I had a lovely weekend with Thersya in Jakarta. (For those of you who met me after college, Thersya and I graduated from Drew together—she’s a lovely Chinese-Indonesian and grew up between Singapore & Jakarta. She has been back in Jakarta for almost 3 years. Oh, and she’s a lot of fun.)
I took the executive-class train between Bandung & Jakarta. It was a pretty nice ride…big seats, tons of leg room (or crap room, if you are a short pack rat like myself), and they feed you and show you bad movies & music videos…all for only 75,000 Rp (about $8.30). It’s a beautiful ride. Well, most of it is. The train goes right by some small villages that you can’t see from the highway. Seeing the ramshackle houses, gross streams that get household waste water and piles of burning trash remind you that you’re in a developing country. A beautiful country, but very much a developing country with a lot of poverty.
Anyway, Thersya and I had a fun tourist weekend. On Saturday, we went to a few museums downtown that are all in the Kota area—known as Batavia during the Dutch colonial period. Not many of the old buildings are left, but the old town square is still there, and some of the buildings right around it are now museums. We went to the Wayang (puppet) museum, the ceramics museum, the Jakarta History museum and Balai Seni Rupa (the fine arts museum). Sounds like an overwhelming museum day, I know, but they are all small and not well-curated, so we went through them pretty quickly. It’s sort of sad: they have some really nice things, but the buildings are all dusty, the temperature & humidity aren’t controlled, there’s very little information posted in most of the galleries, etc. But the buildings themselves were gorgeous: high ceilings; huge old windows; impressive, solid beams and floor boards; beautiful staircases (including the two most beautiful spiral staircases I’ve ever seen). It was Thersya’s first time at any of these museums, too. We decided that we liked the buildings more than a lot of the galleries, but there was some gorgeous furniture in the history museum (big pieces, solid teak, really intricately carved) and a few really nice paintings in the art museum. The Cannon Si Jaguar was kind of neat, too. It was a Portuguese cannon, brought to as a trophy to Batavia after the Dutch booted the Portuguese out of Indonesia (mid 1600s). It has a hand making an impolite gesture coming out of the back…for some reason, it’s a sexual symbol in Indonesia and women who are having trouble getting pregnant supposedly sit on it.
We were eating champions this weekend. Sushi & sashimi on Friday night (from a restaurant that sends little covered dishes along the big conveyor belt that goes around the big rectangular bar—all the rage in Japan these days.) Dinner was followed by some wine at an outdoor bar/café & a late-night phone call to Mikey for his birthday!) Chinese noodles for breakfast and mutton sashimi for lunch with Thersya’s family on Saturday. Korean barbecue for Saturday dinner with some of Thersya’s friends. Dim sum brunch on Sunday (after a Balinese massage & scrub in the morning). Mmmmmm. Everything was so good. The food & weather in southeast Asia really agree with me. And I think I made Thersya’s dad happy by enthusiastically eating food with a lot of chilies.
Thersya and I were also shopping champions. I hate clothes shopping for myself, but I love shopping for gifts for people. And the array of batik, wood carvings, etc. in Sarinah department store is absolutely dizzying. Sarinah is a big department store downtown with one entire floor devoted to batik and other textiles, and another devoted only to other handicrafts. I got some really nice gifts. And the department stores that carry handicrafts usually have good quality and reasonable prices in an environment where bargaining is not part of the package. Westerners who shop in little stores here & there usually get quoted outrageous prices to start with and have to either completely overspend or bargain people down. That requires a lot of energy.
I head back home in less than a week. I have to make a list of all the outstanding photos I want to take and all of the food I want to eat before I leave! Haven’t had jackfruit yet. Don’t think I can hack durian (on this trip, at least). I did eat chicken feet at dim sum on Sunday, though. Surprisingly good. A little messy to eat, though—lots of little bones to spit out. So I’ve revised my “I will not eat…” list down to durian, brain (prion diseases freak me out), and bits of intestine. I will happily eat sausage in natural casings, but the sight of chopped up, cooked pieces of intestines grosses me out. The livestock services folks who go out into the field with us find this list to be quite amusing.
I’m going to see Thersya again for my last day or so in the country. I’m heading to Jakarta on Wednesday PM and going in to the office Thursday to debrief. Theoretically. They've not volunteered a lot of details re: Thursday morning. Like which office I should go to for a 9:30 AM presentation. Or what I'm supposed to do in the afternoon. Or whether they have anything they want me to do on Friday. You know, little things. Anyway, I'll meet up again with Thersya on Froday PM or Saturday AM, and then I'm back to the States eeeeeearly Sunday morning.
I'm trying to upload photos, but it doesn't seem to be working. Will try again later.
-Janine
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home