Goodbye Bogor

It was our last day...finally. We said our goodbyes at the house. Gave the family a photo book of Washington that we had brought as a gift. One of the daughters around our age gave Hillary a blue jean jacket and a gaudy pink purse, which was very nice. (The gesture, not the purse.) We were feeling really horrible that the only gift we had for them was a little crappy book about Washington after they had let us stay in their home and eat their food for four nights. After saying our goodbyes, the students gathered for our final class session.

That's when we found out we were paying $25 a day per person to stay at these family's homes. Since we were sharing a room, $50 a day is actually steep compared to the $10 or $15 you would pay per night in a small hotel. To add insult to injury, we also ended up buying lunch every day for us AND our entourage.

A new look for formal events

We had been invited to a party for our last night in Bogor and the hostess offered to dress the women up in traditional Sundanese style. Because they were told that would take awhile, the women went directly from the village outside Bogor over to the woman's house. I went back to the house where we'd been gathering most of the time for the birthday party of one of our other hosts.

The birthday party was an interesting experience because it was very formal, including speeches and recitations of the Koran. The tradition includes the one celebrating the birthday having to prepare a plate first for the oldest person there and then second for whatever honored guest was present. Guess who was named the honored guest...

After getting ready for the party, my host parents and I made the trek across Bogor to where the party was being held. Unfortunately, I missed the karaoke session that happened while the women were waiting on everyone else to show up, but the actual production was very elaborate and entertaining. At the end, we were asked to make speeches, dragged onto the stage to dance with the performers, and had to pose for at least 20 photos.

Kampung, that means village

On our last full day in Bogor, we were told we were going to a traditional Sundanese village where they put on displays of Sundanese culture including dance and music. We thought, "Cool, this will be kinda touristy, but there's nothing wrong with that." The village turned out to be a modern Indonesian village that was in no way touristy. We were taken to the house of the head of the village's cultural group (let's just call him the chief) and saw young girls dance to Sundanese music and men dance with musical instruments made of dried rice plants, which was pretty fun.

After the performance, we went inside the chief's house for lunch, a nice spread that fed 30 or so. At some point the chief mentioned that the main industry of the village was shoemaking, and he offered to take us to one of the factories. We thought that would be cool, so we piled in the cars and drove off to one of the shoe factories, which was not much more than a small open air room with a couple machines for cutting leather.

It turned out that the shoe factory was very close to the fountain of youth, so apparently we COULD NOT pass up the opportunity. After seeing the hole in the ground and splashing a little water on our faces, we started walking back, at which point we were immediately assaulted with the type of downpour that we had heard described, but not yet experienced. We stopped at the very modest house of one of our guides to sit out the hardest part of the rain. Literally, we sat on his floor for an hour! By that point, we were late for a party, so we decided to brave the rest of the rain and get back to the cars.

You're on the radio...now sing

One of the unique challenges for even a laid back American in Indonesia is that very little is planned, and that which is planned, you're not told about. We had heard since our first day that we were invited to a radio broadcast at the local outlet of the national radio station. We were told that the broadcast might be distributed all over Indonesia, to which we said, "No thanks!"

We eventually agreed to go to the radio station after we were promised that we wouldn't be interviewed. We expected what you would probably expect. You're in a sound room; someone is sitting on the other side of the glass wearing headphones and talking into a microphone. What we found when we arrived, was a big room packed with people sitting on carpets and musicians in the front.

We took seats in the front and the broadcast audience was immediately told that the diplomats had arrived. The broadcast turned out to be a Sundanese sing along, featuring one of our instructors who was apparently a minor local celebrity.

The songs and speaking were all in Sundanese, a language similar to the national language, but not similar enough for us to understand a word of it....

The sing along ended when we were asked to lead the group in a song. We had learned one song the previous night, and with no other options, all of western Java got to listen to us sing "Halo Bandung".

Bamboo and massage

On our third day in Bogor, we were scheduled to check out some bamboo handicrafts in the morning and a local type of massage specialty that afternoon. We arrived at the bamboo place after having class with our teachers for a little bit.

We were greeted by a little man who had apparently dedicated his life to all things bamboo. He went on to explain to us how bamboo is a great material for building houses, furniture and anything else. We saw some of the workers who were making baskets and furniture out of bamboo and we asked one of them how many small baskets he made per day. He said two or three. The bamboo man had previously told us that those small baskets would sell for about a dollar. It's a little shocking when you realize that if the sales off the baskets only total a few dollars a day, the worker making them really can't make much to support the wife and two kids he said he had.

After a boxed lunch of rice and a little piece of meat, we were told that the bamboo place was also where we were going to learn about the local style of massage. We weren't told anything about what made the massage style unique, but we all were massaged/tortured. I really think these guys tried to see how much pain they could cause before you'd have to say something. Good times...

The Texas A&M of Indonesia

Our after lunch agenda brought us to the opposite side of Bogor, an hour long endeavor with the traffic and pothole filled roads. Our destination was the Agricultural Institute of Indonesia, the national university that specializes in subjects ranging from animal husbandry to math.

We initially met with the vice rector of the university where he discussed exciting topics such as the university's involvement in advancing agricultural research in Indonesia...I think. Our discussion was in Indonesian using a specialized area of vocabulary that we really didn't have. Lots of smiling and nodding.

After our meeting with the vice rector, we were given a tour of the campus by three students, which was a much better experience since we were able to talk one on one with them. Most Indonesian college students understand English, but they don't really feel comfortable speaking it.

Afterwards, we had to make the trek to the other side of town, which had now grown to take an hour and a half. Nothing happens quickly in Indonesia.

Eating, Sundanese Style

After our trip to the palace, we were whisked away to eat lunch at a Sundanese restaurant. With entourage in tow, we sat down for lunch and our hosts ordered a massive spread. We sat on the floor in a nice outdoor restaurant with a little pond in the middle and ate our fill of Sundanese food, since we weren't yet sick of it, having only eaten it four meals in a row at that point.

When we were finished, we asked about the bill and one of our hosts said that she had taken care of it. We thanked her for her generosity. More on this later...

Hanging out in Sukarno's digs

On our second day in Bogor, we were taken to the presidential palace that was built by the Dutch and had more recently been used as the weekend home of Sukarno, Indonesia's first president. Indonesia's meetings with President Bush during his state visit last fall were also held at the palace.

We were lucky to get a tour of the palace. I believe it's supposed to be open to public tours, but I think those tours are hard to get and limited in what you see. Because of this, I think our families and the entourage that we developed there took advantage of the opportunity.

The tour guide spoke entirely in Indonesian, but we were able to get quite a bit out of it. We were able to see the room in which Kim Jong Il slept during his state visit, as well as Sukarno's art collection full of women in various stages of undress. My favorite part of the tour was when we all took a moment at the podium to do our best Suharto impression.

Reflexology massage, aka torture

One of the great things about Indonesia is that massage is a regular part of life for most Indonesians. It is also ridiculously cheap by American standards. An hour costs anywhere from $3.50 to $10 depending on how nice of a place you go to.

On our first night in Bogor, our host dad took us to a little hole-in-the-wall massage place near their home. Hillary, our host dad, and I all got close to a two-hour massage for a little over $4. The only bad thing about this was that the massage was reflexology massage. You would never know it looking at these little Indonesians, but they pack some strength in their hands. Because reflexology is the practice of stimulating the feet to cause a beneficial effect on linked parts of the body, they focus a lot on the feet. They caused me pain in areas of my feet that I didn't realize could feel pain.

Meeting our families

One aspect of this trip that really made it an immersion was that we stayed with Indonesian families. After our meeting with the mayor, we went to one of the homes so that we could meet our families. Hillary and I stayed with the family of a retired Brigadier General with the Indonesian national police force who had a huge house in one of the nicest neighborhoods of Bogor. They were certainly rich by Indonesian standards.

One of the interesting things about Indonesia is that regardless of a family's apparent wealth, they still don't have some of the luxuries that regular American families are accustomed to, like showers, sinks, and air conditioning. The other BIG disappointment with the physical conditions of our housing in Bogor was its location. Our room was located 20 feet from a very busy road and because we didn't have air conditioning, we had to sleep with the windows open. Even with the windows open, it's still freaking hot in Indonesia. The road always had traffic, but one of the weird things about it was that every morning at 5 a.m., a steady stream of loud motorcycles would zoom by for at least a half hour. There was also the call to prayer to look forward to at 4:30 every morning. After the first night, we were given a fan, which helped some.

Even though the father of the family we stayed with had been a relatively senior official in the Indonesian government, he didn't really speak English. Even the daughters who were around our age didn't speak any English. There were definitely many times where our vocabulary failed us and we had to move on to another subject, which made for some awkward moments. They were a nice family, so we were pretty lucky.

Sink or Swim

The morning we met in Jakarta, we were told we had a meeting at noon with the mayor of Bogor, and not much time to get there. I had planned to buy a batik shirt (formal Indonesian dress for men) before our first meeting, but since this was sprung on us on very short notice, I had to borrow the shirt literally off my teacher's back.

When we arrived at the city administration building of Bogor, we were taken into the entrance hall, which had chairs arranged for approximately fifty people. Red flag #1. We were seated at the front next to the mayor's chair. A moment later, a stream of people, including the press, started flooding into the room.

After some sort of formal speeches read by one of the mayor's staff, we introduced ourselves. The mayor made a few comments that we couldn't really understand, but so far, so good. Then our teacher blindsides us with, "Do you have any questions for the mayor or the other officials?" . . . crickets chirping . . . then someone thinks to ask, "Can you tell us about the history of Bogor?" Brilliant stall question!

We were all able to ask a question or two, not that we fully understood the answers, but we survived. Apparently we were a big story in Bogor, because our visit made at least five front page stories in the local newspapers. Some of the highlights included Hillary getting a Swedish last name and being listed as the future Consul General of Surabaya, the country's second largest city.

The City of Rain

The first stop of our trip was Bogor, a city about an hour south of Jakarta that was the capital of Indonesia for much of the dutch period of rule. People in Jakarta regularly take day trips to get away from the city, so we expected a nice relaxing little town. What we got felt more like an elbow to the gut...

Bogor is a hectic, crowded, dirty, noisy city with bad roads and the traffic to match. It does have botanical gardens on the grounds of the palace, so I suppose there is more green space than in Jakarta. Our visit here was a memorable part of the trip, so I'll make several posts rather than having one long one.

Selamat Datang!

We arrived in Jakarta on Wednesday, February 21.

Those of you who visit will see how as soon as you clear customs, you're immediately assaulted by a mob of taxi cab drivers. Unfortunately for all the guys just trying to make a living, there's only one reputable cab company in Jakarta, so you just say no thanks and barrel your way through.

It's only a 45 minute cab ride from the airport to the city center on a good day. Our driver got us there in under an hour and a half. Luckily, in Indonesia a cab ride that long still only costs about $15.

We spent the night with friends in Jakarta, and other than a quick visit to the embassy, we immediately got out of town.