Snap snap!

It's taken forever, but I finally snapped out of my pre-school laziness to post these pictures from Bali! Hope you find them entertaining.

Straight off the plane from Jakarta to Bali. Translation: Welcome to Bali!

There were bird cages everywhere nearby our hotel rooms! It was strange but distinctly beautiful.

The beautiful setting outside of our hotel rooms. I love the ornate details in Balinese architecture.

On the left: our gracious tour guides for our first day in Bali, Mario and Claudia. On the right, Stefan exhibiting some typical behavior: smoking in the morning and hotel slipper-wearing all the time.

Sascha tended his wounded ankle daily with bandages and some kind of red-colored medicine. The gash was still kind of deep, but better than when he initially cut his leg on our trip to Pelabuhan Ratu.

A parking lot areal view of Dreamland Beach, one of the quieter beaches in South Bali. It's known for having fairly spotless shores and killer waves for surfers who know their stuff.

The waves were so fucking strong at Dreamland that my entire bikini was almost ripped off and I felt like I nearly drowned twice. It was kind of worth it.

Paradise.

The entrance gate to Padang Padang Beach in Uluwatu; the journey was steep and perilous, but well worth it, if not for the guys in our group. There was tons of topless sunbathing going on.

The tide was so low that you could walk out to all the jutting rocks and little islands of land normally hidden by the water. It was pretty special.

The huge cliffs of Padang Padang

Our half-ass group picture. Stefan and Sascha ruined everything :P

The Bali crew, shortly before eating the biggest seafood dinner of our lives.

Our amazing dinner came with some equally fantastic musical entertainment by a group of musicians who, by day, work as fishermen. They even sang some Beatles!

I like this photo a lot
Crazy eyes!

A Bali sunset with my dear friend Stefan. Who's more photogenic :)?

Stefan: "It's trying to tell me something, I just know it..."

Sascha has a tender moment with one of the puppies.

Sleepy puppy!

The looooong waves at Kuta Beach were pretty rad...the shore extended so far up, it was fantastic :)

Endless forms most beautiful

So I finally arrived back in Seattle on Sunday...it's been really weird coming back home. I love Seattle but I was really getting used to my life in Jakarta as well. I'm sure there's some kind of psychological term the used in that FIUTS orientation seminar about coming home after time spent abroad. I'm still in this weird in-between stage where I'm re-realizing the differences between Seattle and Jakarta. Anyway, the last few days have been spent overcoming jet lag (for the first two days I couldn't get up before 3 p.m.) and catching up with friends and family. I have a slew of pictures to post as well from my trip to Cerita and Krakatau, as well as random Jakarta pictures and some from Bali.

I wish I had been able to update this blog more often from Jakarta. Aside from the terrible internet connection, I was really busy in my last week or so finishing stories and tying up loose ends before my Bali trip. I was able to do one really cool story about the director of the Q! Film Festival, the only gay film festival in Indonesia. The director, John Badalu, was graciously candid in his interview and I ended up spending almost 2 hours with him. From that I was able to put together a profile of him and his work, and I also talked to a colleague of his and an Indonesian film director about the impact of the Q! Film Festival on Jakarta's queer community; that became a separate article that ran alongside the profile.

Overall, I'd have to say my internship at the Jakarta Post was disappointing. It had its moments, like with this last profile piece, as well as with the other stories about Miss Indonesia and Uplift International. But I felt that a lot of my time was wasted there, mostly because of poor communication about my arrival in Jakarta. All the editors I worked with had no knowledge of my arrival, and thus I had to be worked into their existing schedule instead of them having set aside assignments knowing they would have an extra reporter to use. I didn't just sit back though, half the stories I wrote were enterprised ideas. Toward the end, the assistant features editor, Chisato, gave me a steady stream of work and encouraged me to find ideas myself too (which resulted in the John Badalu piece). She's one of the best editors I've worked with in a long time.

I just don't understand how this could have happened. I corresponded with the chief editor, Endy Bayuni, for months before I arrived in Jakarta. That should be plenty of time to at least tell some of the editors that they would be getting an intern in July. They also fucked up my housing search, which resulted in me staying with my uncle (which wasn't terrible, but it was far from work). Staying in a foreign country requires a certain amount of independence, and I would have much rather stayed the whole two months in an apartment or homestay. I would have to say that for a company that desires to attract native English-speaking employees and interns, they sure do a shitty job helping them acclimate to their host country. How am I supposed to know where to find affordable housing in Jakarta?? Why doesn't anyone in the office know who I am? Why do all the editors look at me like I'm a crazy person for soliciting story ideas from their section? Maybe you should tell everyone that an intern is coming to make everyone's lives a bit easier by wanting to write some stories!

If the UW sends another student to Indonesia (which, despite everything, I would still encourage), there needs to be a lot of changes made in terms of how the internship is set up. I'm not totally blameless; I should have specified ahead of time what sections I wanted to work for instead of assuming that I would be doing general assignment reporting. But even then, the person in charge of managing the interns (who no longer exists; he was Soeryo Winoto, but he quit shortly before I flew out to Jakarta) should give the intern an idea of what sections would be appropriate or what sections most of the interns have worked previously; again, I was given no indication of this. From there, I would recommend the next intern to request speaking with the editors directly instead of communicating through Endy. He's a lovely man, but far too busy to do anything about arranging internships.

Aside from the internship. I don't regret in the least going to Indonesia. I had a fantastic and amazing time traveling the country in my spare time and met some truly great people as well. Now I can say that I have friends from Indonesia, Germany, India, Austria and Australia that I wouldn't hesitate to call upon if I should visit those countries in the future.

Oh yes, and Bali...unfortunately I was sick during the four days spent there, but I still ventured outside Kuta to visit Uluwatu, where Dreamland Beach is. I also spent some time at Padang Padang Beach, but mostly I stayed in the Kuta area (aka the biggest tourist trap in Bali). Next time (and there will be a next time), I will definitely go to Ubud and to more northern parts of Bali. Most disappointing was that I didn't see any of the temples while I was there; I just wasn't in the spirit of any strenuous hiking or bicycling anywhere with my enormously disgusting cough and depressed lungs. The beaches were fantastic though and I will miss laying in the sun, feeling happy and at peace.

That about wraps things up. I'll post more pictures soon!

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...

Movin' on up

I'm officially moved into my new place in Benhil! I can now take a 10 minute ojek ride (like a motorcycle taxi where you negotiate the price before you get on the bike) to work. After my trip to Cerita, I stayed at my friend Barbara's apartment, which is in this monolithic complex called Taman Rasuna. There are about 18 towers with 30+ floors of rooms. It's kind of an eyesore, actually, and the buildings loom over a slum neighborhood which, according to Barbara, is in danger of being pushed out to make room for MORE towers.

In any case, she has a pretty sweet 2-bedroom apartment, fully furnished with a sleekly modern kitchen and bathroom. I can't deny that I love my creature comforts. It was nice to stay with Barbara in her quiet, cozy apartment and not have to worry about getting devoured by mosquitoes in my sleep. It was also nice to watch English-language TV channels and have some quality girl-talk time. We did have a minor ant infestation on my first morning there, but ants are quite harmless anyway.

Now I'm in the new room at Benhil, which is decidedly less posh than Barbara's place but very homey nonetheless. I share the second floor with four other girls; the bottom floor is occupied by two other people, plus the landlords and their two kids. My landlords, Martin and Jackie, are a married couple of German and Colombian descent, respectively. It's kind of a relief that I can actually communicate coherently with them. Martin speaks five languages, which totally astounds me: German, Spanish, English, Indonesian and Mandarin. Jackie can also speak Indonesian very well, and I suspect she knows some German too. The house is mind-bogglingly international. There's me, the American, one Austrian girl (Andrea), one German girl (name starts with a V), one Indian guy (Yousef), one Malaysian girl (Lillian), one Australian girl (Sarah), one Japanese girl (forgot her name) and a girl named Olivia of as-of-now unknown origin. Whew! Plus the landlords, it's like a global potpourri living in my house.

The room is quite decent, with a wardrobe, a desk and a nice bed stand with an excellent lamp. I also have a mosquito net to cover my bed, which I tested out last night to pretty unsuccessful results. I woke up this morning to find three new bites on my right arm. I'll try to perfect this situation in the near future, but tonight I'm leaving on a train to Jogjakarta, which is an 8 hour ride from Jakarta. It's more in the center of Java and a popular travel destination as well. It's known as the "student city" due to the number of universities located there; many of my colleagues at the Jakarta Post graduated from a school in Jogjakarta. Since it's Independence Day tomorrow, everyone has a long weekend and getting a ticket to anywhere outside Jakarta was like murder; I attempted to buy my Jogja ticket earlier this week and was simply too late. The one that I have now actually belongs to my housemate Yousef, but he has a big project for his advertising company to work on over the weekend and thus had to opt out of the trip.

All this traveling has really taken a toll on my wallet, but it's been absolutely worth it. I don't regret one trip that I've taken. I still have an excursion to Bali to pay for (will have to be by credit card, I suspect), but money is no object at this point. The experience is what matters, and I refuse to squander any travel opportunity I have while in Indonesia. In a few weeks I'll be home and will feel much less like an international citizen. But there are so many things I desperately miss back in Seattle (largely food-related like good sandwiches, mac n' cheese and salads, but also things like clean air and buildings within walking distance) and people that I'm dying to see again (family, boyfriend, friends), that my time left here will be bittersweet. I've grown pretty accustomed to life here and have made so many new friends. But nothing beats home. Nothing.

Hot Child in the City

Last night's picture exchange was exciting. Everyone from the trip showed up, and lots of people who didn't attend the trip showed up as well. It seems standard for most gatherings I attend involving my new German friends to evolve into some massive blob of global connections. An Australian will show up, followed by a Finnish guy, then more Germans will arrive, and suddenly like 20 people are squashed in the corner of the lounge we're hanging out in. I guess it's quite fun though :)

I don't have any new pictures on hand, I had Sascha (German Jakarta Post intern) copy them onto the memory card of his camera and plan to get them from him since I see him at work.

But an interesting development occurred last night: one of my German friends, Christian (a law school graduate working at the German Embassy), is leaving for the rest of the month to travel around Indonesia with his girlfriend. He lives in Benhil, which is a popular home stay area for expats and people working temporarily in Jakarta. His room is paid through the rest of the month and last night it was suggested that I move into his room.

Living with my uncle has been fine, but now that I've been going out more often during the evenings I've realized how far away his house is from most things in Jakarta. It's not even terribly close to my office, and Benhil is actually quite close to the Jakarta Post office. Just getting to my uncle's neighborhood is at least 20 minutes from most places that I hang out, and getting to his house takes another 5; this usually sets me back about 30,000-50,000 Rp for each trip, which is really only $3-5.50. But it adds up after a while. So to save some taxi money and to experience living in another part of the city, I plan on moving to Benhil next week after Christian leaves. I think all that I will have to pay for is laundry service, which is totally fine with me.

That being said...the progress of my internship has been slower than I had anticpated. It's been a laborious process just getting my articles into the newspaper. I've been at the features desk for two weeks now and have written two and a half stories (the half was a restaurant review that I helped Sascha write), one of which has an unknown publish date despite being written TWO WEEKS AGO. For a while, I was a little annoyed at my editor, Kanis. But yesterday he accompanied me to a madrasah where the Seattle-based NGO Uplift is doing relief work. I've been following this story for a few weeks now and have done research and interviews in preparation for a feature. But I finally got to talk with Kanis about some things and he admitted that the Jakarta Post was pretty disorganized in telling the editors and staff about my arrival, thus squandering part of my time here by not knowing what to do with me. Kanis also explained that he's expected to do a lot more work on his page than the average editor does, and for the last week his assistant (A Japanese woman named Chisarto) was on vacation, leaving him to fend for himself. It did explain a lot of things, actually. My only hope is that the next intern from the UW to come to the Jakarta Post will have a better experience.

Well, I will try to post more pictures from my Pelabuhan Ratu trip soon. There are some really fantastic waterfall shots and some cool black and white pictures from Sascha's camera.

A change of scenery

So I was planning to update on Tuesday but was sidetracked my a mild case of stomach illness; I stayed home Tuesday and have been feeling a bit tender for the last day or so. Anyway, I was trying to also upload more pictures but Blogger.com (or my shitty office Internet connection) seems hell bent on preventing me from doing so. Anyway...


This weekend was my first trip outside of Jakarta, and I'm so glad that I chose to go to Pelabuhan Ratu. I didn't realize how much I had become accustomed to the terrible traffic and dirty air of Jakarta. Seeing streets free of jams and breathing in fresh ocean air was desperately refreshing. Getting to know more people was a welcome relief as well. This last week has been the best time I've had so far in Jakarta. I've thought much less about the negative aspects of my trip here and have embraced the city much more. It's easier to do that sort of thing when you have some company, of course.

But back to the trip...I went with 10 other people: one Indonesian girl, one Colombian girl and eight Germans (one of who is actually of full Indonesian descent but was born and grew up in Germany). Admittedly I haven't known that many people that hail from outside of the United States, so it was interesting to be so immersed in European culture and to be around a language I know nothing of (German is tough to speak, from the few phrases I've tried to learn).

As apprehensive as I was only knowing one person who was going on the trip (Sascha from my office), I had an amazing time with everyone and saw a lot in the span of two days. Following are some pictures from my camera. All of us from the trip plan to meet up again later this week to exchange photos, so I will definitely have more to post by the end of the week:









My first picture after getting out of the van and stepping onto the entrance of a tavern in Pelabuhan Ratu. Palm trees galore!









Stefanie, one of the German girls that I met on my trip, had this crazy jewel glued to one of her teeth, which is apparently getting quite trendy in Germany. Tooth bling!









A late afternoon shot of the beach as we all sat down on the sand for a rest. I haven't been to such a gorgeous beach in a long time.












Happy on the beach and getting tan!










Just the girls at the hot springs near the beaches of Pelbuhan Ratu. I have no idea why I look so emaciated from the waist up (I'm second from the right); I promise that I am not that anorexic looking, even if I have maybe lost a couple of pounds.








We decided to hike up a mountain at the hot springs to get to a hidden waterfall area. It was an hour-ish long hike--in flip flops--and was grueling, to say the least. We hiked through a small village with neat litle houses like this one.









The long and winding road, although much of it was a lot steeper than this. It was definitely worth it though.










Some village kids being crazy in front of the camera. They were so adorable!










The oasis of our destination! The hike down was through a forest and I had several visions of plummeting to my death on the way down (it was a steep, relatively unmarked path on the side of a cliff). But I survived to swim in the water.










Deanne (right) and Stefanie (left) recovering from our hike down to the waterfall. I think Stefanie is trying to brush some ants off her arm.








Group picture at the end of our last meal. We realized that a group picture at the beach would have been a bit more appropriate, but by then it was already 9 p.m. and we just wanted to get home.






Those are all my pictures from the trip; tonight I'm going to a picture exchange and will hopefully get some better shots of the beach and some group photos from the waterfall. There are a few more photos I want to upload from my own cache, so hopefully those will make it onto the blog soon as well.

This weekend I'm travelling to Anyer, a city on the West coast of Java. I'll be going with some German lady friends that I met on the Pelabuhan Ratu trip. We also plan to see the Krakatou Volcaono, which is apparently the site of the largest volcanic erruption in history. More pictures to follow from that trip...

Playing catch-up

As promised, I brought my camera to work and uploaded some new photos to my computer. Here are some highlights of the past week:


A certain Guatemalan friend restlessly convinced me to go to Pollo Campero, a Guatemalan fried chicken chain. I made good on my promise, and was deliciously surprised at the quality of the food. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it...








Mmm....crispy and juicy!









While I had the fried chicken with a side of french fries, Iwan had the salad and chicken soup. He likes to eat healthy but hey, we're at a restaurant famous for fried chicken. It would be prudent to try some.







A Padang building from Mini Indonesia Park; I love the way the roofs curve upwards, it's very elegant.









Standing in front of a Bali-inspired gate. I had to visit mini-Bali in preparation for my trip next month!









In mini Papua, there was actually a guy from Papua in one of the houses making some kind of wood carving object. The body paint seemed a little dramatic, but then again I've never been to Papua.







I rode one of these with Iwan over the park to get a full view of all the provinces from up top. There's even a man made lake with a mini reproduction of Indonesia's island chain sitting in the middle of the park.








It was a long, hot day at the mini park...







I forgot to bring the camera last night for my golf excursion, but it was very fun. I met some of Sascha's friends: another German guy named Christian, who just finished law school and is working at the German Embassy; an Indonesian girl named Yaya, who's a personal assistant to some corporate head (she also lives about 5 minutes from my uncle's house); two Finnish individuals, a guy named Mika and a woman whom I think was called Rita. They both work in Jakarta, but I can't recall what they do exactly. Anyway, it was really a driving range, not a golf course, so I got my swing on as best as I could. Golf is deceptively easy, I think. Trying to hit the ball far is not an easy task, and my hands quickly became raw from gripping the handle too tightly. Today I'm not terribly sore, thankfully.

Tonight, I have yet another pageant assignment to cover. This one is called the Miss Chinese Cosmos Pageant. I'm not that excited to go, but work is work. I might need to have a word with my editor about being typecast as a journalist.