First weekend

After thirty long, long hours we arrived in Jakarta on Friday afternoon, having left Rochester on Wednesday afternoon. We spent some time at the airport getting cash (Indo: kash) and buying onward plane tickets. Luckily this did not involve changing terminals, as we had no idea where to catch that bus.

The Oslo airport was boring and limited, and the Bangkok airport was enormous.

We arrived at our first hotel and promptly, perhaps erronenously, turned a planned thirty minute nap into a two-hour nap. For Friday dinner we had one dish that was fried rice, chicken, and onions boiled in banana leaves, and a dish most like gado-gado at a recommended Indonesian restaurant.

Though our motivation for the trip is partially to assess how much we might enjoy/endure living in Indonesia, a friend living here took advantage of our visit to plan a quick excursion getting out of Jakarta. She assured us that leaving Jakarta is a fairly standard practice for lots of Jakartans on the weekend, and that we would have only limited options in the capital city if we stayed.

So we headed out to Tiger Island (Indo: Pulau (island) Macan (tiger)), about 90 minutes by speedboat away, and spent the weekend relaxing and snorkeling amidst the (recovering?) coral reefs offshore.

We had a quite nice platform hut near the edge of the island, enclosed only by mosquito netting and bamboo siding. The openness of the room allowed a cool breeze to blow in as we went to sleep and another stronger cool breeze to wake us up and allowed us to admire the moon and sunrise without getting out of bed. The breeze and position of the hut was such that we didn't really see any mosquitoes and didn't need to use the overhead fan.

One could wander off our little dock into the sandy bottom and wade out into the Java Sea. The tide went out in the late afternoon, but returned in the morning.

At various points, little fishing boats putt-putted past our island. We were taken out snorkeling amidst the reefs on Saturday afternoon, then spent Sunday morning snorkeling to a nearby island/sandy beach.

New word: tanpa (without; opposite of dengan; as in kopi tanpa gula, or coffee without sugar).

The only downside to the short trip was the boring speedboat ride. There's not much offshore, and the sun on the return was quite strong.

On our return to Jakarta we switched hotels. At about 6:30 PM, our room was filled with about four different calls to prayer from nearby mosques, all of which were either out of synch with each other, or were coordinating their calls to provide extra reminders. The 5 AM call to prayer woke Bethany up. Adam just had dreams that involved Arabic chants.

The photos below of smoggy Jakarta were taken from the six floor of our hotel, which we consider the equivalent (in size, design, and amenities) of a low-end post-college midtown studio apartment in Manhattan.

And quick verdict: could we live (for, say, a semester or year sabbatical) in Jakarta? This city is enormous, spread out without pattern or order like Delhi and São Paulo. One must take taxis everywhere, but luckily the taxis are cheap. The food is good, and varied. The smog is bad, and the traffic is awful. There aren't many tourist sights. On the other hand, it's the entry point for the world's fourth largest country by population, gateway to thousands of tropical islands, the food is good, and it's just a few hours away from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. So, yeah, sure, why not?

This afternoon we're off to Yogyakarta. Oh, hey, look, the Giants won the Super Bowl. (For the entire trip, we'll be either 12 or 13 (in Bali) hours ahead of the US East Coast.)