Brunei, Lightening Storms upon Descent, and Jakarta, yarrrr!

Hello all my imaginary readers and vaguely concerned parents! Welcome to the first blog post of my Indonesian travels - I figured this was the easiest way for people who are interested to check up on life in Jakarta.

For those of you wanting bonus friend points (redeemable where all good credit cards are used), I will make NOT ONLY a brief list of important lessons learnt for the day, but also, possibly, haikus. I'm not sure about the last one. We'll see.

As a writing-type, you know, maybe, I mean, were I to CALL myself a writer, exercise, Ima try and write something every day - just like a diary, only without the references to Nazis (too soon?). I'm pretty sure this'll fail fairly soon but you never know - I might annoy Helena and have no friends, and have to resort to moaning about it in this blog every day. Yeah. You look forward to that, beloved audience.

SO! Without further ado:

I was REALLY nervous when waiting for my plane in Auckland, but foolishly had a leaving party (why?! It's only 6 weeks. Stupid idea, although wonderful to see people!) which went quite late into the night. I also had to pick up Helena from the airport, my fellow Canterbury course graduate and plane-trip buddy (and drug mule. I joke! Ah ha...) So I had about, ohhh I don't know, 4 hours sleep? So we waited until 3:30 am to fly out, what with the inevitable flight delays, and the screaming children in the departure lounge caused a serious discussion between Helena and I about the merits of beating brats on the buttocks with blunt batons (ie wooden spoons). Helena and I bonded over the fact that both had had a sibling beaten until the spoon broke.

The plane took off into the dark, and a lady had stolen my window seat (which actually only consisted of the plane wall anyway) but it was still exciting as all hell, and the moment the plane's wheels left the tarmac and I knew we were off, I couldn't help turning to grin at a very tired (and I should have mentioned, extremely ill) Helena. She was watching Easy A, and I wisely decided to leave her to it and stare at the receding lights of Auckland as we winged our way to Brunei.

I don't really know why people complain about long haul flights, but I guess it was a) my first flight and b) only 9 hours. Anyway, I enjoyed the movies, enjoyed the food (what is wrong with me?!) even though it was foul (does that even make sense?), and enjoyed my semi-conscious naps. The trip was pretty uneventful - the hostesses had really pretty uniforms, with floaty white head scarfs, there was a prayer to Allah to thank him for the mode of transport, which was pretty neat, and we landed in Brunei without any trouble.

It was 7am, and the humidity hit you as soon as you walked up the tunnel from the plane. The runway is lined with palm trees and the airport is pretty small and poky, which I thought was interesting for one of the world's richest states. We headed to our (FREE!) stopover hotel, passing a huge, gold-topped mosque, big tracts of unused land filled with tropical scrub, right next to big complexes of concrete apartments. There are some pretty funky buildings in Brunei, but we were pretty tired, and ended up sleeping at our hotel (awesome!) until the afternoon, when we went exploring! Unfortunately, we didn't really know where to go, so we just wandered around, looked in the HUGE new mall, called very helpfully, The Mall (18 floors or something, we went to ONE), bought some Bruneiian (or actually, Malay) food ( I had Heaven and Earth Passionfruit Drink (yum) and Broad Beans in Garlic and Oil which were delicious, but I'm pretty sure KILLED ME when we tried our next explore.) So, we ended up lying down (both our stomachs having rebelled against us) and finally, venturing down the the sushi restaurant downstairs to order vegetarian maki (mini sushi). We figured it was forgiveable, since Japan invaded Jakarta in WW2 and thus we could classify it as historical research.

After a two hour wait at the airport, we caught our flight to Jakarta! It was pretty bumpy, made up for by the fact that the plane descended through a lightening storm, playing out just past the tip of the plane's wing, where the lightening would strike straight downwards and from side to side, flashes of white and green (which may have been the smog) that crawled across the sky. Brillo!

We landed okay and, clutching the sheet of instructions sent to us by our course co-ordinator guy, we headed to pick up our baggage. The key to not spending money in Jakarta is to ignore everyone. Which is terrible, but probably good advice for a naive tourist - EVERYONE offers to carry your bag (and then will apparently demand to be tipped). Having been warned, Helena and I clung to our bags like whelks to a keel (I'm pretty sure that simile is completely wrong but I like the word whelk so what the hey), ignored all solicitations of luggage lugging and headed through Immigration (where I got nervous and blathered about courses at Catholic Universities - too many Hunter S films make me nervous around airport officials) to customs. People who know me well will understand how it was I who managed to leave my declaration form with Immigration, and had to explain this to the confused, non-English-speaking guard of a recently liberated military country. He was pretty awesome though, and just said "Are you New Zealanders? Go through." Yussss.

We then had to navigate the taxi drivers. LE SIGH. One of them told us he was Bluebird, the trusty taxi company - he wasn't. He then told us it would cost us 250,000 rupiah to get to our hotel (it costs half that). Then he tried to palm us off to his friend with the shady taxi. Eventually we made it to the right company, and headed into Jakarta.

What a city! Firstly, it's sprawlingly massive, lots of giant, electronic signs (the funniest was Samsung's: "Welcome to Ja ta, powered by amsung"). Massive highways, usually filled with INSANE drivers - there are more cars in Jakarta than people, and there are approximately 15,000,000 people here. Lots of ojek, or motorcycle drivers who are even crazier. Terrible air pollution - coming out of the airport, the smell was awful. The humidity is pretty bad too and I'm drinking water constantly, but it's not as bad as I feared and I LOVE the hustle and bustle of this city - it's certainly not boring, and it's nothing like New Zealand. There's rubbish and people EVERYWHERE and on the trip to our hotel, when we stopped at some lights, a little boy ran up to us playing the ukelele and singing "Baby baby baby" (NOT to the tune of Justin Bieber you sickos) "Miss miss miss hey miss baby hey baby". Very funny, especially when he said a rude word that the driver wouldn't translate when we didn't give him any money (apparently begging is illegal in Jakarta, although technically I figure he'd be busking).

We arrived at the Ibis, and wandered around a wee bit rattled, looking for our hotel, the Rota, but found it very quickly and managed to collapse in our small, but perfectly serviceable room, complete with the obligatory mosquitoes. I slept under my mosquito net (thanks Gen!) but couldn't set it up properly since you have to screw things into walls so basically I looked like a mummy, or a particularly large fly. Yummo.

This morning, we met some of our fellow JPPers in the hotel buffet and then headed to the course (9AM?!). It was a basic run down of health and security today (and I managed to fail the pop quiz about Jakarta miserably, le sigh, apart from my knowledge of colonial history). The rest of the JPPers all seem really friendly and it was great to meet them - the next couple of weeks should be good! At lunchtime we were taken by our Pandamping, or student helpers, to a huge mall where I had Baksu (sp) soup, spicy broth with meatballs which is DELICIOUS! Then it was back to the course and then time to view our kos, or boarding houses. Six of us squashed into a car and travelled to one of the suburbs (it slips my mind here, cos I'm useless) and experienced the narrow winding roads, street stalls, rickity houses next to plush apartment rises, open drains running alongside the street, rubbish everywhere, AWFUL heat, the guys who carry enormous loads of rubbish in literal horse floats and then pick through them (I guess to find things worth salvaging?). We weren't lucky enough to find a kos, after looking at about five or six, but maybe tomorrow we'll have more luck - I had a bundle of fun, my eyes are hurting from being so wide for so long and I'm extremely tired - but it's New Year's Eve here and I can hear the brightly coloured horns many Indonesians will be blowing into the night, and which I first saw being hooted by a six year old boy in the carrier basket of a wobbling motorcycle today. I think it's time for a beer with my homies, so I'll sign out here. MUCH shorter entry tomorrow, I promise.

LESSONS LEARNT 1:

- It is essential for me to ride an ojek before I go home

- Indonesian people are very friendly! New Zealanders have a very misleading reputation!

- Control of temper is, like maturity, something to work on (for your MUMS)

- There's no place like home, for non-pollution and quiet

- Home can be hella boring

- Indonesian food is awesome

- Taxi drivers are generally schiesters in Jakarta

- Travelling is frustrating, expensive and a whole bucketload of fun