Globetrotting: Indonesia, Part II

Well, I've just returned from my trip to Indonesia, and I don’t even know where to start. I had no expectations of Jakarta. But it left me with a lot of memories, and a lot of fun facts. I feel like an Indonesian encyclopedia now! I truly hope that I can capture the essence of this massive city with the few tidbits and stories that follow.

(P.S. For those of you wondering, I left before the tsunami and volcano and was not impacted at all. Praise the Lord!)

Things I learned about Jakarta (the capital city) and Indonesia (the country):

• Indonesia is the 4th largest country in the world by population. It follows the good ole US of A, which is preceded by China and India. I had no idea that Indonesia has 240 million people;
  
• Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. You know those 240 million people I just mentioned? Well, 200 million of them are Muslim. But, it’s not a Muslim country! It’s a secular country, and the other 15% or so is made up of Christians, Buddhists, Hindu and those who simply just don’t believe;
  
• Indonesia has the second largest variety of vegetation in the world. This is because is lies in between Asia and Australia and has access to the waters in between the islands. And the weather is always tropical. There are 2,500 different types of orchid and hundreds of varieties of bananas and mangoes. Yum!;
  
• Jakarta has several “downtown” areas, so no matter which direction you look, you’ll see a group of tall buildings. Talk about getting disoriented!;
  
• There are no tourist activities in Jakarta. The local people are the ones who told me this. What do they do for fun on the weekend? They go to the mountains outside of Jakarta or to the shopping malls. There are what seem like a bigillion shopping malls, all really nice, and this is their big outing on the weekends;
• Jakarta has the same weather all year long. How boring. Nice, but boring;
• Jakarta is very “entrepreneurial”. And what exactly do I mean by this? Everyone is looking for a way to make a buck. Teenage boys stand in the middle of traffic and direct it, allowing cars to turn or change lanes when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, and then they get a couple thousand rupiah from the thankful driver whom they helped. And there are “3 in 1” roads during peak traffic, where you can’t drive on the road unless you have 3 people in your car. So what do these “entrepreneurs” do? They hop in your car for the length of this “3 in 1” section, you give them a couple thousand rupiah, and then they take the public bus back to the beginning to do it all over again, and still net a little bit of cash. And just to put that in perspective, the exchange rate at the moment is about 9,000 rupiah to the U.S. dollar. All I can say is, at least they’re not just standing on the corners asking for handouts;
• Komodo Island is one of the main islands of Indonesia, and is the home to the Komodo dragon. It is one of only four islands within Indonesia where these creatures roam free. I had no idea;
• Sumatra Island is the home to the largest flower, the infamous Corpse Flower (aka Titan Arum), known for it’s odor of rotting flesh. For those of you in Houston, this may sound familiar to you as there was big news about our very own Corpse Flower, “Lois”, at the Museum of Natural Science this past summer. Only 28 Corpse Flowers have ever bloomed in the United States. Sumatra Island is there native home;
  
• Indonesia was originally settled by the Dutch a long time ago. Since then, the people of Indonesia are a blend of Malaysian and Chinese. Some of them look more Polynesian (think dark island looking Asians like in Hawaii, and some of them look Chinese).

So now that you know a little about Jakarta and Indonesia, I’ll tell you what made it a special place to me, and a great overall experience.

Indonesia is made up of lots of miniature people. I don’t mean to sound rude when I say that, but I felt like an Amazon woman the entire time I was there. Six Americans on an elevator took up about as much space as twelve Indonesians. But that didn’t seem to intimidate them. I have never seen a people so assertive when it comes to getting on and off of an elevator. There is no waiting for anyone, and they certainly have no concept of elevator etiquette. It’s a free for all. After about a week of this stressful experience, we opted for the escalators :-)

There were surprisingly a lot of expats in Jakarta. It really is a nice city, and I can see why people can easily live there. The food was varied and delicious, the infrastructure is sufficient, it’s a relatively safe town (even though all you ever hear about it is related to terrorism), there is good nightlife, and you kind of just fit right in (well, other than the fact that you may not be miniature).

The hotel that we stayed at was connected via an underground walkway to what we would classify as a 5-Star shopping mall. That shopping mall was also connected to the office building in which we worked each day, so needless to say, my experience was perhaps better than it should have been since I didn’t have to deal with Jakarta traffic at all. Every entrance to every building requires you to go through a security checkpoint – some more serious than others – but the intention is at least there. The security guards between the mall and the Ritz knew us after a couple of days.

Jakarta has many western establishments – McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Tony Romas, Wendy’s, Benihana, etc. But there is also a lot of great local and regional food. I ate lots of sushi while I was over there, and some of the best stir-fried noodles I’ve ever had. They have a lot of Australian Wagyu beef (like our kobe beef) and lamb, which I quite happily indulged in.

One of the members of my team tried to eat “American” pretty much every day, and he certainly never caused the rest of us to have food envy. I’m sorry, but if you’re traveling overseas a lot as part of your job, branch out a little, huh? If you’re scared to partake in local flavors (within reason, of course), perhaps you shouldn’t travel overseas for a living. Just sayin’. I had ice in my drinks AND ate fruit AND ate vegetables AND ate the local fish, and I’m still alive and kickin’!

And we learned that service is sporadic. Meaning, I get my meal within 5 minutes of ordering, and my co-worker doesn’t get his until 15 minutes later. And that’s normal to them, and they think that it’s okay to put me in the position of having to choose to eat before my co-worker has his food, or have a cold meal. I’m not okay with that. But I got over it. I ate first :-)

On the weekend in between our two weeks of work, half of the team went to Bali and the other half of us stayed back. A former co-worker of mine now lives in Jakarta with her husband and family, and she invited me to come spend some time in the mountains with her family. The mountains are about two hours outside of Jakarta. What I didn’t realize was that they have this amazing villa and surrounding plantation with every fruit and vegetable that could possibly grow there, complete with a pond stocked with fish and some imported Australian deer. I had such a wonderful time catching up with her, meeting and hanging out with her family, eating lots of local foods grown on their property, and getting out of the big city. It was a generous display of Indonesian hospitality!

Her family is also very active in their church, and help with the Christian orphanage that houses 25 boys and girls. All of the kids are allocated to various church families to take home each weekend, so her family had three of the girls that weekend and they were up at the villa hanging out with us. They were adorable and it was even a better experience being able to spend time with them. I’m still amazed that with so many Muslims in Indonesia, I got to hang around with part of the 2% of the population that are Christians. What are the odds???

What else did I love about Jakarta?

• the almost daily, scare-your-britches-off, afternoon thunderstorms. It looked like the world was going to end. But we always survived :-);
• the 10 minute process that it took me and a co-worker to get coffee with milk from Dunkin Donuts each morning. It was a ritual that involved paper bags and tape;
• the fact that every employee in the Ritz Carlton knew me by name by Day 2, and knew that I had coffee with breakfast and wine during Happy Hour. And this even includes the staff in the fitness center who would brightly welcome me each morning with a “Good morning Miss Mason”. Gotta love the Ritz!;
• the 20 minute cab rides in a Mercedes for the equivalent of $4;
• the fact that they didn’t really treat me any different because I was American. It seems that they are accustomed to expats. And I loved that. I just want to fit in. Well, as much as I can being an Amazon woman.

I’m not really sure what else to say, other than that my impression is that Indonesian people are hard workers and take nothing for granted. Jobs are created for people to keep them busy. They may not be paid a lot, but at least they are working. The city is well kept (at least the parts that I saw), and although there are a ton of people within the city, it’s well controlled and I never felt threatened. It’s very green, very close to the equator, and has little earthquakes pretty much every day.

Would I recommend going to Jakarta? Apart from the fact that there is really nothing to do, absolutely. Next time I may venture down to Bali to see what all of the hype is about, but I left Jakarta with a smile on my face. And I really couldn’t have asked for more than that.