Christmas Island Tales - Part 2
I spent most of the first night in Jakarta expecting Indonesian police to break down the hotel room door and drag me off to an interrogation room. To make matters worse, every electrical appliance in the room was roughly hardwired into the walls and many wires were bare and exposed. There was a large notice about what to do in the event of a fire pinned to the door and it basically said, "In the event of a fire, run for your life." Not especially reassuring when you're on the seventeenth floor.
Next morning we decided to risk leaving our rooms and go in search of breakfast. There was a large buffet in a restaurant on the ground level of the hotel with a mixture of western and Asian foods as well as something I'd never heard of before: beef bacon. Being a predominantly Islamic country, there was no pork on the menu, but beef bacon was an agreeable substitute.
There were some interesting other guests staying in the hotel. I don't recall seeing any other white people except for one small group that you couldn't fail to notice. Three or four young, stunningly attractive girls accompanied by two of the hugest, most-muscled guys I've ever seen, complete in their 'World Gym' singlets. They were clearly Russians and the demeanor of the men led to quick assumptions they were likely Russian Mafia - this being a time just a couple of years after the fall of Communism.
We lounged around in the restaurant for several hours while the singer made more phone calls. She eventually made contact with "Steve" and a short while later, he arrived and introduced himself. Throughout the brief meeting he seemed very agitated by something and frequently glanced around at everything as if he was expecting to be jumped by somebody. It was very, very strange and, while he told us everything was OK and we'd get to Christmas Island eventually, his actions belied this. He said the next flight to the island would be the following day and that he'd arrange our tickets and collect us around lunch time. In the meantime, we were free to do whatever we wanted.
It had been dark when we arrived in the city the previous night and, while the squallor of Jakarta was evident in the thick stench of pollution, actually seeing it in broad daylight was something else. You can literally see black particles hanging in the air right in front of your eyes. The hotel stood on a narrow laneway bordered on the other side by small vendor vans with bicycle wheels. The vans themselves were festooned with fried chicken feet and bottled water. On the other side of the vans was a narrow canal - in fact, an open sewer with "water" that was indescribably filthy and putrid. It didn't escape my attention that the food vendors washed their pots and pans in this muck and, more alarmingly, the bottled water they sold was water drawn from the canal! On the positive side, street urchins sold packs of Marlboro for $1.00AU. I thought this was a bargain until I lit up one. I'm not sure what they used for tobacco, but they were obviously pr0duced locally and tasted nothing like Marlboros.
Something else that really strikes you hard in Jakarta is the poverty. Beggars were everywhere but one that made a lasting impression was an old woman (she looked like she was 80 but may well have been only 30) sitting on the pavement near an electric escalator to an overpass. She didn't have any legs and her arms were grotesquely deformed. A similarly dirty and disfigured infant lay asleep in her lap. She held out a small plastic bag of peanuts that she was trying to sell for a couple of rupiah (a fraction of a cent). Enough to say it left a lasting impression.
Nobody knows how many people live in Jakarta. The official figure is around 20 million, but we were told it could easily be double that. The main road was a sea of cars in both directions and, in stark contrast to the poverty on the pavements, the number of Mercedes and BMWs was surprising. The aforementioned escalator didn't appear as if it had worked in years but it led to an overpass across the busy road. Everywhere you looked there were market stalls and shops selling everything from fried chicken feet to washing machines and refridgerators stacked five high. First attempts at haggling to buy some cheap local trinket were met with much laughter at my complete lack of negotiation skills.
After a few hours of roaming the streets of Jakarta, we headed back to the hotel for lunch. It has to be said at this stage that the Indonesians who worked at the hotel were about the most hospitible people I've ever met. That they could grow up in such surroundings and be so friendly, like many impressions of Indonesia, left a profound mark on me. Most staff spoke at least some English and I took the opportunity to learn some Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia).
I spent the afternoon sampling the local beer (Bintang) while relaxing by the hotel pool. It was a balmy, tropical afternoon and if it wasn't for the constant and inescable stench of pollution, I almost felt like a tourist. The bass player also found his way to the pool and conversation that I can remember mostly centered around the filth we could see floating in the air and the fact we were breathing it in. It was around this time that I started to get a sore throat and nose-blowing led to tissues filled with what could only be described as a kind of black tar.
Later, after dinner that night, the bass player decided to go exploring for Jakarta nightlife. I might have joined him but by now was feeling less than spectacular and in fact, I started to lose my voice. He returned after a short while, looking somewhat ashen-faced and shaken. There was a bar across the street, he said, that he went to where there was only candle light and a clientele that was a mix of shadowey Asian men and sad-eyed half-dressed Asian girls. He ordered a beer, served at tropical room temperature, and left before finishing it. To cap off his adventure, he accidently stepped into a sewer gutter and had to wash his jeans from the knee down in fountain in the garden of the hotel. Whatever grip he'd had on reality to that point clearly appeared to have loosened for him.
If we'd all been on a cruise ship, I guess we'd have started singing "Nearer My God To Thee" by now. We bunkered down in one of our rooms and drank the mini bar dry while reassuring each other we only had to wait it out for another twelve hours or so.
To be continued...
Next morning we decided to risk leaving our rooms and go in search of breakfast. There was a large buffet in a restaurant on the ground level of the hotel with a mixture of western and Asian foods as well as something I'd never heard of before: beef bacon. Being a predominantly Islamic country, there was no pork on the menu, but beef bacon was an agreeable substitute.
There were some interesting other guests staying in the hotel. I don't recall seeing any other white people except for one small group that you couldn't fail to notice. Three or four young, stunningly attractive girls accompanied by two of the hugest, most-muscled guys I've ever seen, complete in their 'World Gym' singlets. They were clearly Russians and the demeanor of the men led to quick assumptions they were likely Russian Mafia - this being a time just a couple of years after the fall of Communism.
We lounged around in the restaurant for several hours while the singer made more phone calls. She eventually made contact with "Steve" and a short while later, he arrived and introduced himself. Throughout the brief meeting he seemed very agitated by something and frequently glanced around at everything as if he was expecting to be jumped by somebody. It was very, very strange and, while he told us everything was OK and we'd get to Christmas Island eventually, his actions belied this. He said the next flight to the island would be the following day and that he'd arrange our tickets and collect us around lunch time. In the meantime, we were free to do whatever we wanted.
It had been dark when we arrived in the city the previous night and, while the squallor of Jakarta was evident in the thick stench of pollution, actually seeing it in broad daylight was something else. You can literally see black particles hanging in the air right in front of your eyes. The hotel stood on a narrow laneway bordered on the other side by small vendor vans with bicycle wheels. The vans themselves were festooned with fried chicken feet and bottled water. On the other side of the vans was a narrow canal - in fact, an open sewer with "water" that was indescribably filthy and putrid. It didn't escape my attention that the food vendors washed their pots and pans in this muck and, more alarmingly, the bottled water they sold was water drawn from the canal! On the positive side, street urchins sold packs of Marlboro for $1.00AU. I thought this was a bargain until I lit up one. I'm not sure what they used for tobacco, but they were obviously pr0duced locally and tasted nothing like Marlboros.
Something else that really strikes you hard in Jakarta is the poverty. Beggars were everywhere but one that made a lasting impression was an old woman (she looked like she was 80 but may well have been only 30) sitting on the pavement near an electric escalator to an overpass. She didn't have any legs and her arms were grotesquely deformed. A similarly dirty and disfigured infant lay asleep in her lap. She held out a small plastic bag of peanuts that she was trying to sell for a couple of rupiah (a fraction of a cent). Enough to say it left a lasting impression.
Nobody knows how many people live in Jakarta. The official figure is around 20 million, but we were told it could easily be double that. The main road was a sea of cars in both directions and, in stark contrast to the poverty on the pavements, the number of Mercedes and BMWs was surprising. The aforementioned escalator didn't appear as if it had worked in years but it led to an overpass across the busy road. Everywhere you looked there were market stalls and shops selling everything from fried chicken feet to washing machines and refridgerators stacked five high. First attempts at haggling to buy some cheap local trinket were met with much laughter at my complete lack of negotiation skills.
After a few hours of roaming the streets of Jakarta, we headed back to the hotel for lunch. It has to be said at this stage that the Indonesians who worked at the hotel were about the most hospitible people I've ever met. That they could grow up in such surroundings and be so friendly, like many impressions of Indonesia, left a profound mark on me. Most staff spoke at least some English and I took the opportunity to learn some Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia).
I spent the afternoon sampling the local beer (Bintang) while relaxing by the hotel pool. It was a balmy, tropical afternoon and if it wasn't for the constant and inescable stench of pollution, I almost felt like a tourist. The bass player also found his way to the pool and conversation that I can remember mostly centered around the filth we could see floating in the air and the fact we were breathing it in. It was around this time that I started to get a sore throat and nose-blowing led to tissues filled with what could only be described as a kind of black tar.
Later, after dinner that night, the bass player decided to go exploring for Jakarta nightlife. I might have joined him but by now was feeling less than spectacular and in fact, I started to lose my voice. He returned after a short while, looking somewhat ashen-faced and shaken. There was a bar across the street, he said, that he went to where there was only candle light and a clientele that was a mix of shadowey Asian men and sad-eyed half-dressed Asian girls. He ordered a beer, served at tropical room temperature, and left before finishing it. To cap off his adventure, he accidently stepped into a sewer gutter and had to wash his jeans from the knee down in fountain in the garden of the hotel. Whatever grip he'd had on reality to that point clearly appeared to have loosened for him.
If we'd all been on a cruise ship, I guess we'd have started singing "Nearer My God To Thee" by now. We bunkered down in one of our rooms and drank the mini bar dry while reassuring each other we only had to wait it out for another twelve hours or so.
To be continued...
posted by Mister Pervert at 6:44 AM
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