incredible experiences I've had since I arrived in Indonesia. I have mixed feelings about zoos because I think it's sad to see animals penned in and held captive but I also think it's important to be able to learn about them. I felt equally weird about interacting with them so intimately. But the one thing I noticed was that all of them looked very healthy. Their noses were moist, their eyes were bright, and their hair and skin were shiny. Must be all the carrots.

Amazing

This weekend, I'm spending a quiet weekend at home. Last weekend, I had a not-so-quiet weekend at Pulau Seribu, or Thousand Islands. We left our house at 5:45 to make sure we got to the dock by 6:30 a.m. We thought there was only one boat and that it left at 7:00 a.m. sharp. We took two cabs. One of them (mine) found the dock with no problems. There were several boats leaving for Pramuka Island—our destination. The first left at about quarter til seven, loaded down with people and cargo and not so many life vests. Watching the first boat leave, I was a little concerned. I didn't relish having to store my cell phone and camera in the plastic bags I brought while swimming to shore from a sinking boat. One person in my group had been to Pulau Seribu before and her boat actually did start to sink. Lucky for them, they were close enough to another island to crash land and evacuate.

There are lots of little moments in Indonesia where I think "Well, this boat (or this car or this whatever) goes every day to the island and even though it looks as if one good wave would sink it, it must be sea worthy."

But for last week, we didn't end up on the first boat, which was the most crowded, because the second cab, containing our friends, got a bit lost. It was stressful because we didn't know how long it would be until we had just one boat left. They kept filling up and leaving. One gone...two gone...three gone...four gone. At seven, our friends told us we should go without them. But there was one boat left. The three of us stood there, not sure whether we should get on the last boat or hold out hope. Then, finally, at quarter after seven, they came running around the corner. It was a good thing too, because the boat was just about to leave...

Just kidding--it's Indonesia. The boat didn't leave until it filled up, which was at about quarter til eight.

We had an uneventful ride out to Pramuka Island that took, as promised, about two and a half hours. Pulau Seribu is actually just over 100 islands in a little string starting just a half-hour off the coast. The water doesn’t start to clear until about an hour into the trip. In Jakarta, it is a nasty, and smelly, brown color with loads of trash floating in it.

As it started to look a little bluer, we started to see flying fish. In my mind, I had confused flying fish with sword fish that jump out of the water, but don’t actually fly. Flying fish—or at least the ones we saw—were little. They weren’t much bigger than perch or small walleye. But they jumped out of the water and then went skimming across it. Some of them only managed a few skips before they went back under. But some of them cruised across for at least a hundred feet, skipping and flying.

Aside from the flying fish, there wasn’t much to look at except for blue water and the occasional boat. I practiced a little bit of Bahasa Indonesia with a man sitting by us on the front of the boat. He was a teacher too, and last year he lived on Pramuka Island and taught at the school there. It’s the only school for the entire island chain and kids who live on the other islands arrive by school boat. I wanted to ask him how I could apply for a job, but my Indonesian isn’t that good yet!

In the past, when I have traveled, I’ve always preferred to have the details nailed down. It probably comes as no surprise that I’m a bit of a planner. Here though, planning ahead is more expensive because the hotels that you can book online or through an agent cost more. And, in some cases, even if you book ahead, they give your room away, so it makes sense to just go and figure things out when you get there.

I learned that this is especially true when you are taking a boat to an island that is expecting tourists. We got to Pramuka Island and before we were even off the dock, we’d been met by a man offering to help us. His office was right off the dock so we went with him and within ten minutes, we had a place to stay for the night and we had chartered a boat for the day to take us to snorkeling spots and other islands, complete with a guide. They quoted us a price and I think we were expected to bargain them down, but it was so ridiculously low by any standard that any of us were used to that we didn’t bargain at all. We just asked to see the place first.

It was a house, with one large, air-conditioned bedroom, one living room, and a bathroom and shower. It was clean and it was right on the water. They brought us an extra mattress, so all six of us could fit in the bedroom, and we were golden. Total cost: about US$35. And we split it six ways. You can see why we didn’t feel the need to bargain him down. The boat for the day was even cheaper.

I love being on boats and last Saturday was no exception. The boat had plenty of cover, so I could stay out of the sun, and we motored around, taking pictures as we went. There’s a lot of coral around the islands and the water is incredibly shallow. This means that we saw people in the distance who looked as if they were walking on water, hundreds of yards out from shore. There were also many fishing houses, and even a restaurant, built on stilts in the middle of the sea.

We finally came to our first snorkeling stop and jumped in. I love to swim and I used a mask and snorkel plenty of times growing up around lakes in Minnesota and Indiana. But I’ve always been a little bit afraid of swimming in the ocean. I knew I was afraid but I knew I was going to do it any way and, after sitting on the edge of the boat for a few minutes, mustering up the courage, I jumped in.

It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It wasn’t particularly colorful, like coral I’ve seen in aquariums or on television, but it was so beautiful. Coral fanned out all around us, in pinks and browns, in different sizes and shapes, and at different depths. There were fish swimming everywhere, but again, not the gigantic schools of them you see on nature programs. There were also these bright blue starfish, clinging to bits of coral. Our guide went down and picked one up. He also encouraged us to swim down and touch bits of it, which I thought was a little weird. He obviously wasn’t a conservationist! In any case, I had to fight with my anxiety most of the time we were snorkeling, so I stayed on the surface.

I did fine. As long as I was with the group and didn’t stare for too long into the bright blue expanse off the edge of the reef, I could concentrate on what I was looking at. But we kept swimming further and further away from the boat and at a certain point, my anxiety overcame my enjoyment and I decided to swim back.

After everybody was done snorkeling, we went to an island that is also a national park and nature reserve. There was only one house on the island—for the park ranger and his family, I think. It only took about fifteen minutes to walk around the entire shoreline and it wasn’t so good for swimming because there were too many rays in the water. But it was beautiful. There were huge pieces of gnarled driftwood on the shore and, as I walked, there were tiny crabs scooting here and there. There are also blocks of Mangrove trees planted in the water around most of the islands we saw. I learned later that they are a good natural defense against erosion.

After a long time relaxing on the island, it was on to another snorkeling spot. I’d had enough for the day and stayed on the boat. I know I’ll go again though, and maybe some day I won’t have anxiety about it. We ended our day with dinner at the floating restaurant and then, once we were back on Pramuka, a walk around the town in the dark.

The following day, I woke up early and opened the front door to a gaggle of children swimming in front of the house. Eventually, another person in my group woke up and we got some coffee from a little outdoor place where we sat and watched the kids swimming. When we were bored of sitting, another friend had joined us and we went for a walk around the village again. It looked quite different in the daylight and people were mostly outside of their houses, cooking or sitting. The kids were adorable, as they are everywhere. Where I live in Jakarta, the kids spend their weekends playing video games or walking around the mall. On the islands, kids were doing the same stuff that I did when I was a kid, riding bikes, swimming, and making up their own games. It was great to see!

While not everyone in Indonesia speaks English, they all seem to know “Hello, Miss,” which is what we heard from almost everyone we passed. We walked until we found the opposite shore of the island and then we turned back. By the time we got back to our house, everybody was up and we chartered another boat to take us to an island with a nice beach where we could spend the rest of the morning.

On that beach island, we met some guys with jet skis and some local boys, who stalked us until they worked up their courage to come and talk to us. It was a nice way to spend a couple hours. We got tired of the sun and went closer to the dock to sit in the shade and wait for our boat to come back for us. We had to be back on Pramuka to catch the boat back to Jakarta at 1 o’clock. While we were sitting, we started talking to a bunch of guys from Jakarta who were with the jet skiers. These guys were all Harley Davidson enthusiasts who take several trips a year on their motorcycles. Each summer, they fly to a different city in the U.S. and ride from there to Sturgis, South Dakota for the big annual Harley fest (the one where John McCain offered up his wife in 2008).

As we got more and more concerned that our boat wasn’t returning, we started talking about what we would do if we missed the boat back to Jakarta. The guys heard us talking about it and offered us a ride back with them. Turns out, they go over almost every weekend to relax on the islands. Some of them drive the jet skis. The others ride on a friend’s yacht. Yep. That’s right. They offered us a ride back to Jakarta on a yacht. But first, they took us to another friend’s private island where we were treated to a lovely lunch.

Who has enough money to buy an island? I don’t know and we didn’t get to meet the owner because he was on the way from the airport as we dined in style on his dime. We chatted with a lot of the guys (there were only a few women along—and about thirty to forty guys). Many of them had excellent command of English. At least one that I talked to went to school in the U.S. and then stayed there to work for several years. We also met a few police officers who were invited to lunch and we ended up coming back to Jakarta on a police boat instead of the yacht, which was super cool. It was super fast and the weather had turned a little bit stormy so, although we were out in front of the storm, the waves were huge and we got sprayed quite a bit.

So, to recap: boats, beaches, sun, snorkeling, ride on a yacht, lunch at a private island, and delivery back to Jakarta courtesy of the local police.

Quite a weekend.

Life is Easy

When I lived in South Korea, everything was so hard. I didn't know the language and hardly anyone spoke English, I didn't have many people to ask for help, and I felt very much on my own. It was scary and it was stressful. I expected to feel the same way when I arrived in Indonesia, but it has been, so far, remarkably smooth.

There are moments when I don't understand what's going on, but usually they happen when I'm with another foreigner. So, either the other person understands or we both don't. When it's the former, all is well. When it's the latter, we can make a decision together about what to do. Either way, it's not too stressful.

Making up for these occasional moments of confusion is the fact that everyone in Indonesia seems to want to take care of things for me. When I come out of a restaurant or the mall, there is always a taxi waiting. If I wait, an angkot will come along. When I walk into a store, I'm immediately approached by someone who wants to help me. My school pays people to make sure we have enough water at the house, to make sure our floors are cleaned and our dishes are washed, and to wash and iron our clothes. The security guards in my neighborhood remain concerned if I appear to be walking without an umbrella when clouds are rolling in. And, if and when there is a time when I am utterly lost and in desperate need of help, I know there will always be someone willing to help me, either for free or for a few thousand rupiah.

Sometimes, it makes me a little uncomfortable when I think about how little money all these people who are taking care of me earn. But it's a job, which is better than being unemployed. And we're not the only ones who are taken care of. In my wealthy neighborhood, nannies carrying sleeping four-year-olds, following mommies who are shopping and the mall actually employs someone to put your umbrella in a plastic bag if you walk in and it's dripping. It seems kind of silly until you realize that a) they are paying him and b) no one is slipping on wet floors.

Tomorrow morning, I leave for Pulau Seribu and a couple days on the water, motoring from one remote island to the next. We won't be staying in a hotel because the residents of the islands rent rooms in their houses to the tourists to make extra money. Wherever we end up staying, I'm sure we'll be well taken care of.

Bogor and Cibodas

On Saturday morning, I left my house at about six-thirty with one of my housemates. We took two angkots to the bus. Then, we took the bus to the train station where we boarded an express train for Bogor, a city of about a million people located an hour south of Jakarta. There are two different trains going to Bogor: economy and express. As you would probably guess, economy is the cheaper option (about twenty-five cents). But when we had discussed which train to take with the ladies who work at the front desk of the school, they looked a little bit horrified at the thought that we would choose economy. We went with their recommendation and took the express, which cost about a dollar. It was air conditioned and only made about four stops along the way. When I got up to the train platform, I understood why the ladies were horrified at the idea of us on an economy train. First of all, there aren't many seats on either train--the seats line the edges, like on commuter trains, with a large middle room for standing. Plus, on the economy train, the middle doors are wide open, to let the air in. There were so many people stuffed into each car that some men were hanging out of the middle doors and more of them were sitting on top of the train. I can't imagine how they climbed up there, but it did look like the most comfortable spot on the train--they weren't packed in like sardines and they had natural air.

Our train ride was uneventful. Once we got to Bogor, we ran into a tour guide who shuffled us into his office and offered to take us around for two days. His price was high, but he would have bargained. But we declined and headed for a mini-bus to get to the town of Cibodas. It wouldn't be the first time someone approached us and offered to be our guide. The thing is, we didn't want a guide. We were both into exploring on our own.

The mini-bus up the mountain took about an hour and a half. There is only one two-lane road going up and traffic was heavy. We were packed in, but luckily, we got the front seat by the open window and away from the exhaust. Including the driver, there were four of us in the front and, of course, no seat belts. Sitting in the front is always a mixed blessing. It tends to be more comfortable than the back, but also more harrowing, because you can see what's happening with the traffic. I tried to look out the window at the scenery and not pay attention to how close the other cars were.

We got dropped off at the side of the road and had to catch another angkot further up the mountain to Cibodas. I'm not sure how those little mini-vans make it up the mountain. It felt like the little engine that could. But we made it.

Our intention was to hike a path up between two volcano peaks in a national park. We didn't intend to go all the way to the summit of either peak, because those were hikes much longer than we (or at least I) could handle. But there was a 2.8 km hike up to a place where the mountains sort of fuse together and there were three waterfalls there. As hikes go, I imagine it was pretty easy. There was a pathway made entirely of large stones and stairs for most of the way. But I'm not exactly in the best shape for hiking so I didn't know whether I would make it all the way to the waterfalls. About 2/3 of the way in, there was a lake that was a turquoise blue color. That was my original goal, and when I made it there, I was really tired. The thunder that we'd been hearing in the distance was getting closer and I considered the fact that I still had to get down, which is the hardest part for me and my knees.

But three waterfalls...it sounded so cool. So, I sucked it up and kept going. We ended up having to walk the final 0.3 km over a rickety old bridge but the scenery was absolutely amazing! And finally, we got to the waterfalls. It was well worth the walk. Oh, and did I mention the monkeys? Yep, we saw monkeys in the trees on the way up. It's pretty cool to look up and see monkeys!

On the way down, my housemate went ahead and hiked another up another path for a while while I slowly made my way. It had rained at the lower elevation while we were at the waterfall, so the stones were slippery. My knees hurt, but I didn't have much of a choice, so I focused on not slipping and hurling myself head first off the path into the jungle bush. I went very slowly. So, slowly that some other people coming down from the waterfall passed me and asked me if I was okay. I was perfectly fine. It's just that I'm clumsy under the best of circumstances and I wasn't taking any chances!!

I made it out, tired but extremely proud of myself and ready to hike again in the near future. I'm thrilled with the investment I made in my new hiking boots. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have gone the whole way if I'd just worn my Teevas.

After the hike, we returned to Bogor where we spent a little time trying to find a hotel--the first two places were full. But we did find one, where we had showers and dinner and a nice sleep. On Sunday, we headed for Bogor's botanical gardens. The gardens cover more than 80 hectares (1 hectare = 2.5 acres) so we walked some more! All the trees and flowers were so beautiful.

After our day in the gardens, we got a little bit lost trying to find the train station again, and we got caught in a downpour, which felt good after a hot day. Eventually, we made it to the train and made our way home where we had dinner at our favorite Indian place.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. Coming up this weekend, I'm headed for Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands), which is a string of islands just off the coast of Jakarta, for some sandy beaches and snorkeling. There are actually only a hundred or so islands, but I figure that's enough.