10: Lazy Sundays with Kiwis

Ahh, Sundays. Usually they make for a day of hectic lazing in order to save up as much doing-nothing time as possible before the working week starts again. But when you're in a different country and every road is a new surprise, Sundays just so happen to be a frantic rush to find out as much as possible about the sprawl that is Jakarta.

After a bit of a sleep in (cough cough 11am cough), Sarah came to meet us at the kos and Helena, Sarah and I headed off to experience brunch at a Kiwi-owned cafe here in Jakarta, that our programme officer Sunny had told us about. We were looking forward to a Kiwi breakfast after noodles or nectarines for the past ten days or so.

On an aside, Sarah Young is the other New Zealander selected by Asia NZ to attend the ACICIS JPP, and reading her blog is a pretty good way to get a feel for Jakarta - she is a very good writer, so much so that I intend to try and make MY blogs a little more polished and a little less, shall we say, off the cuff Kiwi-ese. Her blog can be found here: http://atraceintime.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/one-week-in-jakarta-settling-in-losing-myself-and-finding-much-more/

Due to Sarah's excellent Google Mapsing (maybe it's NOT Satan's GPS), we made it to the cafe in good time, after having the taxi's boot searched by armed guards. Very strange - it was a collection of fairly Western shops and a carpark of about 20 parks, but it had two guards and a barrier arm - probably because it was in the ex-pat part of town, and a Western gathering place, generally a target for extremist Muslim groups here in Indonesia. Unfortunately the Kiwi owner of the Antipodes cafe (what a give away) was away in Malaysia, but we shall return in 2 weeks when he's back - for story ideas, of course...

The food was great, if a little on the small-portion side - I had scrambled eggs, teensy chicken sausages, mushrooms and toast, and the first decent coffee since arriving here. Yum-oh! After breakfast, which was eaten in the company of a cafe full of white people (ex-pats and tourists, we assumed), we headed over to the bookshop, where I bought the paper I will be working for NEXT WEEK eek and then to the supermarket which was quite a nice surprise since it had heaps of Western food that we'd been craving, like pesto, hummus and good fruit and vege. I have as yet to locate wine, that necessity of life, but it was a good find.

After that we took a mosey around the streets and passed three shops side by side FULL of fresh cut flowers - beautiful! And made me think Mum would LOVE to have been set loose in them. Lilies, Birds of Paradise, chrysanthemums, oh my! We also walked down more richy-rich streets, with amazing HUGE carved wooden gates, whole complexes with weird towers (guard towers? UFO landing sites? I know not these things), little side alleys down which you could see children playing soccer in droves and crooked houses painted bright yellow and blue. It was all very pretty but the heat and the uneven roads (pavements are pretty rare in Jakarta and when they DO appear, are generally made of very uneven brick-work patterns, that frequently give way to gaping holes leading straight into the sewerage) made us very glad to see a beauty spa, our second must-do item being to try a cream bath.

Cream baths are a necessity if you ever visit Jakarta. Your hair is washed and then you choose the food-stuff of your choice to be smeared throughout your hair - I chose Strawberry and the others chose Avocado. Huge tubs of conditioner containing, or smelling like, at least, these fruit are then brought out and your hair is slathered with it and then it's massaged in for a good twenty minutes. Then you get a neck, back, arms and hand massage for good measure, and then your hair is washed and blow dried how you want it. BLISS. Unfortunately our clinic was busy so I got what I suspect was a hair dresser who was free, rather than an actual trained masseuse, because my massage was about 15 minutes shorter than the others and REALLY hurt because it focussed on the arms - my neck is really kinked up and she spent literally 15 seconds on it. Merde! She also jerked my hair every so often and massaged her thumbs RIGHT INTO MY TEMPLES - I asked her to stop after it felt as though her thumbs would pop straight through my skin into my brain. BUT my hair was blow waved into a Jackie-O bob, smells lovely, feels great and the head massage was pretty good. I'm still jealous of the others, but I am containing it like a mature adult and NOT herding mosquitos into their rooms at night in marauding hordes...

Speaking of which, I sprayed out my room today after discovering about 10 random bites - why do mosquitos always go for the strangest areas, like elbows, foreheads and ankles? So awkward to scratch and surely there's no blood there? Honestly, don't they apply common logic?!

Anyway, we taxied home, trying to ignore beggars playing instruments that approached the taxi windows whenever we stopped at lights. I handed out a fairly mouldy and beaten up apple to a man and his daughter and felt like apologising for the quality. I felt it was a bit wasted when the next beggar to come up had no teeth, a mashed up jaw and was playing a flute WITH HIS NOSE. Now that's talent. Sarah found it pretty hard going when a lady with a baby in a sling around her neck approached the car singing and strumming a ukelele, especially when she stopped and for a solid five minutes or so just stood there and said, over and over "Please Mrs please, money Mrs, please please please", staring straight at Sarah the entire time. Awful. The weird thing is, I get quite indignant about people who TRY and play on your sympathy - which is surely the only marketing tool beggars have. I am a strange person.

At home, we relaxed on the balcony while Moko mopped our floor - what a life! The Ozzies decided to go for Sunday roast at the local warung Seafood, which I was definitely keen to join in on...until I fell asleep for an hour or so. Whoops. I get tired very easily here - or maybe I'm just lazy! I will have to try it soon, and hang out with our South Pacific homies.

My blasted DVD is proving to be a mission to watch - right at the climax! What a pain in the posterior. I will just have to move on to one of the other 7 that we bought (it's a hard life). In health news, I may have bruises on my arms, but my inflamed tonsil is settling down and I'm sleeping much better. Huzzah!

Until tomorrow mes amis, I will leave you smelling of strawberries and mosquito repellant.

LESSONS LEARNT 10:

- Even when they're bad, cream baths are awesome!

- Flowers are a good way to feel better about a place

- I cannot stress the importance of wandering!

- Home comforts are comforting (weird, I know)