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.