My trip to INDONESIA by Daniel Silver

 

Dear All:

 

FRIDAY

 

Well, I am just sitting down in here in Jakarta to my first Indonesian meal, and I have decided it will be Nasi Goreng, or fried rice, from room service.  And indeed, it does look like fried rice, although it comes with a piece of roast chicken, a fired, battered slice of pineapple, a massive prawn chip, and a great big sunny-side-up egg on top -- and you know how much I love eggs in that cartoonish incarnation.  The rice also has for garnish some peppers in oil and some kind of vegetable mixture, innocuous tasting chopped orange and white thingies.

 

Well, how does it compare?  Well, Jakarta is definitely better organized than Manila.  Despite complaints, traffic at 11 pm was negligible -- in Bangkok, you could still get hung for up for an hour.  It is a little darker at night; streets are wider and things look newer.  On the other, there isn’t any food to be found on the street -- at least not like in Bangkok, where it is impossible to avoid -- thus my resort to room service.  Of course, they don’t speak English, but Bahasa Indonesia is easy -- Thai syntax (Me want go hotel -- no conjugations) with almost Spanish-like ease of pronunciation, indeed, it may even be easier.  I was making understandable sentences on the taxi ride in, by just thinking what I would say in Thai and using Bahasa words.  And they use our alphabet!  That is a nice touch.

 

This is, however, is the third most corrupt country on the planet, apparently.  Well see what keeps this place afloat.  The World Bank would say they are just using up all their natural resources and cheap labor, and when these become scarce or cost more to get, everyone will get out.  I suppose well see.   And taxis have meters, at least.

 

And the rice?  Well, it was Ok for fried rice.

 

Today (Friday) was an unnecessarily hellish day.  To avoid traffic, I took the train to the airport.  Overall, it took about 2 hours in 90+ degree weather, waiting and riding.  It was also Songkran.  Songkran is the Thai New Year, and (at least as far as I can tell) it mostly involves throwing water at each other, throwing it from big buckets, or in plastic bags, or using fluorescent-hued Super Soaker pistols.  Indeed, as we passed through the slum area on the way to the train station, I was sort of glad I was in an enclosed taxi.  All Thai youth were wandering or riding around on motorcycles with massive water pistols.  As a farang, I was of course a choice target, and it was with regret that I realized that, both amazingly and unfortunately, I would be the only white to escape.  And that was a nice thought until the train started moving and I received one of the first volleys from those who live by the tracks.  After that, the windows went up. The water was refreshing, but when it dried it left tea colored stains on my shirt -- god knows where that water came from. All I could think about was how to explain to the Indonesian customs official why I was a greasy smelly farang wearing a stained shirt.

 

I couldn’t even explain it to myself, because the road to the airport was almost completely clear.  So sad!  I suppose my compensation was that taking public transport was more environmental. 

 

SATURDAY

 

ATE goat satay, chicken curry.  Food is OK, not terribly daring. 

 

SAW the big mall next door.  Actually it is just one big department store.  Also went to the center of town to look at the Presidents palace, but most importantly, to see the Istiqlal Mosque, the biggest in Southeast Asia.  I admit I have never even been in one before.  You remove your shoes, and I suppose protocol demands you remove your socks and wash your feet too, but they sent me up sockshod anyway.  It was a big one all right, and the muezzins voice reverberated everywhere, calling to prayer.  The main room itself was huge, with marble slabs showing you the proper orientation toward Mecca.  Likewise, the whole main building was off center to accommodate this.  Indeed, throughout the place, even on the roads in back, there were lines to indicate the place to line up your prayer rugs.  The long distances, the people in shadows or silhouetted (the mosque was entirely lit by indirect light from the cupola and the sides), the song of the muezzin -- it was as enchanting as the tinkling bells you hear at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, one of the few times when Asia lives up to Westerners romantic image.  It was also a pleasant contrast to Thailand’s frenetically decorated temples.

 

It was perfect, 12 stainless steel clad pillars rising up to a stainless steel cupola.  In the exact center of the mosque, the dead straight-line to Mecca, there was, of course, a grandfather clock.  It appears that every temple in Thailand has one too.  Maybe it is an Asian thing.  It was very cool, and thunder rumbled in the back, as it is doing right now as I write.  It hasn’t done anything more than sprinkle ever, though. 

 

My bathroom is nice.  When I flush the toilet, it geysers like Old Faithful.  And there is a little spout that shoots water upwards (if the flushing doesn’t do the job). 

 

I just had an ice cream sundae at McDonalds. It tasted a bit different...almost as if it were actually made of milk.  It was probably halal--kosher for Muslims.  This is the largest Muslim nation, y’know?  In the malls you can buy outfits for women to keep even their hands covered...they have these big hanky things that go over the hands.  There is a Koran in my hotel room too.  Pity its all in Arabic.  According to T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame), the chapter on the cow is supposed to be especially poetic.

 

On batik shirts, well yes, they do make you look like a waiter, or a refugee from the APEC summit in Bogor.  I have looked around, but I cant bring myself to buy one. Like a guayabera, what seems OK one place may simply be an international faux pas.

 

Pollution here is Latin-America bad.  Far buildings are difficult to see. Or maybe it is all the clove cigarettes which many enjoy smoking.  But the city is not as claustrophobic as Bangkok.

 

Ooh, I have been in Bangkok too long...I wrote tea-coloured up there.

 

Interesting: they actually stare at Westerners here.  Like we are unusual!  We are, compared to Bangkok.  Both men and women stare.

 

SUNDAY

 

Went to the National Museum and to Kota, the old city, which there wasn’t much of.   The museum was pretty much a collection of Stuff.  At the National Museum, what seemed like an entire English school came to interview foreigners, and they all ended up interviewing me, giving me the usual questions.  It was fun.  What eez your name?  How do you like Indonesia?  Don’t know.  Do you have any brothers and sisters?  Yes, one younger sister.  (Oh, only two of you?) Are you married?  Nope.  How are old are you?  They were some of the first in Asia who learned my real age.  Their English was pretty good too, at least after living in Thailand it seemed so. 

 

MONDAY

 

Well, I finally met with the Deputy Assistant Minister for the Environment -- a very arduous meeting, where I slowly had to get these guys to agree to some kind of agenda that I invented.  Meanwhile, the guy chain-smoked clove cigarettes, as did most everybody else in the room.  If this was typical, it was certain than the gray haze over Jakarta was caused as much by smoking bureaucrats as by cars. You can just imagine how much I enjoyed our 2.5 hour meeting, with me ending up smelling like an ashtray.

 

(By the way, I woke up early today--Thursday-- and, as promised, at 4:20 am there was a call to prayer.  People actually wake up for it and then go back to sleep.  I am certainly not cut out to be a Muslim.)

 

Traffic was extremely severe and crawling.  It took me forever (well, 45 minutes) to just find a taxi, and 1.5 hours to get home.  I suppose Bangkok would often be worse, but having skipped lunch I was hungry.... For dinner, ate Javanese food with my hands.  This was not quite as natural as one would hope.  I don’t know exactly what I was doing wrong but most of my rice spilled to the plate.  Thai sticky rice, in this sense, is much more user friendly.

 

TUESDAY

 

Today in Jakarta it must have been 100 degrees with beating sun, but the humidity wasn’t so bad.  It was tolerable.

 

Went to Puncak (c is pronounced as ch in Bahasa Indonesia), which is in the mountains about 1.5 hours from Jakarta.  It is very peaceful here, and cool.  Indeed, the populated countryside here is fairly pleasant looking, compared with that of Thailand or the Philippines.  I went for a conference on Creating Sustainable Markets for Sustainable Energy, or something like that.  It is mostly Japanese, Americans, Indonesians, a few Filipinos.

 

Unfortunately, they forgot to pick 2 of us up at the hotel, and we missed our ride to Puncak.  So they put us in a taxi for the full 75 km, paid them about US$70.  I chatted with an Indian guy, a specialist in rural electrification.

 

WEDNESDAY

 

The day was cool here, and then it rained, a lot.  This seems to be one of those places where it rains all the time -- the resort we are staying at is built to channel water out as rapidly as possible, spouts and gutters spilling and creeping everywhere.  The resort is not so great.  Each room has so many light switches--I must have 10 in my room alone.  I have had to call the front desk 3 times just to locate them all so I could go to sleep.

 

Long day, as all conference days are, but I managed to survive, although Plenary Session C was definitely going for the knockout.   The food here is really terrible.  During the breaks they gave us breaded and deep fried goodies that either had been left to sit around or actually WRAPPED IN PLASTIC so as to allow minimum freshness by the time we got them.  It was like eating day-old food from the county fair.  For all I know it was.

 

The evening was good though, and we had goat and satay!  They cut the goat meat from a very petting-zoo-goat-shaped carcass.  Indeed, they amazingly managed to keep the whole skeleton together. Reminds me of the occasional siting of the carcass truck rolling down the street I work on in Bangkok....just a big truck load of white and clot-brown cow skeletons, all still hanging together, like a moving and jiggling Francis Bacon painting.

 

THURSDAY

 

Last day of the conference, and my punishment for retiring early (they were starting to sing karaoke -- time to get out) was waking up early.  The countryside was a beautiful mosaic of vegetable gardens.  To combat boredom, I made two of the days presentations and volunteered IIEC to help set up 4 projects. I finished the conference not knowing why I was there, and had the impression that the organizers had the least vision at all. 

 

FRIDAY

 

Only two meetings...everyone wants to meet me later.  Which means I am not getting out of here soon. Well, that’s OK, but I wish I had to time to really travel.

 

SATURDAY

 

looked at shops.  Ate food, had a nap.  Indonesian food is better than Filipino food, but still leaves much to be desired.  Frying is still a primary cooking operation.   If you like fried goat, this is the country for you!

 

SUNDAY

 

Today I didn’t have any luck. I made it to the dock in the north of the city, where hundreds of bedraggled longshoremen unload hardwood planks and sticks off large wooden boats. They looked at me as if I were from Mars.  I wondered why on earth this was a tourist destination.  I got a second look at the old part of the city, and I just couldn’t imagine this place was trading for 400 years.

 

I arrived when all the museums were closing.  The Museum of Fine Arts had a wedding.   They practically screamed at me after I saw -- they seemed to be really concerned that I had no idea what I was doing and that if I didn’t watch out, I was going to walk right into the middle of a wedding and then I would be really confused.  The bride and groom were decked out in multicolored garments and sitting on the floor, I think, although the shouts of concerned guests made it hard for me to concentrate. 

 

I only made it to the National Monument, which has a history diorama.  The highlight was a room that had a great name like the Nationalism Room, or something.  It was fairly strange, being shaped like a bowl, or more like an upside down lampshade -- except imagine that it is square.   In the center, occupying most of the level floorspace, was a green marble room.  Or maybe it was solid inside, full of steel beams supporting the obelisk above.  Each side of the room had a symbol of Indonesia: a brass map, a flag, an eagle, and on the last, two tall, thin, ornate gold and green doors, with spirals and acorns engraved into them.  Suddenly the room darkened and martio-nationalistic music reverberated through the room.  The doors slowly opened, revealing a huge flat stylized gold monster’s head that occupied the whole space behind the doors. It had a huge open mouth, behind which was a large, brightly illuminated golden disk.  With an audible creaking or ticking, the disk slowly ascended.  Behind was a Lucite box, with a copy of a piece of paper.  It appeared to be a photocopy of the declaration of Indonesian independence, which appeared to say (since I cant read Bahasa) “ Indonesia is now independent.”  The brevity puts ours to shame.  During all this time the music is playing, and then it quiets for a moment to allow a huge booming voice to speak.  Had it been speaking English, it would have sounded like the voice of God in The Ten Commandments.  Everybody gathered around to look at the piece of paper while the monster spoke.  Then the speaking stopped, and the great disk fell in the monsters mouth to the strains of more music.  I didn’t hang around to see the denouement, but when I returned later the doors closed but for a little crack.  Someone, however, forgot to turn the light on the disk, and it glowed through the crack.     

 

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY

 

I spent these days running in circles, despite only having two meetings a day. And, since Murphy’s Law is the operating principle here, of course they had to change the date of the conference, which meant I needed to get another visa.  I almost had to spend until Friday in Jakarta--they were going to shut down the Thai consular office without notice....but, as a lesson against procrastination, they decided to process my application THAT SAME DAY because I showed up so early at their office.

 

I also learned that the young ladies who organized the Puncak conference had secret crushes on me, or something.  Yani, the main organizer, told me that they were all asking about me, but she helpfully told them all I was married, which she indeed thought to be the case. She must have figured I am one of those guys who prowls market transformation conferences without his wedding band on.   Well, it IS a Muslim country -- I guess I could have my wedding band on and it wouldn’t matter.

 

THURSDAY

 

I am back -- snowed under with work, and training a new Thai staff member, who is actually quite competent.  He is actually a professor at a private university, meaning he should be accorded great respect, but he is also a law grad from AU, my alma mater...so why worry?

 

FRIDAY

 

I will go back to Indonesia in another month!

 

I heard I got into Berkeley.  I am so confused.  All I know is I need to get out of here. Ah well --they are already talking about ways to bribe me to stay.  Well, no dice.

 

byeb y e

 

Daniel