2013_01_14 Jakarta - Part 1 Revised

Editor's note:

I originally received a post about Jakarta on 14 January; then I received a  "revised version" a couple of days later.  From an 8 January facebook entry I understand she has moved on to Bali.

And, after reading the headlines today about major flooding in Jakarta, I'm VERY glad Alexa isn't there any more
Well, on January 24th I received a 3rd version of this post.. as  I understand it, I was to replace everything previously  posted as Jakarta - Part 1..
Done on 27 January

-------------------- corrected revised post about leaving turkey  Jakarta ---------------------------

My last day in Turkey the sisters took me to the local hair salon. I got a five dollar haircut just like my sister Amy's.  Melek had her eyebrows plucked by a fast moving white string ..."threading." They still share their childhood bed. One prefers the Turkish toilet the other the European. The washing machine lives in the bathroom as it does throughout Europe. There are no clothes dryers but metal racks. Drinking water is delivered. One night the tap was dry but water was restored within a day.

Melek took the bus with me to the metro to the airport on her way to a farewell visit with friends before her new job in a new city. A man helped me lug my suitcase; costly Turkish airlines dominated the airport. A Nigerian in line with me for passport control seemed miffed I wasn't including Africa in my travels.

The flight on Etihad airline (competitor with Emir Air but belonging to the same family) featured a personal entertainment center on the back of the seat in front: movies television music or games.  I watched Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones put sex back in their marriage...a bicycle messenger's Manhattan adventures ...Dexter...more forgetable movies until a late night arrival in Abu Dhabi and a 6 hour layover until the 2 a.m. flight to Jakarta, Indonesia. Saw no bargains at the Duty Free and the dozens of free computers didn't work that well. The second flight much like the first, a rabid search for entertainment and little sleep. We were told to lower our shades against the sun. I wondered how such a huge plane full of people and luggage could ever get off the ground.

I talked my neighbors out of their uneaten yogurts which kept me fed along with my Turkish sandwich later in bewildering Indonesia but got very anxious about declaring food and money on my visa form. A stewardess advised me to be honest. I listed my various foodstuffs and their value. In the end they never even looked at my declaration. DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS and explicit warnings against attempted bribery grace Jakarta's airport walls. It was hot! I paid $25 for a thirty day visa. Then the taxi vultures descended on me. First I had to get Indonesian rupiah from the bank machine. One dollar is worth almost 10000 rupiahs. I settled on a driver willing to take me to my couch for 170000. Noticed right away the steering wheel was on the right and traffic flow on the left. How did that happen?   The ride lasted well over an hour with tolls, traffic, long lights and enough motorcycles for Bike Week in Daytona Beach. He got out of the cab half a dozen times to confer with people over the address and finally paid a motorcyclist to guide us to the door. I paid him 180000 and it felt like $180. I was generous, a dollar tip. A little Malaysian woman was expecting me...I thought at first she was my couch hostess and embraced her. We left our shoes on the cement before the entrance. She pointed out her room and led me down a bright windowless corridor to my own.

My hostess Icha was spending her holiday at her parents'. I wouldn't see her for days but she did have a good supply of English books, an air conditioner, a bathroom...there was a small kitchen around the corner with a drinking water dispenser, hot and cold. It was the 23rd of December I was exhausted, the rooming house was deserted and the maid spoke no English.

I took the two Istanbul snowglobes from Icha's boyfriend out of my luggage and started my hand laundry. I noticed instead of toilet paper there was a handheld water sprayer attached to the toilet tank for hygiene. In Europe there had been small trashcans in every toilet for used paper. Welcome to Asia, land of the clean but wet bottoms!

Icha had a TV with poor reception of poorer programming. I'd kept asking the maid "Internet cafe?" She gave me keys to the room and led me outside into the sweltering busy street where a mis-step could land you in a ditch past staring eyes and humble stalls to Snapy, a spiffy business with uniformed attendants, rows of computers and free snacks and hot drinks. Computer use was about a dollar an hour. I had gotten pretty far in my Istanbul letter - oh how I missed the Turkish sisters! when the maid appeared to escort me home. It  was getting dark. We passed an open air fish restaurant under tarpaulins. My watch battery had stopped. I had a long miserable sleep feeling deeply sorry for myself waking up on Christmas Eve. I had no map of the city, no idea where to go, a prisoner in the little room. I had finished Isabel Allende's short story collection The Tales of Eva Luna and left it for Dilek or Melek to enjoy. Now I began Lady Chatterley's Lover and found it quite different from the version I read in Sarajevo, John Thomas and Lady Jane. I finished it by Christmas night.

I didn't expect what I took to be a Moslem country to set any store by the Christmas holiday but everyone was travelling, train prices tripled and Snapy was closed for 'Natale.' Disappointed, I bought several dimes' worth of street snacks. Then before the house I saw a woman with a cart full of produce and bought a package with carrots celery onion cabbage and tomatoes so I could at least make some soup. Tofu was in plastic too. I'd finished my brown rice and sesame butter from Turkey. The maid was cooking for her sons and husband and more visiting family including a 5year old girl having a birthday. There was a rice cooker full of white rice and she urged some on me as I made my soup. There was a large TV claiming their attention. The men all smoked.

I read Dwight Adam's ("A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") Thanks for the Fish. Also a book claiming happiness lirs in living like the French, shopping for fresh food every day and looking smart. And much of "Around The World in Eighty Days" (Shirley McLaine was so miscast) and spent another sleepless night when Icha arrived from her family holiday exhausted. She washed and put on a special costume with no opening for her feet and performed the Moslem prayer. I sat on the bed embarrassed, not knowing where to look. I left her to rest and dashed off to Snapi Internet again and when I returned she had left for work in children's programming.

So I took a bus to the center for thirty five cents. The bus stops are metal cages in the middle of the street with ramps to elevated side openings to the middle of the bus. An attendant decides how many people may board. Younger people automatically surrender their seats to their elders if they are women. At the terminus Kota I noticed Mandiri Museum across the street. Mandiri ("Independence") banks are everywhere. The 'museum' is a five storey old time bank with safes and safe deposit boxes in the basement, displays of early computers and telephones and five floors of offices and meeting rooms and mannequins from the fifties doing banking business.  I dozed off in the hot courtyard with caged birds, wild cats and large trees with huge jackfruits. The street outside was so full of traffic I didn't want to walk them aside from buying fruits and snacks from the vendors everywhere.

I went back to Icha's and took her out for a fish dinner at the tent. I ordered an avocado drink, a rich sugary concoction that lasted me days. I decided to leave that night for my other Jakarta couch with TiTi and took a taxi to Setiabudi and a boarding house down an alley behind commercial high rises. A friendly group of males were watching a Henry Potter movie in the lobby. TiTi came down from her fourth floor room and hoisted my suitcase. She'd been hiking recently and changed her clothes to pray. She took clothes to work to pray in too. There were shared bathrooms on each floor with large square ceramic tanks continually being filled and plastic dippers for ablutions. She shared her slippers which did not enter the room. "Lazy," she paid the concierge to clean her room twice a week. Once I forgot and wore the slippers into the bedroom.  She was upset because she prayed there and paid the concierge to clean the floor again. The call to prayer punctuated the days and nights with loudspeakers in every neighborhood.

Like Icha she worked overtime for free. There was a kitchen TiTi never used and a porch for hanging laundry against a skyline of highrises. I stepped out at dawn to take a picture and saw my first rat. TiTi slept on a yoga mat and left for work at dawn. I gave her keys to the concierge and Antoinette, a telemarketing supervisor, walked me through several allies to a shopping center with a Santa statue and a Starbucks for me to catch up on email. I needed a mobile to log on but an employee shared his authorization.

TO BE CONTINUED
Photo from facebook.. Farel Fahrezy Spensus, Alexa Ross and Ida Yoel