What you don't have you don't need right now, what you don't know you can feel some how

I still can't believe that I'll be home in two weeks!! It's mindboggling, really. In a way I wish that I were staying for another month. I've been getting to know more and more people here, and they are shocked to know that I'm leaving in a matter of weeks. It feels good to know that a foreign city can feel like home as long as you get to know the right people.

This past weekend was pretty amazing, although my plans altered cosiderably from what was originally intended. I was preparing to take a ticket to Jogjakarta from my housemate, Yousef, because he had to work on some big advertising campaign for a client over the weekend (which was longer because of Independence Day on Friday the 17th). The plan was to leave Thursday night, so I rushed home from work to pack my bags and meet my travel mates. But Yousef ended up rearranging his schedule and was able to go, leaving me with zero weekend plans. I was disappointed, but then again it was Yousef's ticket to begin with.

I spent Friday being lazy with Sascha and Stefan (a German-born Indonesian, and the most hilarious person I've met in a long time). We spent most of the afternoon at Plaza Indonesia, one of the oldest and ritziest malls in Jakarta, attending an Adidas/L'Oreal fashion show that Sascha had to take photos for and eating lunch. We then got excited with the idea of getting massages and headed toward Sarinah, a neighborhood of Jakarta where Stefan lives. Since it was Independence day, most everything was closed and we were forced to seek refuge in a nearby Carre Four (the only thing that seemed to be open) where Sascha and Stefan each grabbed a beer to drink on our way to Kemang.

Kemang is where I previously visited a madrasah to write a story for the Jakarta Post, but it is also home to a slew of really great cafes, art galleries, bars, clubs, boutiques and furniture shops. It's a pretty Westernized area (and a hotspot for expats), but it's also fantastic for late-night excursions. We got a bottle of wine and staked out a spot in Cafe Amor (a 24-hour coffee place) for a couple hours having dinner. We then migrated to a German pub called Die Stube, where we drank Indonesian beer and watched a group of Europeans attend to a French tourist who had fainted from some kind of food poisoning.

Our group migrated once again to Rock Cafe, a kind of Hard Rock Cafe rip off, I suppose, but much cooler. There was a live band playing covers of everything from Queen to Guns n' Roses to Led Zeppelin to Poison (!). It was actually really fantastic and we ended up staying until we were kicked out around 2 a.m. Then, to my horror, the boys dragged me to Blok M, a noted "red light district" of sorts and late night haunt for the youth of Jakarta. We ended up at a club/bar called Top Gun (yes, just like movie), where I was privy to really bad house music and sleazy Indonesian girls shaking their rumps for an unsavory group of foreign men. I felt somewhat safe being with Sascha and Stefan, but I also had the distinct feeling that everyone else in the place probably thougth I was some kind of Chinese-Indonesian prostitute. Top Gun is the kind of place where most men go to seek out Indonesian women for one purpose alone, and they usually have to pay to get it. It doesn't take much to wrap your mind around that.

To my suprise and delight, though, Stefan (who's training as a lawyer for an insurance firm) had a near run-in with his boss, a stuffy-looking, middle-aged German guy. When he walked into the bar I had pointed him out to Stefan, noting how this man looked so ridiculous situated near the gyrating girls and the other less-distinguished looking men in the place. As Stefan looked at him, his face took on this look of utter horror as he said, "Shit, that's my boss." Ah, the exploits of expats in Indonesia...

Saturday morning, after about an hour and a half of sleep, I met three other girls for a trip south of Jakarta to Bandung. The city is a noted "city of students" much like Jogja, but it's also a hub for artists, musicians and clothing designers. Since it was a long weekend, we ended up staying at a homestay instead of a hotel. Luckliy it was really close to a lot of the outlet shops (which Bandung is also famous for) and we were able to shop on Saturday and much of Sunday as well. It was a more relaxing trip than I think going to Jogja would have been, and I really loved having more girl bonding time after spending a marathon day with Sascha and Stefan. We ran into some traffic coming back to Jakarta on Sunday afternoon, but it only took us an hour longer than expected to get home. We all agreed that massages would be the perfect ending to our weekend trip and headed over to Plaza Pondok Indah for body scrubs and massages; my session cost 100,000 Rp, which is about $11 US. Try finding a massage and body scrub for that price in Seattle!

My lavish lifestyle here will soon come to an end, but not before I go to BALI next week! This will likely be the highlight of my trip. Just need to buy the ticket first before getting overly excited...