Indonesia 2003
Greetings from Indonesia!
First trip south of the equator and I’m sad to confirm first-hand that the swirling of the water down the drain in the opposite direction (it is counterclockwise here) is an urban legend. Just like standing an egg on end during an equinox or Iraq’s compliance with UN resolutions.
This close to the equator in the South China Sea, there are only two seasons: wet and very wet. It is the monsoon here. Monsoon (Indonesian for “Isn’t that your house floating toward the ocean?”) makes travel challenging. There are constant decisions to be made: do we take a boat to work, or a really big boat? Do we need scuba gear to go out for lunch? Is beef and chicken really seafood if it is on the special because it drowned?
While in Jakarta, we went to the National Museum to learn about the culture of Indonesia. We got to learn a lot about the culture of Indonesia, especially when we ran smack into an Anti-War, Anti-US (emphasis on “us”) rally that was breaking up outside the museum. No one told us that the museum sits just down the street from the American Embassy and thousands, 100,000 to be exact, were planning to march on it. If you go to news on Yahoo, query Indonesia and look through the pictures for February 9, you can see the street I was stuck on in traffic. With 100,000 of my closest Muslim friends. Since I don’t read Indonesian dialects, I couldn’t read what all the banners said, but I saw the word “Amerika” several times and noticed everyone was wearing a special symbol that indicates a party that wants peace. We were already committed due to the inability to turn the cab around, so there was nothing to do, but wade through the remaining protestors up to the booth that allowed us entry into the Museum, which was protected by the police. The clerk at the booth was very friendly, but obviously spotted somehow that we were not locals and asked where we were from. I think being a short fat white guy in a country of even shorter skinny tanned Asian Muslims might have tipped him off. I looked around at all the crowd listening for our response like an old EF Hutton commercial and felt my nationalism swell. I thought “what the heck, we all live only once”, looked him straight in the eye and said “FRANCE! POLLY-VUE FRANC’E?” To my great relief, he didn’t speak French, so I stammered out in my worst possible French accent, “how much to see the…how you say…museum?” My coworker forgot all about the crowd and was about to double over laughing at my thick East Texas-French accent. Fortunately, no one noticed I was wearing cowboy boots. I’m thinking about giving up this auditing stuff and becoming a CIA operative.
Really, things are typical here and everyone has been very nice, including those we saw coming off the protest. Everyone smiled at us, although it might have been because they though we had to be senile to be where we were. One guy even kept trying to sell me a hand carved blow-gun outside the museum. If it had been an Uzi, I might have bought.
At the moment we are in Balikpapan on the island of Borneo. Garuda Airline (Garuda is Indonesian for “It ain’t much, but it is the only airline you want to fly in this country, unless you are suicidal or the type to go to demonstrations in which you are the object being protested”) (I should point out here that Indonesia is an extremely efficient language) pilots were scheduled to go on strike Tuesday when we went to Balikpapan. Fortunately, the strike was delayed and we got to take Garuda. We are holding back-up tickets to Jakarta on Bouraq Airlines. Bouraq Airlines (motto: 4 out of 5 planes arriving safely is still good odds) is an interesting airlines when I ask. Other than their safety record, they are pretty good. And the delayed and cancelled flights. Other than safety and delays/cancels, they would be just like any US airline. And, if US airlines allowed livestock on board. OK, not any livestock, but the last guy I know that flew them had passengers carrying live chickens upside down by their legs on his flight. It said so on his headstone. Next to the list of his body parts buried there that were recovered from the wreckage. OK, I exaggerated some of that. There was only one chicken. We are still in a pretty nice hotel, although it is an obvious step down from Jakarta and the US. The worst hotel I ever resided at was the Bahia in Equatorial Guinea in West Africa. I had to sleep with the lights on and a shoe in one hand to kill any roaches that crawled over me in the night. In that hotel, you were especially concerned if it looked like there was a mint on your pillow when you came back in the evening. That could only mean there was a rat or worse loose in your room. Tomorrow, I leave for a four hour trip through the jungle of Borneo Island to visit a storage/shipping facility on the northeast coast.
English the fourth language for our driver here. Unfortunately, he only knows three languages so far. As a result, we get a lot of tours of Jakarta, when all we usually want to do was go to the office or back to the hotel. The company requires drivers because the consequences are pretty severe for anyone caught in an accident. The exchange rate is 8,800 Rupiahs to the dollar. The Durian fruit is banned in all the hotels here just like in Malaysia. It is banned because it smells like everything bad you ever smelt (I guess that should be “smelled” – “smelt” would imply processed metals.), all rolled up into a demonic looking fruit that looks like a pineapple and porcupine had been a little too friendly. We could just lob these into Iraq, and everyone would come out gasping for breath and promptly surrender. But then, we would become the only nation on earth to actually use Durian in warfare.
I hope everything is going well with you and yours. Let me know how things are going. I’ll pay 100 Rupiahs for the best story!
Take care,
Keith