Jakarta

Luckily, we were able to catch a flight from Cebu to Manila, and then to Jakarta. Walking through customs in Jarkarta at midnight was a little intimidating as there are signs saying that if you are caught with drugs you will get the death penalty, and my mother somehow convinced me that someone would put drugs in my bag. Thankfully on the other side of customs my friend Katrina was waiting for us. Katrina is a girl from Vancouver Island I met in 2005 while sailing the Whitsundays in Australia. Even though we live so close to each other we hadn't seen each other since, which makes it funny that we are now meetin up in Indonesia! It was very nice of her to pick us up at the airport and invite us to stay with her for a couple of days!

From the airport Katrina convinced the taksi (taxi) drivers who were trying to rip us off to take us to her place for a decent price, and we were on our way. Traffic was pretty clear, but my throat could sense the residual smog. Katrina warned us that at 4 or 5am we would wake up to prayer calls that together sounds like (as she described) a bunch of zombies coming after us. We finally got to her place which, in her words, from the outside looks a little sketchy. She shows us where we can sleep and we chat for a bit about Indonesia. Out of the corner of my eye a cockroach scurried across the kitchen counter. I gave a little shriek and Katrina says "ya he lives here... there are two of them... we named them, but I can't remember what...." Then she says "oh ya, if there are any mosquitoes in the room tonight, make sure you don't hit them against the wall - it will wake the rats!" OMG! For a second I wondered, why did I come here again?

But our sleep was good and then next morning my head was no longer filled with thoughts of the death penalty, cockroaches, rats and zombies, but rather of all the mouth watering Indonesian dishes described in the Lonely Planet book. I grabbed my notebook out of my bag and began jotting down the names of dishes so I knew what to order. I also wrote down translations to things like "water", "vegetables", "what's that?" and "I don't eat meat." By the time I am finished I filled up four pages in my notebook. The menu for my day in Indonesia? hmmm maybe some gado gado (vegetables and peanut sauce) and nasi goreng (fried rice)... or some Tempe Kering (soybean cake stirfried with soy sauce). Finish off the meal with something sweet, perhaps a pisang goreng (banana fritter)! YUM!