Into the Jungle

When we came to Indonesia, there was one place we felt we had to visit...other than Bali of course. We recently made a trip to the southern part of the island of Borneo to visit Tanjung Puting National Park. The park is the largest wildlife preserve in Southeast Asia and home to some of the great biodiversity found only in Indonesia. The main reason we wanted to visit this place is because Borneo is one of two islands in the world that still has orangutans living in the wild. In Sumatra, the other island where orangutans live, there are only around 7,000 left and they are critically endangered.

The orangutan population in Borneo (the third largest island in the world) has faired better due to their relative remoteness. However, the estimated 50,000 left in the wild are endangered and represent only 14 percent of the historical population. Their homes have always been subject to destruction from forest fires and logging, but they are under an exponentially growing threat due to the growth in the palm oil business. Some estimates say they may be extinct in the wild by 2012.

The best way to see Tanjung Puting is to fly to Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan. From there, you drive 20 minutes to get on a small chartered boat. We took the boat along the Kumai river to a smaller river that headed north. It took about 4-5 hours to travel all the way up into the area where there is a large population of orangutans. As you travel into the reserve, you begin to see long-tailed macaques sitting along the trees lining the river. We also saw proboscis monkeys, which only live in Borneo and are extremely endangered. Fewer than 7,000 still live in the wild. They're famous for their long protruding noses and in Indonesian are often called "Dutch Monkeys" because they think white people have big noses.

On the first night, we moored our boat along the river and the boat crew cooked dinner and made beds for us and our two friends on the upper deck of our boat. We slept under nets, afraid of every mosquito since malaria and dengue fever are prevalent in this area. The next morning, we woke up early and continued up the river to Camp Leakey, a remote orangutan observation camp built in the 1970s. More to come...

Can you find it on a map?

Timor-Leste is one of the newest countries in the world, having only achieved nationhood in 2002. I recently had the opportunity to go there on a last minute trip for work. Because our embassy there does very limited consular work, they asked someone from Jakarta to speak at a townhall they were having for Americans and I got the nod.

Dili was like no foreign capital I'd ever been to. It felt like I was in a movie set in sub-Saharan Africa. Because Timor-Leste doesn't have the infrastructure to police the country, the United Nations is there. As a result, there are UN vehicles everywhere you turn. The country's infrastructure is non-existent in so many areas. It's a beautiful country with great natural resources, but they're still struggling to get on their feet.

I was shocked to see a refugee camp immediately outside the entrance to the tiny airport. They call these camps "Internally Displaced Persons" camps because they are filled with people who had to leave their homes outside Dili due to recent violence in their areas. These camps are all over the city and at one point a few months ago the population of Dili doubled when the number of people living in the camps reached 100,000. It definitely makes you think about how badly some people in the world need our help.

Earth Day

Indonesia has the most biodiversity of any country in the world. We see it as critically important that we encourage Indonesians to take care of this amazing natural environment. The embassy is always working on environment protection issues, but for Earth Day we invited a group of about 80 kids from around Jakarta to come to the embassy.

Each group of kids painted a mural about the environment and then presented them to the embassy to be displayed on our outer wall. It was also a day of fun and games that included Hillary teaching the kids Simon Says and me organizing a soccer game with coaches from Arsenal's training academy(!) The kids were even treated to a live performance by their neighbors from Jalan Sesame (Sesame Street) that featured an orangutan talking about his home in Kalimantan.

Who has the key?

In East Java, a local government recently passed a law that requires Indonesian masseuses to have a lock on their pants, so that the client knows there's no funny business going on. What I find humorous is that they can also wear locking skirts. I'm sure this law will be very effective.

I want to know what the girls do when they need to go to the bathroom though.

Quiz

Question: What do you do when your 4 year-old boy has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a crowded mall?

Answer: Easy. Have the nanny pull down his pants, pull out an empty 7-Up bottle and let him do his business.

Why didn't you just say so?

Here’s the scene: John and I are at one of our favorite restaurants, a dim-sum place. A popular drink here is a lime squash, which is basically lime juice, sugar, and club soda. We ordered two lime squashes and they brought us two lemon squashes. The whole conversation was in Indonesian, by the way.

Hillary: We ordered lime squashes.

Waitress: Yes, lime squash.

Hill: This is lemon, not lime.

Waitress: Lemon?

Hill: Yes, this is lemon. We ordered lime.

Waitress: Yes, lime squash.

Hill: But this is not lime, this is lemon. Lime is green, lemon is yellow. (Pointing to the lemon slice in the drink) This is lemon. We ordered lime.

Waitress: Lemon squash?

Hill: No, see here on the menu? (Pointing) We ordered lime squash. See? Lime squash.

(She brings over another waitress and we go through the charade again.)

Lemon. Lime. Lemon. Lime etc.

(She finally brings a manager over. He is holding a lemon.)

Manager: This is a lemon.

Hill: Yes.

Manager: Different than lime, yes?

Hill: Yes.

Manager: We are out of limes!

Hill: Oh, I see. Thank you.

Only in Indonesia would it take 20 minutes to get to that point!

Brooke comes to visit

We finally had our first visitor! My sister made it halfway around the world to see us and check out Indonesia. When I met her at the airport, you never would have guessed she'd just been traveling for almost 30 hours. What a trouper! We left the very next day for 5 nights in Bali and had a great time. Perfect weather the whole trip. One highlight was this amazing hidden beach we discovered (with a little help). The area is famous with surfers, although it is reef-protected, so the waves break far from shore and keep the water crystal clear and perfect for swimming!

Towards the center of the large island of Bali is a town called Ubud, which is Bali's cultural area. Lots of art, dance, rituals, performances, etc happen here. First thing on our agenda? The Monkey Forest, of course! This is a dedicated area that surrounds old Hindu temples deep in the forest. It is inhabited by a TON of long-tailed macaque monkeys. They are not shy, and will do anything to get food from you. One of them rummaged through my sister's purse and stole off with her entrance ticket! In the photo below, you can see one of them starting to take Brooke's sunglasses off her head. Just like that, the monkey had them in its hands and took off, disappearing over a wall with them. Apparently, sunglasses are their favorite thing to steal after food!After Bali it was back to Jakarta for 4 more nights before Brooke went home. We spent the time relaxing, taking her to some of our favorite spots to eat, and of course got her a massage. So what's next? She just might come visit again next year!

Not Quite 40 days and 40 nights

Jakarta is a big city. It's also a low-lying coastal city. As Jakarta continues to grow in sprawl, forests are replaced by roads and houses. And roads and houses don't soak up water.

Two nights ago, our friend Brent arrived and we took him out for dinner. By the time we got home at around 11 p.m., it had started to rain...hard. The rain didn't stop until the next afternoon around 3 p.m. In around 16 hours, Jakarta got a month's worth of rain according to some news reports. That spells bad news.

The airport reopened today, but there's no way to reach it because all the roads to it are still flooded. Over 40 flights had to turn around and go back yesterday. We're praying that since the rain seems to have stopped, our friends coming in late tonight

won't have any problems.

Yesterday many neighborhoods of Jakarta had water that was around 3 feet deep. This happens every year, but construction still runs rampant and apparently someone thinks it would be a waste of money to make drainage improvements. T.I.I.

Yogya, Yogyakarta

The weekend before Christmas we flew to Yogyakarta (pronounced Joeg-Jakarta), commonly regarded as the cultural capital of Indonesia. Yogya (as it's usually called) is the heart of Javanese culture. It's still ruled by a Sultan who fills the role taken by a democratically elected governor in the other provinces. The streets are full of becak, tiny carts powered by bicycles that everyone takes for transportation. It's a city full of artists and musicians, so it was really a great place to visit for a weekend. We also ate the best Indonesian food we've found here.

Not only is it home to amazing culture of recent centuries, it's also the site of ancient wonders of the world. Only 25 miles from Yogya is Borobudur, the largest Budhist temple in the world and 12 miles in the other direction is Prambanan, an enormous 9th century Hindu temple complex (you really should click the links and read about them on Wikipedia). They were very cool to see.

We had heard that the best way to visit Borobudur is to arrive early enough that you can watch the sunrise over the volcano nearby. On our way in to town, a few locals followed us to our hotel on their motorcycles and offered to take us to a nearby village in the morning to watch the sunrise for a fraction of the price of the sunrise admission to Borobudur. We weren't worried about the cost, but we decided to go with them.

When they took us out to the village the next morning, in the distance on a hilltop we saw this large church. We asked them to take us there and after an adventurous trek, we arrived at this abandoned church. The thing was shaped like a giant chicken! We couldn't make it up even if we tried.

Conservation

Indonesia is home to the most biodiversity in the world. The government is trying to take steps to prevent all sorts of environmental catastrophes. One tragedy that no one has yet addressed affects us greatly.


The menu shortage.


When you go to a restaurant (even one that caters to expats and rich Indonesians), you'll be lucky to get one menu per customer. Even if you order an appetizer and say you're going to order more food in a minute, you'll have to fight to keep your menu. And god forbid if you're at a bar and you want to save the one drink menu for your friends who haven't yet arrived. After you spend long enough in a place, these small things start to wear on you.


So please people, think of the menus.


T.I.I.