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!