SO! After I had written my blog last night, I had a very quick cold shower (amazingly refreshing) and headed over to the Ibis to meet up with the other ACICIS students. It was all very Western so we decided to join some others at Melly's, a local eatery and bar across the road- I suspect it's still not VERY authentic but ah well. Melly's was awesome - little Japanese-style sit-on-the-floor tables and also big wicker chairs and tables. I ordered Nasi Ika Akin (I think) which is salted fish, and was basically little goldfish-sized deep fried, dried fish (there ARE a lot of goldfish in tanks around Jakarta...) with chilli rice and a fried egg on top - I'm not sure if this is an Indonesian thing, or just Melly's, but everything there seems to come with a fried egg on top, and the breakfast bar at the hotel I'm staying at has an 'egg bar', where you go and order your morning eggs (very sick of the word egg now, except in its proper context of 'Ow, whatta egg', of course) and how you want them done - poached costs about 15,000 rupiah or about $2.10. Everything also tends to be fried or deep fried, with few veges, so we keep getting told to ensure we eat veges and fruit. I, of course, am a strictly healthy person and have yet to eat a vegetable in Indonesia. On the other hand, I haven't eaten a vegetarian either.
I also ordered a bottle of Anker beer, at quite an expensive price (for Indonesia), since most Indonesians don't drink (due to 90% of the population being Muslim, I'm thinking). I was extra gutted when I saw the local Bintang beer being served to others in big 1L bottles, for the same price. CURSE YOU, ANKER BEER! The rest of the night was spent speaking to one of the other NZ girls, who is having culture shock and has decided to go home, which is really sad. I also chatted to the other ACICIS kids, many of whom are Australian, and smokers. They are pretty stoked smoking is allowed indoors in Indonesia, or in fact, ANYWHERE - cigarettes are a good way to say thank you to an Indonesian, and everyone here smokes. Smokalicious!
I headed back to the hotel about 9pm, being the nanna that I am, and also it being about 3am in NZ and fell asleep at 11pm, just in time to miss the crazy fireworks and masses of horns blowing into the night. Awwwww. The others tell me Jakarta went OFF, with people handing out fireworks to small children and swarming to the big hotels and roundabouts, where bands were playing. Next year.
Woke up at 7:30 despite being allowed a sleep-in (dang NZ time!) and then spent ages trying to sort out odds and ends. We decided to go for an explore and try and purchase the following items:
1) Cotton shirts
2) Sandals with a back strap
3) Power plug converter
We ended up purchasing a grand total of NONE of those items, but we had the best day in Jakarta so far (out of two...) We looked at our printed-off maps and headed out into the bustle and heat of the street. We got lost about two minutes later, having decided to flag the map and have an adventure. Our best decision yet! We wandered down a random street lined with lopsided signs advertising PlayStations, Kodak, photocopying, and the ever-present little kaki lima, or 'five legs', little vendor trolleys that sell food and drink and are a sure fire way to get food poisoning. About thirty seconds later, a small (actually about average, but up to my shoulder) Indonesian man with a backpack, jandals, grey hair and two front teeth missing, said 'Happy New Year!' Next thing we knew, we were on a guided tour of some city hot spots, including the National Monument to celebrate Indonesia's declaration of independence from colonial powers in 1945, a HUGE 45 m (in memorial of the year) spire with a golden flame on top, representing Indonesia's spirit. It was located in a big national park, where everyone was flocking to, it being New Year's Day. There were also, among the trees and the ubiquitous rubbish, deer! I don't quite understand what that was about, but there you go.
We then headed to the world's third largest mosque, which at its peak houses 200,000 pilgrims (this is all according to our guide, called Pud, which I remembered. The heat seems to be affecting my all ready limited brain power, as I can't remember anyone's name, but I remember Pud's, mainly because it sounds like Christmas Pud). I've got photos on Facebook of all of this, but it is MASSIVE, a huge white building with a large white dome, booming out prayers through a loud speaker (newbies like me: most mosques here and, I'm assuming, overseas have loud speakers. Speaking of which, on Fridays, there are five prayers at various parts of the day, with the first at 5:45 am (I think) = NO SLEEP. Sigh.) The mosque was almost on an island, since one of (?) the big rivers (or THE river) flowing through Jakarta semi-circled it, like the Avon. This river is DISGUSTING - rubbish covers the banks, and there are little banks of rubbish in the river itself. The smell is worse - it's like a mix of diarrhoea and putrid rubbish. Yummy. There are parts of the city where you have to just not breathe for a while, because the smell is that overwhelming.
At the mosque, I was feeling distinctly hot, drenched in sweat, and a wee bit tired, but our guide was pretty awesome, giving us helpful local advice ("Don't take pictures of soldiers. Be careful of the bus-way - you'll get squashed.") and random, possibly true facts. He loved the fact that Helena was Dutch, since most Indonesians I've met seem to really like their country's Dutch heritage. It's kinda strange compared with many New Zealander's antipathy for the British, but then, Indonesia had until recently a pretty heavy propaganda campaign for a good 50 years - maybe this campaign favoured the Dutch? Anyways, Pud was pretty cool, and offered to show us to a big, cheap shopping centre. Around about this time, we figured out that he was going to expect money, but we weren't too bothered - we were having a whale of a time, and also felt pretty intrepid for venturing out at midday in the heat. (Also, first sunburn of the year on my nose AGAIN. Le sigh). We probably would've been burnt much worse if it weren't for the haze of pollution that covers Jakarta permanently - I don't know how people live here! My throat and head hurt at the end of each day, and breathing is a mission in the streets.
Anyways, we continued on to a Catholic church right behind the mosque, which was enormous, with two big spires to rival the national monument. Pud pointed out the proximity of the church and the mosque as an example of religious tolerance, which was pretty funny, but I thought privately it might be an example of the cock trying to out step the robin (I don't know if that metaphor made sense - I meant both are striving to appear more important and tricked out than the other). The church was free, so we went inside, to find a little grotto to Mary, with a statuette sitting high in the wall, and lit prayer candles all around her. Very pretty.
After that we headed to the shopping centre, whose name escapes me but ends in Basu (Bertie Wooster eat your heart out). It was FULL of little shops, clothes and sandals and here we left our guide Pud, Helena discreetly slipping him some money and he just as discreetly pocketing it. We took one last photo of him grinning with his gapped smile ("I'm 54, and I have no teeth!" "Well...you can't have everything?") and explored the shops. Unfortunately, large numbers still scare me, so I passed on all the shoes, only to realise they were all about $14 when I got back to my currency converter. DANG. Double unfortunately, all the clothes are about two sizes too small, since I'm the tall descendant of women used to carrying a sack of potatoes under their arms and five children on their hips, and the clothes were made for petite Indonesian women. Ah well! I will continue the search another day.
At 12:30 we took Pud's advice and hopped in a little blue car, which serves as a sort of mini-bus service in Jakarta. Most people haven't braved these yet, as there are certain routes which are impossible to work out if you don't speak the language, but we were in adventure mode, and Pud gave us very simple instructions: "Take number 12, blue car. Number TWELVE!" We asked a passenger to tell us our stop, he asked the driver, the driver (after a short trip), told another driver, who told us to get in HIS car, and he took us to our destination, where he told us to get out, right in front of our (may I say) admiring ACICIS friends. That. Simple. We were stoked, since, even though we paid our drivers double by accident (pineapple moments), it was still much cheaper than a taxi, or even the bus, and much more enjoyable. The cars are about three quarters the size of station wagons, with long padded seats behind the driver and across the back, and open windows, so you can see the city whizzing by, and you get to meet the inhabitants of the city, who YET AGAIN proved to be friendly as friendly can be.
We then went on a tour of the port, where they have these really pretty small, sloop-like wooden sailing ships to shift industrial ingredients like fertiliser, cement, plastics and timber, to other islands in Indonesia that have too small a population and land area to produce their own. We were allowed on board, walking precariously over a wooden plank (YES! I FINALLY DID IT! My piratical nature is shining through) and over the scummy, disease-ridden river (please don't fall in, please don't fall in). The ship was pretty awesome - very Chinese junket I thought - with the big sailing ship square thing in the deck to load cargo into (Yarrr). The sailors were very helpful, friendly and danced for our cameras (people in Jakarta LOVE pictures, and the young boys like getting pictures with female tourists - someone said this was to show off to friends. I was pretty flattered - I've never had males clamouring for my photo before!)
We then headed to the Maritime Museum which was frankly pretty boring, because we were all too tired to read the information boards. However it WAS in this enormous, concrete white walled building, which was several warehouses-worth large. Coincidental? I think not - turns out this three storied building (with ENORMOUS wooden beams, like, as thick as old masts) was used to store spices during Suharto's regime, which made him very very rich, according to one of the student helpers, who still spoke very quietly about Suharto's corruption (don't mention korupsi here - government officials don't like it much, apparently).
THEN it was a tour of the river, where the poorer people live and the shanty towns exist. Apparently this used to be called Dutchman's graveyard and three out of every four visitors would die there, from exposure to diseases they'd never come across before - dengue and other mosquito-and-water-borne fare. The rubbish was the WORST here, and there were stray cats, with strange, stiff half-tails that ended in a knob. The people were still lovely - one of the men waved when I took a photo of his house, a tiny leaning, wooden hut with shirts hanging from the second floor, overhanging the polluted, horrifically smelly river. I felt pretty sad, but he looked happy and relaxed - maybe his life wasn't so bad? We were talking about how the wealth gap in Indonesia, while created by the previous governments' corruption, was still an effect of the West, and of colonialism, and of the lifestyle Western people create and encourage - buy, waste, exploit, use. Not nice, and pretty guilt-making, really. Having said that, you'll be pleased to hear I haven't been moved to give to beggars yet - I guess I'm a hypocrite, since I certainly don't need the money (as much). Another good thing to see at the river was the impromptu pool house - about four pool tables were set up in the shadow of one of the bridge's massive support columns, and men were playing away, beside the river, the stench and the rubbish, and sinking some pretty mean shots. That's dedication.
After this, the tour ended at the Cafe Batavia, one of those old-school, colonial retreats. It has a doorman, wicker recliners, slow moving fans, dark lighting inside, big leather armchairs, expensive drinks and upstairs, little Victorian tea-set chairs. Brilliant. I ordered a beer (a SMALL Bintang, I have NO luck), sculled a coke, and then headed home to the hotel, where we had a meal at Milly's (I got Nasi Ar Cami something something, which turned out to be shady-smelling calamari and rice, which sucked, but Helena got Nasi Millys, which was that awesome chilli rice I love, and sliced chicken, and seafoody-type chips, with the obligatory fried egg on top. I think Nasi must mean 'chilli rice with fried egg') and I got my FIRST and SECOND mozzy bites, uwaaah! So if I get dengue tomorrow, you know who to blame. Then it was home to try our 711 (they have them here) purchases (Blueberry Fanta - bizarre but delicious, and Nutri-Jus Lime and Cucumber juice - nice, but just tasted like juice and Tango tiramisu wafers (NOT AT ALL LIKE TIRAMISU), blog and then bed.
Another monster of a post, but I'll try get some photos up at some point (if I can find a cable...) and I'm sure when I start school Monday, with 4 hours language class and 3 hours cultural/social/political lectures, the blogs will get MUCH shorter. I may also try and edit this, to add things I've forgotten - so much happened today but it was one of my top ten days, saw some truly AMAZING sites and it was good for me to see just what awful conditions people in the world live, and survive, in. No more complaining for Alex! (Famous last words).
LESSONS LEARNT 2:
- Adventures are awesome, and definitely worth a try!
- Money comes and goes - it's best not to get too attached, especially if you have parents willing to see you make it home again...
- Being frugal, especially at the start of a trip, is not a bad thing, to encourage parents to bring you home again
- Everyone needs to see just how poor people can get
- Everyone needs to see just how rich people can get
- Talking to people is a GREAT idea
- Challenges are necessary! So far, I have 1. Ride an ojek 2. Use a squat toilet 3. Eat at a warung (roadside food vendor, nowhere near as unhygienic as the kaki lima)
- Cameras are invaluable when travelling but a good experience works the same
- There are no rubbish bins in Jakarta, or rubbish collection/disposal system
- To cross the road, follow a local. Otherwise, make a will
- Remember GST is 20% and factor it into your purchases
- Mosquitoes are everywhere!
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