Disorganisation

Indonesia has a flair for disorganisation, and this was exemplified during my holiday last week, when I flew to Lombok, using Jakarta’s old domestic flight terminal. This, and Lombok’s terminal are utter chaos, and the only way to survive them is to assume the guise of a detached observer, laugh at the various goings on, and not to worry about niceties such as getting on the correct plane, or collecting your luggage at the end.

The check in was smooth enough, but as you pass though the gate to board the flight you are deposited in a long corridor, with several other gates emptying into it,  four different planes off it, and nary a sign or official in sight. As I have previously managed to board the wrong flight (though not in Indonesia), I was keen to avoid a repetition of that colossal blunder. I followed the flood of people down a hidden staircase onto the tarmac, where my odds doubled, as only two of the planes seemed ready to receive passengers. I spotted a few people who had been waiting at my gate and followed them; I don’t what method of divination they were using, but we all managed to board the correct plane, or at least a plane to the correct destination. 

The flight itself was uneventful enough, despite the very retro style plane, and I arrived in Lombok’s capital Mataram a few hours later. The arrivals hall is pretty small, and it seems even smaller when it’s full of a couple of planes worth of passengers, and an equal number of porters complete with luggage trolleys that no one wants. There are two “carrousels”, each with a ruck of people four deep around them, and no screen to tell you which to use. I say “carrousel” because they were nothing of the sort. A carrousel is where you bags are placed onto a circular track, and slowly rotate until you collect them; these are just single tracks that the bags are loaded onto, and then blasted out into the middle of the room where they lie in a heap on the floor, with the crowd rooting through them in a frenzy. This was all a bit much for me, so I wandered around in a daze for a little while, by which time the crowds had thinned out and I could see my scuffed bag lying forlornly on the ground.  

The return home was eerily similar. I arrived in Jakarta easily enough, and on leaving the plane found myself on the tarmac with the bulk of the terminal in front of me, masses of possible doors and staircases to take, and nary a sign or official in sight. There is strength in numbers, so a group of passengers clumped together and went to find a way home; we peered up staircases and through doors, hoping for some official looking entrance. There was none, but some of the more adventurous of our posse forged ahead, and found a ratty looking staircase up into the terminal, and ultimately to the baggage reclaim hall. 

In Jakarta, they at least have carrousels, six of them in fact, and a board telling you which to use; unfortunately the board doesn’t seem to have updated since 1982, so you are left with a choice of the six carrousels, each with a huge scrum of people around it, and no accurate indication of which one your bag will be on. Remembering my technique from the flight to Lombok, I allowed my mind to drift away on a sea of tiredness and irritation, day dreaming about possible future holidays to Singapore or Switzerland, or other well organised countries, and by the time my fantasies were over the crowds had again thinned and I was able to spot my poor bag circulating by itself around one of the carrousels. 

Lombok

I have just had a very nice 10 days holiday in Lombok, a small island just to the east of Bali. It shares a similar mountainous landscape, and it's also volcanic and ringed by beautiful small islands and beaches, but doesn’t share much culture with Bali, being Islamic rather than Hindu. I didn't see much of the island, spending about a week on a small island off the north coast, and another few days based on the south coast.

My flight arrived at about midnight and I immediately transferred via speedboat to Gili Trawangan, one of three islands off the NW coast. There is too much pollution to ever see the night sky in Jakarta, so on the boat, away from the lights of the islands, was the first time I've seen the stars in almost a year, and lying back in the speedboat, it felt as if I was driving directly into them. I checked into my room and sat outside drinking a beer, and rather than traffic, I could hear the sea. Very tranquil and relaxing, and just what I needed.

The three Gili islands are semi autonomous: there is no police force, they have banned motorised vehicles, and it also means that there are certain things that are overlooked. Things like weed and magic mushroom being easily available, along with an apparently thriving party scene (although not while I was there - it was still Ramadan so the music went off at midnight). The island itself is about 3km long by 2km wide, with white sand, very clear blue water and plenty of coral nearby. There’s a main strip of bars and restaurants, mainly serving western food and seafood barbeques (and a surprisingly good curry place); its busy in the south, but gets much quieter and relaxing in the north.

I suffered a little from reverse culture shock the first day, Gili Trawangan is absolutely seething with bule, many of whom are real tossers. Luckily my brother and his girlfriend were visiting, so I divided my time between chilling with them and learning to dive. I now possess the most basic diving certification, meaning I have logged at least four dives, and dived to a depth of 18m. It doesn’t really equip you with many skills, it’s a lot like being given a driving licence after spending an afternoon driving around a car park for the first time.

Gili Trawangan is a very lovely spot, but probably best to visit at low season, when it’ll be easier to dodge the idiots trying to outdo each other with their boring travellers’ tails and apocryphal stories.

After Gili Trawangan, I moved onto Kuta on the south coast of Lombok. It’s a small sleepy place with some fabulous scenery and beaches around it, populated mainly by locals and surfers. There’s no nightlife as all the surfers have to be in bed by 8pm so they can get up for the morning waves, and the only places to eat are warungs with unspeakably slow service. The coast reminded me a little of the Gower in Wales, very green and rugged hills and long sweeping beaches. Of course in Lombok it's hot, the water is warm and it doesn't drizzle 360 days a year.

I spent the first day relaxing on the beach and exploring the area a bit, and then the next morning I was picked up bright and early for a surf lesson. Most of the surf in the area is brutal, far too much for a beginner to handle, so my board was strapped to the side of a motorbike, I climbed on and we went in search of something easier to surf.

The roads all the coast are terrible, just a thin strip of tarmac snacking its way between the trees and around and over the undulating hills; pot holes are frequent, often hidden, and sometimes as deep as the road was wide. Going downhill felt like skiing an icy, rocky black run at pace, with a sail strapped to your back, and having to contend with chickens, oxen, and various other fauna trying to cross the piste at the same time. It was so bad in places it crossed my mind I was still on Gili Trawangan, and had ingested too much of the local fungus.

After arriving safely at the beach, we had half an hour to wait for the tide to change, so I wandered around watching all the boats coming in from their mornings fishing. The people were very friendly, posing for photographs and proudly displaying their catch, and seemed delighted to see a few foreigners enjoying their beach. The surfing was fun, and I’m getting better, but am still really shit. I surfed most of the morning, until the beach started to fill up. At that point some of the local kids thought it would be amusing to play chicken with me as I was trying to stand up. I was certainly not competent enough to avoid them, so called it a day and gritted my teeth for the ride back into town.

I did a diving trip to Lombok’s SW peninsular for my final day. On the way to our destination we drove though some of the weekly markets, with people still wearing their traditional sasak clothing. I dived off Gili Ringit, a small uninhabited island that was almost converted into a small party island. I say almost as many things have been built; there are bars, a restaurant, a stage and a jetty, but the money ran out so the whole lot has been abandoned, giving the island a ghost town/Chernobyl area kind of atmosphere. That day I did a couple of dives off the beach as part of Project Aware, to help clean up the reef. I was in safe hands, as I was the only non-divemaster in the group, but I was also the least useful as I tended to drift past anything I should be picking up. I did, however, manage to score a nappy, and I confirm that they do NOT biodegrade.

During the drive back to Kuta I saw the most upsetting thing I've seen since I have been in Indonesia. On the road in front of us was a very old and decrepit ambulance. It was missing its back door, or it was open; there was a man lying on the wooden slats on the ambulance’s floor, his visibly distressed wife kneeling over him trying to lend some comfort. He was moving, barely, but there was no medical assistance, and no sign there was going to be a happy outcome. The saddening message seems to be this: don’t get injured, and if you do, make sure you have some insurance, and to probably carry proof of it with you.

Ramadan

I got back from the uk to find myself in the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. Since I live in a very Chinese/Christian area, the signs of Ramadan are not as noticeable as elsewhere, and it’s still fairly easy to eat and drink during the day.

Indonesia straddles the equator, so the sunrise and sunset times are much the same year round: the sun rises just before 6am, and sets just before 6pm. In order to survive the days fasting, people get up at about 4am, eat (something filling presumably) and go back to bed. They then fast (no food, drink, cigarettes or sex) during the day, before breaking fast at sunset. There are various traditional foods they eat at this time, they are typically sweet, and include such things like es buah (a sort of chilled fruit soup) and kolak, which is a mix of palm sugar, coconut milk and various fruits.  

I wanted to try fasting, so in preparation I tried a mini fast, getting up at about 10am, drinking a cup of coffee, a few glasses of water, and eating some not very filling instant noodles, and then ‘fasting’ with everyone else. The result: I’ve been getting pretty damn hungry and thirsty, and my energy levels have been low, especially around lunch time. The Muslims at work who I told about my attempts were pretty scornful, they all seemed to think their full days fasting complete with exercise and work or study was a much worthier endeavour.

This week I have fasted for two non consecutive days. Both times I got up at 5ish, ate a load of bready food, drank as much water as I could stomach and went back to bed. Both times I drank too much water, meaning I kept having to go the toilet, pissing away all my valuable hydration.

The days seemed to pass in a haze of tiredness. I couldn’t have my morning coffee, and energy levels remained low thanks to a lack of food. I would imagine I was more irritable than usual, especially since the school is full of braying morons. Although I was hungry all day, it was the thirst that was harder to bear, though with both I reached a level, and didn’t really get any worse from there. Fasting is boring, getting things to eat and drink during the day gives you variety and something to do. I also really enjoy eating, not much of a revelation in itself, but when you don’t eat for a day, you really miss it.

Breaking fast is very pleasant, there is a wonderful period of anticipation leading up to the sunset, a spirit of togetherness and solidarity between the fasters, and the first drink (hot sweet tea traditionally) is a delicious relief. 

On walkway at Pulau Tidung

On walkway to smaller Pulau Tidung
Originally uploaded by ValleyNinja

Test post of larger size photo. This was taken on the walkway between the two Tidung islands, in Pulau Seribu, north of Jakarta.

Monks at Borobudur, near Jogjakarta

Monks at Borobudur, near Jogjakarta,
originally uploaded by ValleyNinja.

I've just connected my Flickr account to my blog, so this is test post.
This was taken at Borobudur temple, during the annual Vesak day celebrations. More info can be found in the original post.

A trip home

I've just returned to Jakarta after spending a week back in the UK for a wedding. It wasn’t much of a holiday as I spent a lot of time moving around, but it was nice to see family, fill up on some Western food, and also to clarify in my mind some of the things I like and dislike about living in Jakarta.

The most notable thing I liked about being back in the UK was the climate, I was actually able to relax; outside it was warm and fresh, with a lovely breeze, and inside much the same, minus the breeze. I wasn’t always hot, I wasn’t always sweating, and I wasn't forced to scuttle between air conditioned rooms. That said, I’ve been back four days now, and despite the initial discomfort, I am again acclimatised to the vaguely greasy feeling this climate creates.

Using public transport again felt a little strange, as it seems I’ve become used to travelling everywhere by taxi. The buses and trains were much as I remember them: not too crowded, reasonably efficient, and a bit pricey, but having to get myself from the house to said transport become an nuisance, I almost found myself standing outside the house wondering how to proceed without a taxi to pick me up.

If walking to the train station was an irritating chore, strolling around the shops was not, much preferable to dodging lanes of traffic and certainly better than another mall. I was going to write another anonymous mall, but each of Jakarta’s malls does have some sense of identity, at least compared to the ones in the UK.

I had expected miss certain things while I was away; I had not expected to find myself missing aspects of Jakarta, especially since I was only away for week. Specifically, I missed nasi goreng, my lunch time comfort food, and Teh Botol, which I really like, but don’t actually drink all that much of it. More generally I missed the spicy nature of the food, in particular the little fresh tasting green chillies you get with bags of gorengan.

Things I've enjoyed about Jakarta recently:

• I was sitting on the back of an ojek, weaving in and out of traffic, and it was dark and hot. The traffic increased so we came to a stop underneath a flyover; the temperature and humidity increased, it was suffocating, I felt like my body was in a vice; there was graffiti everywhere, cars and bikes were trying to force their way around us, the traffic on the toll road next to us was roaring past, and it occurred to me that I was enjoying the whole experience.

• I had stayed the night in east Jakarta; I wandered out from the air conditioned bedroom onto the roof terrace and early morning light. It was still pleasantly cool, and I could hear the area waking up and coming to life, with the call to prayer being played somewhere in the distance. It was a very pleasant sensation and thoroughly atmospheric.

• Wandering though Jakarta’s night food markets is one of the pleasures of living here. Weaving between all the different stalls, dodging the smoke and steam and smelling what is on offer is wonderful. There are so many different places to eat, they all smell delicious, and there is very relaxed atmosphere. Most of the time someone will have pulled a tarp over the area to keep the rain off, but it keeps the heat in, making it a very noisy and sweaty experience.

• The rain, until you get caught in it. It’s warm, and torrential. Sometimes it builds up slowly, sometimes it all arrives at once, sometimes there will be a single heavy burst lasting less than ten seconds. Recently I got caught in a shower; the raindrops themselves were huge, the size of 10p pieces, but they were widely spaces. Before it intensified, I had the curious experience of standing outside during a rainstorm, watching everything around me getting wet, but because the drops were so widely spaced, I could stand between them and remain dry.

• Playing pool in Jakarta is pretty cool. If the table is in a bar it’s free, if it’s in a pool hall then it’s not very expensive. Either way, the tables and cues are of a decent quality, there is always someone there to rack the balls up for you, and quite often there will be talcum powder for you hands, so the cue runs smoothly while you play.

• I am still getting a kick out of driving (i.e. being driven) around the city at night. I get a little thrill seeing all the bright lights, especially so when I see Monas (the Monument National, a big spire in the centre of the city), which looks very impressive at night. This is surprising, as by day it is one of the least impressive centre pieces for a city you could imagine. Note I said driving around the city by night, not stuck in traffic in the city by night, that is a different thing altogether.

Food update

I have discovered a new type of food, and have been eating it whenever I get the opportunity; it’s called Peranakan or Nonya and is a mix of Malay, Chinese and Indonesian cuisines, and it is delicious. My favourite dish is laksa, a noodley soup that can have coconut milk in, can sometimes be very sour, and is filled with things like chicken, prawns, tofu or egg, depending on where you buy it. It’s always tasty, and comes with a big dollop of sambal floating on top to spice it up. Also available in these restaurants is a nice bread called roti chanai, which is the same as the parathas you can buy in the Indian restaurants in the UK. They're cooked to order and can be stuffed with a variety of fillings, I recently one full of sardines which was wonderful. 

A more traditional Indonesian food I have been eating recently is bakso, the meatball soup / noodle dish. Previously I didn’t really enjoy it, finding them a little bland. I have now discovered that if I mix in loads of kecup manis (sweet soy sauce), saus (a red gloopy sauce of some description) and sambal then it becomes very tasty and addictive. If I do this in front of Indonesians they seem a little confused, and shake their heads in amusement; apparently kecup manis does not belong in bakso.

I have recently bought the Jakarta good food guide. It is full of restaurant reviews from all over the city, of many different cuisines, and from 5 star hotels to 50p a meal kaki limas. It’s very inspiring, and I’m looking forward to working my way through it. One of the places I’ve been to is a western/Japanese food place in flashy South Jakarta. I had a wagyu steak burger. I’d not had wagyu steak before, as it’s freakishly expensive, so thought this would be a good way to try it (burgers = cheaper, Jakarta = cheaper, by UK standards anyway). It was really nice, but I was still slightly underwhelmed considering the fuss that is made about it. Also I ordered it medium rare, which is a mistake for a burger as I couldn’t bite through it; I had to take the burger out of the bun and cut it up with a knife, kind of defeating the object of ordering a burger in the first place.

My cooking of Indonesian food in still decidedly average. My pastes are getting better, or smelling better anyway, and they now have a much better, smoother texture because I’ve bought a big flat Indonesian style pestle and mortar. I think the problem is I am using UHT coconut milk. Next time I cook something I will try to make the coconut milk myself, but it does seem like a massive hassle. I don’t really fancy smashing a coconut open and then grating it, there are just too many ways for that to go wrong. 

The Baduy Tribe

Depending on how you measure it, Jakarta is one of the biggest cities in the world, and Java one of the most densely populated islands; so it came as something of a surprise to find that less than four hours travel away there exists a tribe that completely rejects the modern world. On a busy holiday weekend I crammed myself along with my companions into the packed public transport and headed south to visit the Baduy Tribe. Despite it being a holiday weekend, where every accessible green space close to Jakarta is overrun with people, there was hardly anyone there: people either don’t know about the tribe, or they don’t care.

There are two main areas, the inner Baduy and the outer Baduy; the inner being more pure, with the outer acting as buffer between them and the outside world. Very few people are allowed to visit the inner Baduy, and even fewer are allowed to live there: even if you were born in the outer Baduy, you may not live in the inner Baduy. Foreigners are certainly not allowed into any of the three inner Baduy, so I visited several of the thirty eight outer villages.

The Baduy people live a very traditional life, rejecting many of the luxuries that most people take for granted. Electricity is the most obvious example, but it’s the simpler things that surprised me; there is no glass, so no windows, or glasses to drink from, and no cutlery other than the small selection for use by visitors. Their income comes mainly from growing rice, which is sold across the rest of Java. Since this is taxable, the Baduy send a delegation to Jakarta once a year to pay the tax, and since transport is forbidden, the delegation walks the whole way!

A Baduy house is built from wood and bamboo, and the walls seem to be weaved together; they are very natural and beautiful creations, and although the doors are attached by metal hinges, and the occasional screw is in evidence, they are still remarkable. It takes three months, and about £1500 to build one of the houses. More remarkable are the bamboo bridges across the rivers. Built from bamboo poles lashed together, they only take three days to build and are truly a sight to behold, and yet they only sway as much as the Millennium Bridge in London.

Small signs of the modern world are the flip flops worn by some of the tribe, the ones that don’t have amazingly toughened and huge feet, very hobbit like! There is a small amount of rubbish around, probably left by visitors, as I saw no evidence of any of the tribe using anything that creates litter. This almost total lack of litter also seems to have another benefit: there were very few mosquitoes and other bugs and nasty things. The Baduy apparently don’t use soap to wash, but I did see some of the women using washing powder to clean their clothes in the river. The river serves several purposes: washing clothes, washing yourself, general socialising, and, as I didn’t find out until after I had finished swimming, going to the toilet. 

Toll Roads and Schrodinger’s Cat

One for the eternal questions raised by travelling by car in Jakarta is whether to take the toll roads or not. Theoretically they should make the journey quicker, but practically they are sometimes so jammed with traffic it would have been quicker to remain on the smaller, shittier and still traffic clogged roads that weave around them. Apologies to any physicists reading, for what is doubtless a very poor analogy, but Jakarta’s toll roads are like Schrodinger’s cat: you can’t tell if they’re busy until you’re on them, and by that time it’s too late. For those interested, the Wikipedia article on Schrodinger’s cat can be found here.

Other pseudo-intellectual news: I recently made my higher level students research the philosophy of ethics including utilitarianism, deontology and such luminaries as Kant, Plato and Derrida. They didn’t get it. 

The Burping Masseuse

One of my little pleasures in Jakarta is going for a massage. I don’t go to a seedy, happy ending type of place, but to a clean and professional establishment, where for £6/hour you can enjoy massages ranging from a Japanese shiatsu to the gentler Javanese style. The shiatsu massages are wonderful, they involve the masseuse climbing onto the table, and walking over your back, clicking your joints with her toes. I didn’t really know what I had asked for the first time, so was quite surprised when I found myself lying helplessly on the table with someone standing on my neck. Another trick is when they rub their feet quickly the length of your body, in effect surfing your back before they shoot of the end of the table. It’s all very nice, but I’ve found I have simple tastes: whether it’s my feet being massaged, the palms of my hands, or strangely, my ears, but the most notable thing is that the masseuses spend the whole time burping! The first time was incongruous, I thought that maybe she had had too many fizzy drinks before starting. But no, it seems to be an occupational hazard; every massage I’ve had, the masseuse has burped several times, so much so that I don’t really notice it any more. I don’t have an explanation for this, I can only guess that I may be something to do with the pressure they are exerting. 

The Thousand Islands and Pulau Tidung

There is a group of islands north of Jakarta known as Pulau Seribu (The Thousand Islands), many of them very close and reputedly dirty and polluted as a result, while others are privately owned, although you can stay on them for a small fortune. I have had several different people recommend one of the more distant ones, Pulau Tidung, one even saying it is like Bali before it got popular. So that is where I went last weekend, joining a cheap tour with a friend, which meant travelling on the public ferry, and staying in some pretty basic accommodation. The ferry left at 6am, and was crowded, uncomfortable, and looked as if it had been found in the land that health & safety forgot. But no matter, three hours later we arrived at the island. There are actually two Pulau Tidungs, a large inhabited island, connected to a smaller one by a wooden walkway.

After dumping our stuff in the accommodation, we were taken for some snorkelling on a smaller boat. It was lovely to be out of Jakarta and sailing between tropical islands, but the weather wasn’t great and not dissimilar to a beach trip in Wales: it was drizzling and not all that warm. The snorkelling was ok, nice enough water but a lot of dead coral. We explored the town a little; the people seem to lead a basic and quite traditional life, and although the streets are quite narrow, you do still have to keep dodging bikes and scooters, just like Jakarta.

The Sunday, however, was much better. We walked the length of the island (about 2km) and across the walkway to the smaller island. The weather was hot and sunny, the islands stunningly beautiful, and suddenly the comparison with Bali didn’t seem quite so fatuous. The walkway is fantastic, stretching between the islands through super clear water, and with a little bridge that people take turns jumping and diving off. Although the islands are beautiful, and the sand is nice, the beaches themselves are not amazing, being short, very shallow, and slightly dirty.

The return to Jakarta was significantly less smooth than the trip out. Essentially, there were too many people to fit on the ferry. There were also too many people to fit on the fishing boat the island laid on, which departed looking dangerously overcrowded. So the remaining island goers sat around in the sun, getting hotter and more agitated as no one seemed to know what was going on. Eventually another ferry turned up, from where I don’t know, as it certainly wasn’t scheduled. There were blissfully few people on it, so despite the wait and uncertainty, the journey back was relatively comfortable and quick.

It didn’t take long to come back to earth; as we neared Jakarta we sailed through rubbish and what smelt like sewage, we were then forced into a sweaty and crowded angkot before driving through the stinking fish market, and into the deafening traffic where every driver seemed to be leaning on his horn – hello Jakarta!

On loan

For the last couple of weeks I have been working at another branch of my schools franchise; it was quite novel at first, a chance to see a different area and how other schools do things, and to meet some new people. Unfortunately two hours a day sitting in traffic tends to kill the enthusiasm. The school itself is very similar, although certain systems and ideas are better implemented. The kids also seem to be better behaved: blackberry use is amazingly low, they all bring in their own pens and books, and actually queue at the door at the end of the lesson to be let out.  However, the teacher’s morale seems to be just as low as it is at my school. This is apparently a result of the school’s penny pinching, lack of flexibility and refusal to make any concessions regarding teacher well being, confirming that it is the franchise that is a rapacious profit machine, and not just my school. 

Recent happenings

I have finally got my UK phone unlocked, so I can use it with my Indonesian SIM card. This has allowed me to finally take part in authentic modern Jakartan culture. I went to the mall, hung out, and fucked about on my flashy hand phone while watching other people buy stuff. Brilliant.

I have been working Saturdays for the past month. It’s a pain in the arse because as well as starting at 930 on Saturday morning, its four hours long. I’ve been going out all day afterwards, meaning I’m tired all day Sunday, and then straight back to work on the Monday. It seems as if I’m never away from the school. The Saturday class is business English, so they are much more motivated and mature than my normal students; I can actually talk and have an intelligent discussion with them - a marked difference from my normal classes of hyperactive eight year olds or stroppy monosyllabic teenagers.

What’s worse is I am now embroiled in what my school calls ‘Summer Fun’. It means I have to start work at 10am everyday and work until 7ish, in addition to working on Saturday. I have it quite easy though, other teachers start at 10 and work until 9 in the evening. The class I teach in the morning is a “conversation” class. While I have nothing against conversation classes per se, I don’t like the way my school sets them up. The classes are too big, it is not possible to have a ten person conversation, and some of the students are too low a level. If you can’t (or won’t) ask and answer simple questions you have no place in a conversation class. 

Jogjakarta

A few weeks back I had a long weekend, so flew to Jogjakarta for a few days. Jogja, as it is normally known, is a Javanese cultural centre and a good base for exploring the surrounding area. The city itself is much like the other Javanese cities I’ve visited; the big draw is the presence of several temples an hours drive away. Before heading out sightseeing I first had to sample the cities food. Jogjan food is famous for two things; nasi gudeg, and nasi kucing. The former is a very sweet and spicy chicken dish cooked with jack fruit, and the latter translates as cat rice. Since Java is not Sulawesi (where they tuck into delights such as dog, rat and bat), this isn't actually cat with rice, but very small portions that are only enough to feed a cat. There are whole streets in Jogja selling this stuff, where students lounge around chatting and getting their main meal of the day for about 20p. 

While I was there, it was the annual Vesak celebration, a Buddhist festival commemorating the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha. Monks from all over the region come to the temple of Borobudur for the celebration, which involves a procession to the temple followed by prayers, chanting and meditation. The atmosphere felt quite sacred, as most of those watching seemed to be Buddhist as well, so took the whole thing very seriously. The monks then moved through the crowd sprinkling holy water, and I'm pleased to report that some hit me, so I may well be blessed. The monks would then have walked seven times around the temple, but I didn't get to see this as it had started to rain, so I scuttled off to find somewhere to hide. As interesting as the celebration was, it meant the temple was closed for the duration, so I was unable to climb to the top. Photos of the monks, and a few of the temple here: www.flickr.com/photos/amnewman.

Also in the vicinity of Jogja is the Hindu temple complex Prambanan. They are very beautiful, more so because they are set in some lovely green and well maintained gardens, a distinct rarity in these parts. I could happily have spent the rest of the day chilling out and watching some of the dances troupes in the area, but I had to get back for my flight. 

Many times I've wondered, when I've got out of a car and left the door open, whether anyone would be fool enough to drive into it. I lived in the UK for 32 years without it happening; after five months in Indonesia, and two days in Jogjakarta, it finally has. I got out of my taxi at the airport, and in the time it had taken me to check to see if I had all my belongings, a lorry had driven into the open taxi door and got itself stuck. The driver did seem to be reasonably alert, he noticed my shouts and stopped to allow me to free the door, before driving off leaving me with an irate taxi driver to contend with. 

Dentistry Indonesian style...

I started to have some tooth pain a while back, with one of my wisdom teeth making a concerted break for freedom. The area around the tooth became swollen and infected, I couldn’t really open or close my mouth, it was very painful, and I developed a fever. It got so bad that I was actually looking forward to a trip to the dentist – certainly a novel experience. I decided against one of the numerous backstreet dentists and went to the very new, very modern hospital just down the road. It’s a very shiny professional place, where they gave me some antibiotics and advised me to have it removed. The antibiotics were amazing, they killed the infection straight off, but I’ve yet to have the tooth removed. A dentist friend back home generally recommends against extraction, so I'm going with this option at the moment; mainly because I'm a coward, but also because every time I go to a privately run hospital I always have a suspicion that they are trying to sell me procedure that I don't necessarily need. However, if it gets infected again, I shall have to have it removed. 

City of God kids

I have recently finished teaching a class of seven 4 year old boys. Despite their age, and their tendency to bring massive amounts of (toy) weaponry to class, they were reasonably well behaved, and would quite happily sit around and have a conversation. There was hierarchy with an unofficial leader, who they would defer to and ask advice, an ‘enforcer’, and the runt of the litter, who was the butt of their jokes. Despite the obvious disparity in class and circumstances (e.g. they all have Blackberries), they reminded me of the favela kids from the Brazilian film City of God. They sit around and chat, gossip, compare recent antics, and (probably) hatch schemes to defraud their schoolmates and make it big in the Jakartan underworld. 

Attempts at making the local food and drink

So far, so unsuccessful. Not bad, just a little bit bland. I’ve tried cooking a tempe curry, a fish curry, a long bean dish, fried noodles and rice, and some sambal. The sambal was great, really sweet and spicy and very easy to make. The curries have involved making pastes (similar to the stuff that Thai curries use), which have smelled really good, but not translated into a tasty end product. Not sure if the pastes are to blame, or what I do to them afterwards. The fried noodles and rice have been pretty good, but then all I do is fill them full of kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), and that makes anything taste good.

I’ve also tried making juices/smoothies, and, damn it, it isn’t as simple as throwing a load of fruit into a blender. I started by not peeling or deseeding the fruit. That was a mistake, which I knew even as I was doing it; the results were very fibrous and full of ball bearing like pips. Before anyone scoffs too loudly, I only did this with fruit that can sometimes have edible skin, such as guava.

I’ve now taken to peeling and deseeding the fruit, but the results are only marginally better. In search of an answer I took to observing and questioning the local juice makers. The solution is as unsurprising as it is obvious: loads (and loads) of sugar. So much for the natural sweetness of nature’s bounty!

What to drink (non-booze)

If you’re going to go local, then you need to wash down your nasi goreng with a bottle of teh botol. It’s the local brand of iced tea, and quite nice, though packed with sugar.

The coffee is certainly an experience. There are no new fangled western innovations like filters, the coffee grounds are poured into a glass and topped up with hot water from a thermos. You wait until the grounds have settled at the bottom and then drink, leaving a few mill of water so that you don’t drink the grounds themselves. It’s really nice, if a bit on the gritty side.

Another coffee experience is coffee lewak, reputedly the most expensive coffee in the world. The coffee beans are eaten by a jungle cat, digested, and crapped out. The coffee is then brewed from these beans. Apparently the jungle cat only eats the best beans, therefore only the best beans get brewed for your coffee. Anyway, the coffee costs about £10 (a bewilderingly high amount for a coffee, especially in Indonesia), and is nice. Not much else, just nice.

There are fresh fruit juice stalls everywhere, providing a plentiful supply of Vitamin C, and sugar. One of my favourites is young coconut; there are several versions, the most interesting being the whole young coconut with its top macheted off, and a straw put it- simple and effective. Another notable drink I’ve come across is a combination of avocado and chocolate. I can’t comment any further, I’ve yet to pluck up the courage to try it. I’ve also recently had a grass based drink, involving ice, grass and some sort of jelly. It tasted of grass. 

What and where to eat in Jakarta

Rice! And noodles! Either fried, or boiled and eaten with some dishes on the side for flavour. Nasi goreng (fried rice) is a national dish, and my usual lunch.

Some dishes I particularly like, and that are particularly Indonesian are tempe, and gado-gado. Similar to tofu, tempe is made from soy beans. Whereas tofu uses the milk, and has a slightly slimy unpleasant texture, tempe is made from the beans themselves, and has a much more pleasing meatier texture.

Gado-gado is the national salad. A mixture of whatever comes to hand, it normally features beans, tofu and/or tempe, lonton (rice steamed in banana leaves until its solid), bean sprouts, an egg and krupuk (prawn crackers). It is dressed with a spicy peanut sauce. This sort of sauce is found everywhere in Indonesia food; you can have it with fresh fruit (when it is called rujak), or maybe with some deep fried catfish (when it is called pecel lele). A famous example would be sate, marinated meat (chicken or goat usually) grilled on coconut husks and then served with spicy peanut sauce.

Jakarta has an admirable selection of places to eat. They cater for almost any budget, and can be found in almost any location. I would say any budget, but I don’t think our office boys (probably the lowest strata in employment) can afford to eat there too often, instead contenting themselves with IndoMie, the local instant noodles. These are cheap, and despite some far fetched scare stories perpetuated by various  bule about them causing cancer, are actually really nice - several cuts above likes of Supernoodles.

The cheapest food outlets I am referring to are known as Kaki Lima (5 legs). They are one or two person stalls on wheels that get pushed from point to point, selling their wares. They normally consist of a wok, a burner and gas canister, a bit of storage, and probably an umbrella to keep the sun and rain off. The five legs refer to the two legs of the pusher, the two wheels and the stand. They provide quick and cheap meals (from about 40p) of reasonable quality. Each kaki lima only sells one product and sometimes the quality will be better than you find in some restaurants, but I concede this may be due to familiarity and a personal fondness for nasi goring and deep fried tempe.

Kaki limas are found everywhere. If there is an unoccupied pavement space, there will be a kaki lima. If they discover a handily placed block over an otherwise open sewer they will have set up next to it, and the customers will be sitting on the block eating their lunch. Each type of kaki lima makes a distinctive sound, which they sound as they move to attract custom, much like an ice cream vans tune in the uk. Useful you may think, until they decide to sell their bakso (meatball soup) at 6am outside your house. And your house is on a dead end street, so you know that even if you quickly get back to sleep, you are going to be woken up again in 5 minutes.

A step up from the kaki limas are the warungs; essentially the same thing, but a bit bigger and with a fixed location. They sell the same sort of thing, at the same sort of quality, for a slightly higher price.

A step up again are the places selling regional Indonesian food. The main types near me (and throughout Jakarta as far as I can tell) are Javanese (from Java), Padang (from Sumatra) and Sundanese (also from Java). These are apparently entirely separate cuisines, although I currently have difficulty telling them apart. It’s certainly true that the Javanese places don’t sell beef rendang, and are a bit cheaper (rice and 3 different dishes can cost from 50p up to about £1), but at the moment the subtleties are lost on me.

Telling Indonesia people that I like nasi padang has become one of my favourite pastimes; there is sharp intake of breath, a short and loaded silence and then a load exclamation. Their reaction seems to encompass surprise that I have heard of it at all (strange since places selling it are everywhere), surprise that I’ve tried it (they are admittedly funny looking places), surprise that I find it tasty (I can’t understand why, it is really is good), but mostly surprise that I can tolerate the heat. I suppose I’ve acclimatised to the heat of the food now, but nasi padang seems no hotter than any of the other food. That said, I do use the sambal sparingly, as they can be murderously hot. 

Transport in Jakarta

Getting around Jakarta is problematic; there are a huge number of options, but none of them entirely satisfactory. The only option that the locals don’t use is walking: you’ll see people waiting for transport for a journey that would take maybe five minutes to walk. I was pretty scornful of this at first, I’ve always been an advocate of setting out on foot (with some occasionally foolish results), and especially where the local transport is so baffling. However, after about three months in Jakarta, I’m beginning to concede that the locals may know a little bit more about living in the tropics than I do. Simply put, I’m tired of getting sunburnt and dehydrated after the short walk to the shops. Also, midday is not the time to go, as anyone brought up outside northern Europe will tell you.  

Angkots are minibuses that have had the seats stripped out, and benches running lengthways installed in their place. You flag them down, force your way in (they can get very crowded) and then contort you body to be able to see out of the window, so you can tell the driver when to stop. Sometimes they will be too crowded to get on, but no matter - there will be another one along in thirty seconds. There are an uncountable number of angkot routes running throughout Jakarta, I only use the one running from my house to the nearest mall. I’ve also tried to use the angkot running from the mall back to my house, but I’ve got lost every time. Instead I now use an ojek to get home.

An ojek is some bloke with a motorbike, and zero, one or if you’re lucky, two helmets. You find your man, negotiate a price and you’re off. They can be quite liberating if there is a lot of traffic and a reasonably sensible driver; they can be horrendous if you have an empty road for them to accelerate into, and some young gun who thinks his nickname is Maverick. All ojek journeys used to terrify me, but now I’m developing a sense of invulnerability. I don’t think this is an improvement.

Next transport choice is a bajaj. This is some sort of covered three wheeled motorbike that will sit three people at a push. Other than novelty value I’m not really sure what purpose they serve. They are not really any cheaper than a taxi, and are certainly more cramped and less comfortable, and are probably slower as well.

I have recently used the Trans Jakarta Busway, a relatively new solution to the cities transport problems. There are several interconnected lines, much like an underground system. It is cheap and fairly efficient; it has a dedicated bus lane that in theory shouldn’t get hogged by other traffic. Unfortunately knowing when to get off requires telepathy: the stops are not announced, and are written in tiny letters, so you may notice them if all the planets are in alignment etc. etc. That said, Jakartans being the friendly people they are, someone will have asked you where you are going within a few minutes, and will be going to some lengths to ensure that you get off at the right stop.

Despite all these tempting transport options, most of the time I just take a taxi. If you are going to a well known area or landmark then they are fine. If you are going home, or somewhere even a tiny amount off the beaten track they can be a nightmare – they simply do not know where things are. When you are driving around in circles and stopping every three minutes to ask for directions on your way somewhere in daylight, it can seem like an amusing piece of local colour. When you’re new to Jakarta, tired, drunk and on your way home after a night out, such antics take on a more sinister tone. I’ve not had any problems though, other than an inflated fare. 

Impressions of Jakarta

Jakarta is a sea of densely populated and difficult to navigate low rise streets and kampungs, which has continuously expanded with no discernable order or purpose. There is no defined city centre or shopping district, just the occasional mall and food court in amongst the sprawl, with the Jakarta skyline always tantalisingly out of reach.

Jakarta is not an easy city to get to know, although I am starting to recognise the names of areas, but not yet how they are related to each other. It is also hard to say whether I actually enjoy living here; there are many aspects I do like, but the size and inscrutability of the place makes easy generalisation a difficult task. So, in place of a nuanced and insightful piece of writing on Jakarta in the 21^st century, here are a couple of lists:

Things I like: the food, the seedy weirdness of some of the nightlife, friendly people, beautiful girls, the contrast between Jakarta at skyline and street level, strange transport options that aren’t especially good value or practical but are an immensely entertaining way of getting around, having picked up functional Indonesian fairly easily, the sensation that almost anything could happen at anytime, the service industry (it seems possible to get someone to do something for you 24 hours a day).

Things I dislike: lack of any real transport system, lack of green spaces, lack of pavements, lack of places to hang out that aren’t a mall, the mind numbing similarity of street level Jakarta, being unable to hold a conversation in Indonesian, Puri.

Puri is my area of Jakarta, it is an affluent Chinese dominated area in the far west of the city. Kelapa Gading in the NE is known as the head of the dragon because of the Chinese influence, and Puri is the tail of the dragon. It is a quiet, residential, and an essentially boring place to live. There is a decent variety of places to eat, and little else. 

First week at work

Bit hazy this, I should probably have written about it at the time. All I can remember is a fair amount of chaos and having to cover other people’s classes in addition to my own. As I had no experience with teaching a real class, this was quite stressful. Lesson planning was taking a long time, and I was unfamiliar with the classes and the school’s material. I survived, and it has proved to be a fairly accurate reflection of the schools working practices. One thing I do remember clearly is this piece of advice, which I think I received within my first hour: ‘If you ever find yourself with a prostitute, do NOT go down on them.’ Classic. 

My first post

This is my attempt to set up and write a blog. I am starting about 3 months late, but I intend to slowly bring it up to date. It won’t be in chronological order, I don’t have a good enough memory of the timeline or details for that. Instead I will organise by theme, when I’ve covered the main topics I will start ordering the posts by date. My opening theory was that I’d produce one well written and tightly edited piece a week, but having started writing I seem to be churning out a load of rubbish about whatever happens to be crossing my mind that moment. Time will tell…