2013_01_24 Yogiakarta and Surubaya‏

Astrid is such a contrast to the Muslim schoolgirls. She longs to return to India. She earns her living translating and teaching. She is writing a novel based on her mother, who died of cancer. She is divorced from her Balinese husband. She's read books I have yet to get to. I saw three copies of Bill McKibbens' The End of Nature. I finished my second hand Dickens' Hard Times, a bound xerox, originally purchased in Ramallah, the West Bank. Astrid said pirated books are common in Asia. She showed me a collection of short stories in English and Indonesia written by herself and two friends, Abmi and Labodalih, called Tread Waver Soar. I read it that night. Magic realism lives!

The green mosque across the street had loudspeakers (Astrid was raised Catholic) and the neighbor's house (where chickens strutted) and Astrid's were the same color. We locked the kitchen door at night and left the light on to keep the rats at bay but could hear them scamper under the roof and above the woven palm ceiling. No need to conserve water. Tap water isn't drinkable but abundant. Astrid has 5 gallon jugs delivered for drinking water.

She and her friends hope to develop an organic farm. She took me to a tiny organic market in front of the vegetarian restaurant where her son goes to daycare. Among three or four vendors, I managed to buy bread, red rice, amaranth, dragonfruit, mangosteen, rambutan, puff chips, a cookie and non-alcoholic beer. We met co-author Abni and his East Timorese boyfriend, who returned to the house to bake a pumpkin birthday cake for the other short story authoress.

I set off for the temple complex Pramhasan. Astrid left me at a bus stop and I met a friendly family I saw again running the gauntlet of souvenir shops before the entrance. Cries of "Taxi, Madam?" besieged me. I stopped at a stall for snacks and coffee to get 'small money.' The plastic bag of hot coffee burst as soon as I turned to leave, and the replacement was not free. As the temple was a couple of kilometers away and I got a late start, I agreed to 'transport' and hopped on the back of a motorcycle. But the ride was short, so I got a slight refund. I don't learn, not having brought my student card, and paid many times over for my error, and didn't enjoy my 'free' coffee. I suppose visiting the Pyramids isn't cheap either. I rushed to the site, which was a number of small temples with steps to an inner room which sometimes held the statue of a god. It was wet and rainy and treacherous. Some nights the Ramayana is performed.

From the map I saw there were several other small temples in a line. No one else was bothering. I hurried past lush lawns and at the end found a huge lonely temple complex guarded by fierce stone dragons. It was eerie being so alone in such an ancient place.The sun was setting and the museum closed. I hurried back for the last bus, agreeing to another motorcycle ride. On the bus a girl helped me text Astrid of my impending arrival. I would be joining the birthday party. At the North Ring Road it turned out that this girl Uzzi had been a student of Astrid's at the university! Only using the bus because her motorcycle was in the shop.

At the party the baking boys were stretched out asleep, the hostess smoking green menthol Marlboros, and I tried a clove cigarette. There were sealed plastic glasses of water to drink, tea, juice, pumpkin cake, noodles, and chicken satay in peanut sauce from a street vendor. The talk was lively and hip.

Asabhumy, Astrid's son, has a way of falling asleep standing before his mother on the motorcycle. He always dons a face mask against the pollution as well as his helmet. Back at home I decided to watch Astrid's pre-release documentary by Josh Oppenheimer called The Act of Killing. Men my age cheerfully recount and reenact the days in 1965 when they were systematically murdering Communists and Chinese. A government minister praises the still extant paramilitary group for its patriotism. These men must have been teenaged thugs eager for action. Today they continue to shake down Chinese proprietors. In the final cut the crew will be disguised for their safety. Only at the end does the major killer have second thoughts and becomes nauseated at the rooftop scene of his crimes.

Astrid's neighborhood is an arts colony. We drove past surrounding rice fields with large sculptures in the open. We went to an art gallery with a display of photographs of costumed wandering performing gypsies, the last of their breed. There are water gypsies in Indonesia who live on boats and don't care to live on land. We went to a large shop on Marlborough Street where the owner performs in drag shows. Every local delicacy and handicraft is for sale on several floors. I bought soap and Rainforest tea, ginger candy and coffee, a palm fan and a large green straw hat I would lose at the airport in Kuala Lumpur. We went to a spa for massages and I had an underarm wax that hardly hurt. We took Bhumy to see The Hobbit in 3D after dinner in a Sumatran restaurant. Astrid gave me an extra phone that came with a translating job. By the end of my visit, Bhumy was no longer aiming his slingshot at me, said "Good night" and was calling me "Oma" (grandmother).

SURABAYA 

Astrid had taken me earlier to buy a train ticket and called a taxi to get me to my night train to Surabaya. Despite Kurt Weill's "Surabaya Johnny" running through my head, no one recommends this town on the way to Bali. I had two potential hosts, a young girl without Internet living in a rooming house, and a tour operator, Nunu, living two hours from the city. I was a little wary since he sent me a suggested itinerary for visiting Mount Bromo (Mount Merapi had erupted near Jogja two years ago, killing dozens) but did not insist. His friend (an employee), who spoke no English, met me outside the station with a van for the long ride to Nunu's home. Nunu has a roomy house down a slope from the street, with a row of single story apartments he rents out to one side. A maid served us tea; his wife works for the government in the environmental sector. In a side courtyard he has a caged mynah bird and a rooster under palm netting. I was afraid it would be sacrificed for my dinner.

Nunu is ever sweating and smoking. After his strapping twelve-year-old son Alif returned from school, we four set off for a botanical garden nearby, then a tea plantation up the mountain. We saw the packing house and shopped and satisfied Alif's appetite with chicken meatball soup. Nunu's son speaks English well. His wife welcomed us home with no English whatsoever, and presented me with a lovely black batik sarong and a red batik blouse. They took photos. I shared a chocolate bar from Jogja but they already had plenty of red rice, which they cooked for me. The rooster was a pet, no worries! I slept in Alif's room.

The next day we headed back to Surabaya on a couple of buses. Nunu rises at 5 am to pray and nodded off on the bus. He keeps a motorcycle at the station for getting around the city. He took me to the House of Sampoerna, a free museum and operating factory from the Chinese family that founded this clove cigarette company. Nunu waited, smoking, for me as I toured; the other twenty-year-old Surabayan, Diajeng, would join me on the free "Heritage" bus tour in the afternoon. No photos were allowed on the second floor, where you could overlook the immense workroom with hundreds of yellow and red uniformed employees seated rolling and packing the cigarettes by hand. Nearby about six women were doing the same jobs. I felt I was watching a speeded-up film. Their hands moved faster than you could see. I was glad these people had work, but no matter what their speed, they could not keep up with the demand for cigarettes. And so much energy expended for so little!

Diajeng missed the bus. I sat with a French fellow looking for a job in Jakarta, a Malaysian father and son, and Indonesian women. First we passed the red bridge, old Dutch colonial buildings and then stopped at an elaborate Chinese temple. The female tourguide explained the fake paper money they burned for good luck. In no time at all the tour was over and I met Nunu and Diajeng, who had never been to the cigarette museum before. Nor had she spoken to a native English speaker. She gave me a small notebook from her job, selling wedding dresses. The museum has big cut-outs of Marilyn and Charlie Chaplin at the entrance for some reason. The Malaysian father and son spoke with Nunu and I saw my first electronic cigarette. The son said the initial expense was high, but they are common. I took a picture.

We three set off for a typical Surabayan meal in a shed nearby. I was happy to treat. There was fish satay on sticks, rice and vegetables. Only I drank the broth. Then it was off to Tiger or Lion Airlines to get my ticket from Denpasar to Kuala Lumpur. We had booked online the night before when I realized my visa expired before the chosen date! After a stop at a bank machine and the news that because of an approaching holiday, the fare was 100,000 higher, Nunu negotiated the purchase. Though they looked at my visa, they spoke no English, and didn't see that I would still be overstaying it though I thought I was leaving a day early. The receipt was a faded copy that didn't look like a ticket, but Nunu assured me it would work.

We met his wife on an air-conditioned bus for the trip back. There were music videos on a monitor for a time, but everyone fell asleep. His wife was very fond of me despite the language gap. I would be taking a bus the next day to Probolinggo where Indra wanted to show me his grandmother's village and Mount Bromo before I finally left for Bali. I didn't sleep a wink that night!