Christmas Day!

We are sitting here in a little cafe on a small street in a town called Hoi An. It is a beautiful French colonial villiage in central Vietnam full of shops and tailors. The French came here in the mid 19th century because it was a thriving port with immediate access to the Thu Bon River which connects with the Mekong River. I just finished my banana pancake and am now waiting for my coffee to drip through the tiny Vietnamese style filter that sits above the cup. Drip, Drop... Leah looks like she is pondering something...maybe another pancake.

Merry Christmas!

Travels

Here are some descriptions of a few trips that we took. I have also posted a ton of pictures on our website. check it out at

http://homepage.mac.com/doublebassface22/

Hopefully this will fill you in a bit and tide you over for a few weeks when we return from our trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Also when we get back I will post some thoughts about our trip to Papua. The taxi is waiting outside our house as I type, to take us to the airport.

Grant and Leah

Anyer-
Anyer was our first trip out of Jakarta. It was just a little beach town about two and a half hours away. It was nothing special but a nice get-away from the dirty city. We went on this trip with some new friends, Jeff and Cindy, who are both also teachers at NJIS. We hired a driver for about five dollars for the entire day. When we arrived we were instantly hounded by tons of vendors all shouting in Bahasa, the items that we should buy. After they backed off, the day was much less stressful and we were able to enjoy the sun and the waves. Later in the day, we ended up getting massages on the beach. The women were kind enough to use sand and oil on us, exfoliating our skin and lubing us up for a nice roasting. Forgetting that we were in the tropical sun, we hung out for another two or so hours. By the end of the day we were all completely sunburned.

Pelabuhan Ratu-
This was an interesting trip. We went with about eight other teachers to this beach house owned by some Australian architect/surfer that one of our friends knew. It was an absolutely stunning house, that he designed and built himself, overlooking a beautiful view of the southern coast of Java. The rooms of the house had walls that could be slid opened revealing an unbelievable view of the Indian Ocean right from the bed. It was incredible!
In order to describe the unusual and sometimes frightening events that occurred on this trip, I must explain one thing about Indonesian culture. They are a very superstitious people, that strongly believe in the existence of ghosts, spirits and omens and what they represent. Pelabuhan Ratu has a legend attached to it that everyone warns you about the second you mention the area. It is believed that a long time ago a queen lost her son when he was on a long journey out to sea. After that she vowed to roam the seas until her son has returned to her. The myth says that if you wear green in the water she will come and drag you out to sea. Of course, none of us wanted to tempt our fates, so everyone brought the most non-green suites that they owned. Upon arriving at the house, we unpacked our stuff and headed out to the beach. The beach was completely clean and free of people. The waves were amazing and they were perfect for body-surfing. Leah, our friend Jesse, and I were the first ones out in the water. We were playing totally carefree and commenting on how wonderful the waves were, when we realized we were really far away from land. The tides had carried us further and further with such swiftness and ease that we didn’t even notice. We all had talked about how to swim out of a strong current and so we started swimming and slowly we were reaching land. I looked back and realized that Leah was pretty far back still and was not making it back in. She started calling for me to come help her. The look on her face was so terrifying that even writing about it makes me feel nervous and sick. She was getting tired quickly and couldn’t make it in on her own. I was feeling alright and I headed back to help her. As soon, as I started trying to bring her in I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to do it. The waves were crashing so quickly and taking us so far out that all of our energy was draining at a frightening pace. I don’t know if I can describe what it is like to suddenly know that you can’t make it back to land. Even harder to describe is the utter terror and emptiness that I felt when I realized that I was not going to be able to save my wife and best friend from this. It was the scariest moment of my life. Flashbacks haunt me occasionally and fill my body with absolute fear and a coldness that reaches everyone bone and organ. I don’t mean to sound dramatic but it really feels like this. The upside to these thoughts is immediately after the fear I feel truly lucky and blessed that I still have Leah.
Obviously, we are just fine and we can all thank our friend Jesse, who was in the water with us, because she just happens to be the swim coach at our school. She has spent her entire life diving the oceans and seas of Southeast Asia. She is a Master diver and has saved more than a few lives. She saw us struggling and came out to get us. We are honestly two of the luckiest people around. If she had not been there, we would not be here. When we got back up to the house, we looked down at the beach and the waves were clearly dangerous. It’s hard to believe we didn’t notice before but now that we have seen a rip-tide I am sure I will recognize it the next time.
Once on shore, teary eyed and exhausted, down came another couple to head into the water. Oblivious to what had just happened and frankly ignoring our warning to go in the water, they merrily love-birded their way into the water. Guess what happened? Minutes later, the guy was stuck out in the water and calling for help. At this point half the village was down on the beach and in the water to help. In the end, everyone was all right but it was quite an eventful first couple of hours of our trip.
After taking a long break away from the water we all settled down and relaxed at the house. We went into town and ate dinner at one of the resorts, had a few drinks and played some pool with some guys from England. Oddly enough, the next weekend, we ran into those same guys at a bar in Jakarta. After the dinner, I got to drive home. This was my first time steering from the right side of the car and driving on the left side of the road. The driving was somewhat stressful because the stick shift was on my left and the lanes were really tight.
The next day we went down the road and found a little cove that was pretty private and had much gentler waves. We spent he whole day there boogie boarding and watching the surfers. Although, Leah was a bit apprehensive about entering the water she eventually found herself enjoying the ocean again. Later in the day there were some bigger waves and more surfers came out. It was amazing to watch some of them ride those waves.
That night we had one of the most amazing dinners ever. The house-maids cooked up a huge Red Snapper and some tantalizing Prawn. Accompanied by some delicious red wine, it was a wonderful dinner. A few of us stayed up late into the evening just watching the waves from the look-out deck. From land, the endlessness of the ocean, fading off into the horizon, makes you incredibly vulnerable to your thoughts. It was the first time I really felt far away from home. It was also the first time I felt sure that we made the right decision to move.
It was a great trip out to the coast of Java. We all made it back alive and learned a few lessons. We also learned a little bit about some of the people we work with. It is sometimes hard to mix work with pleasure. Some people just don’t get it. That’s all I will say.

Bogor-
About an hour south of Jakarta is a town called Bogor. It is a little more up in the hills so the temperature is lower (close to 83 degrees). Bogor is known for it’s Botanical Gardens and it’s relaxing resorts. This was a last minute trip that we booked the day before we left. We found a luxurious hotel for next to nothing. We spent one day hanging out by the pool and around the grounds of the hotel. The next day we went to the Botanical Gardens for a few hours and returned home to the dirt and smell of Jakarta. A nice quick trip to allow ourselves to stop thinking about work for a bit.

Krakatau- I celebrated my 26th birthday at the base of an active volcano. What Fun! How inexpensive! What Wildlife! No, I mean What Wildlife? However, there were giant Monitor Lizards that were at least a meter and a half long. One crawled next to our tent when we were sleeping. I almost threw up with such a frightful scare. OH MY! I was fortunate enough to get sick with heat exhaustion. Only for a few hours though. After sleeping for a bit and completely sweating out any illness that I could possibly have, I awoke in the middle of the night and saw one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. The moon was full and high in the sky. I was completely alone awake on the beach in the middle of the Indian Ocean on a tropical island thousands of miles away from anywhere I ever thought I would be. It was such an incredible way to spend a birthday. The next day we woke up bright and early and traveled over to the peak of the volcano and hiked up. The hike only took us about 20 minutes but at the top it was absolutely stunning and made it all worth it.

In the beginning...

Moving In-
Our House- When we arrived at our house we were very excited, but it was also very overwhelming because it was much larger than we expected. We were totally exhausted from our long flight and crashed almost immediately. However, we met our new pembantu, which is Indonesian for servant. Her name is Lilis and she is from a small village in the mountains in eastern Java. She is twenty-two years old and has been a pembantu for a few years. She works to support her family back at home and pays for her younger brothers and sisters to attend school. It is pretty common for girls to move from their villages to the city to work as servants and nannies. She is a devout Muslim and speaks very good English. She is pretty great and is so helpful. It is definitely a wonderful thing to come home from work and have dinner already made and the house already cleaned. I think we got pretty lucky with her, because some teachers have terrible stories about what they had to go through with their pembantu.







Jakarta Life-
Transportation-
Traffic- Traffic in Jakarta is something unexplainable and can only be understood when seen in action. The entire city seems to move as one giant entity, albeit a slow blob-like entity, making its way to wherever blobs go. As with Jakartan life, Jakarta traffic takes it’s time, without immediacy. Cars, motorcycles, giant buses, little buses, bajaj, taxis and even the occasional ricshaw, manouver the roads as if no one else is on the road. It is acceptable and even encouraged to turn right from the left lane, or to pass everyone else who is waiting in a turn lane and cut in front of the first car. Another nice feature of the traffic is stop-lights. If you want to stop, then you stop. If you don’t want to stop then just make everyone else wait. There is always plenty of honking but there is absolutely no road-rage during any of these situations. Everyone does it, so why hold it against anyone else. The most important unwritten rule of Jakarta traffic seems to be whatever is behind you is not your concern. For example, a little mini-bus, called ankot, sees a person on the side of the road waiting for a ride. The bus will just zip on over, making everyone else swerve for their lives (often a dangerous choice given the open sewers…I mean canals, along every street). Somehow this system works. And even with the police hard at work (I will explain later), I don’t think a reform is anywhere in the near future. As horrible as it seems and as horrible as it was upon first arrival, I can’t believe how immune to it we have become. Now, I often encourage the driver to do crazy moves to get around a slow car.


Bajaj- Bajaj, pronounced bah-ji, is another unexplainable…the sound, the smell and the orange and green color. It is a three-wheeled buggy thing, that runs with a lot of gas and a steering wheel that directly controls the single front wheel. It spits out a ton of exhaust and sounds like a Harley-Davidson Chopper, however it doesn’t even move a quarter as fast. For RP4000 (about 40 cents) you can take this thing anywhere you want. The bajaj holds three people tightly but you can often see more squeezed in plus all of their shopping bags (also to be explained later). It is one of the loudest and hottest rides I have ever taken. Not my first choice but on occasion, we take it for short distances.

Ojek- Ojek is the funnest ride of all. It is pretty much a motorcycle taxi that can buzz in and out of traffic, around turning cars and even drives onto sidewalks. The ojek can be quite dangerous but luckily, they give you a helmet that is about as safe as wearing a plastic mixing bowl turned upside down. If the traffic is actually stopped at a light, the ojek driving will just move his way in and out of the gridlock and often move around pedestrians who are inconsiderately walking on the sidewalks (not so much sidewalks as side of the streets).

Bis- This is the little mini-bus, that I talked about earlier. Leah and I take these to school a lot of mornings. They save us from the fresh Jakarta air and allows us to miss the smell of the beautiful canals (the Dutch can be thanked for them). These buses always have people overflowing out of them and are always willing to squeeze on one more. The cost is RP2000 (about 20 cents) and to let the driver know you want to stop you have to flick the ceiling. Although, whenever we get in, they seem to know we either want dropped off at school or at the mall, maybe it’s the white skin.

IndoSquat- This is a bizarre phenomenon that occurs all over Indonesia. People (mostly men) line the streets and hallways, squatting in a very, very low crouched position. This may seem normal but the entire sole of their feet are completely on the floor, go ahead try it. In Indonesia, there is a lot of free time amongst the general population. Many people don’t have jobs and if they do have a job there are about 100 other people doing the same job (as described in shopping), leaving them with free time at their job. In order to kill this free time, the preferred activity is to squat. This can happen anywhere at anytime. However, squatting is not just a one or two minute activity. The indoSquat is done for extended periods of time only. The most exciting IndoSquat sitings are when they are performed on ledges and even road barricades on the tollways.

Food-
Kaki Lima- Kaki Lima, literally five legs, are the street vendors of Jakarta. The name is because the stands are traveling carts with three wheels. Add that to the two legs of the vendor and there you have it. They sell all types of goods from clothes to a number of foods that so far we have dared not tried. Each Kaki Lima has a little sound or song that is sort of his signature to let the people know that he is coming. They travel through the different neighborhoods selling their wares to construction workers and pembantu. For weeks, we sat at the breakfast table laughing and singing along to the songs but now we are just excited if a new vendor comes to the neighborhood with a new song.

At this point in writing this blog, Leah has informed me that I write too much and that no one on earth will want to read all of this. I will try to be less longwinded.


Shopping-
Shopping could possibly be considered Indonesia’s national past time. The entire city of Jakarta is covered with huge buildings painted with a tacky teal color and an equally distracting redish-brown. On top of all that wonderful paint is tons of lights and billboards. People flock to these havens of air conditioning and clean smelling air. On Sundays, the hallways are almost packed wall to wall. Only a true Indonesian can skillfully maneuver and weave through the gauntlet of people. Shopping is the standing version of the IndoSquat. People are not in any hurry to get anywhere and over half of them aren’t even shopping. The pace is slow and friends line up in straight lines to block the entire hallway from fast paced Americans like us. That is the other thing when Leah and I go to the mall we are pretty much the only white people in the building unless we stop by the Starbucks where the rest of the teachers hang out.

Spas- One of the most appreciated parts of living in Indonesia has to be the spa. For a mere, six or seven dollars, you can indulge yourself in a hour long full body massage or whatever else you want done. Depending on where you go, whatever you want done can really mean whatever you want done. We have a little place about a two-minute walk from our house that we stop by every once in a while. We think it is really sad that you have to pay so much for a massage in the States. If everyone had them done regularly, people would be more stress-free and a little friendlier. When or if we move back the spa will definitely be missed.

Heat- It is always hot and always humid. Everyday.