The Rolling Stones: Indonesia: Part I

I am so lame. Not two days after committing to a blog a day, I fall short of my goal (all the while asking myself who will really notice, saying that one blog a day is too much, reminding myself that I blogged twice the day before, and it will take a whole day just to get through the pictures anyway... etc... etc...). Despite all these things, my conscience is still smiting a little bit, so I'll just apologize and be done with it.

So, sorry.

Alright, let's get on with it. So Will and I left Melbourne on Thursday night (well, 12:00 am on Friday, to be exact), and arrived in Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysia

on 7:00 am on Friday, bleary eyed and sleepy. After clearing customs, being temperature-checked for swine flu, and filling out about a million health clearance cards (again for swine flu), Will and I had a good seven hours to wait around in the KL airport before our flight to Surabaya, Indonesia that afternoon.

A quick note about swine flu: I must admit that when we started this journey I hadn't really given much thought to the international health crisis that is apparently sweeping the globe. I mean, I knew it was affecting the United States and Mexico, and I also knew that a lot of Australians have been talking about it, but I'd written it off as the typical paranoia about the Aussie borders--the same paranoia that put a harmless little white puppy dog in quarantine for 30 days, that makes beagles sniff people's bags for apples at the airport, and has inspired such riveting shows as Border Patrol (think an Australian version of Cops, except it's about border officers who arrest people smuggling coffee beans and apple seeds and such). So honestly I didn't think the dread swine flu would really affect us. Hmmm... Let's just say that every time we flew into a new country, I felt like a character in a post apocalyptic disease movie, being hoarded through long lines while workers wearing surgical masks checked our papers to ensure we weren't contaminated. Not only did we have our temperature taken in Malaysia, but we were disinfected in Indonesia (we walked through a corridor and had alcohol or some such concoction sprayed on us and our bags as we passed), body-scanned in Australia, and had to fill out millions of health clearance papers and convince people that even though we are American, we have not been back to the US in months. Even my boss asked me when I got back to work what countries I had visited, making sure I didn't set foot in the US.Sheesh.

Alright, back to the KL airport. After a long day of waiting around, we actually almost missed our flight to Surabaya because we couldn't understand the people's English who were calling the flight. Thankfully we were paged, and we understood our names enough to make the flight. We arrived in Surabaya a few hours later, and Taylor met us at the airport. Taylor Smith is our friend from Vanderbilt, and fiancee of one of my best friends Carissa Lucyk. He has been in

Indonesia

for the past nine months teaching English under the Fulbright program. He will be going back to the

in a couple of weeks, and I must say, he has picked up quite an impressive amount of Indonesian in his time there. He practically sounds like a native. Anyway, he met us at the airport and we shared a hotel (sidenote: double beds don't exist in

Indonesia

, so it was either one king bed or two twins. Will and I got to share a twin). Though we were beat, we manned up and went out to our first Indonesian dinner, and even had enough energy to frequent one of the three bars in the city of Surabaya to see our first of many Indonesian cover bands (they love cover bands there). Although, as a Muslim country, bars aren't a big part of the culture... however it doesn't seem to be a problem for clubs to boast the added perk of legal prostitution. Hmm... The bar was kind of funny, actually. It was called Eclectic, and it lived up to the quite literal definition of its name. Half of the bar was a chic New York-style lounge, and the other half--not so subtly divided by a line down the middle-- was an Irish Pub. I guess they were having an identity crisis.

The next day we rented a car (and a driver) for the whole day to take us around. It was so cool-- we got a driver, a tour guide, and a car for the entire day for $50. Of course, then the driver got us lost in the mountains on the way to Taylor's village and we drove around for an extra hour or two, but he decided that since we had driven all those extra miles that we owed him extra money. Hmm... or you could try not getting lost next time? Just a thought.

Check out our sweet ride for the day

Anyway, we started off the day by going to the mall. Indonesians apparently love their malls, although I was told by our tour guide that only about 10% of people who cruise through the malls actually purchase anything besides McDonald's ice cream cones, which are the equivalent of $.10. This particular mall was another "eclectic" mixture, as half of the mall was designed for expatriates or elite Indonesians, featuring such bounty as Starbucks, a donut shop, and a few brand name stores, and the other half had all sorts of Indonesian stores. Believe it or not, but we were actually there for the Indonesian side of the mall, and a certain cheap DVD operation that we heard about through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend (although I'm not gonna lie, I did stop at Starbucks. In my defense, I haven't been to Starbucks once since I've moved to

Australia

!).

70 cents a disc ... can't beat that!

Taylor getting fried tofu at Mr. Potatoes in the mall

The next stop on our guided tour was an animal reserve near Taylor's village (well it should have been near, if your driver knew where he was going ...) Now, I've been to zoos and animal reserves, but they all have one thing that this particular venue didn't. Cages and fences. The only protection we had from lions, tigers, and bears was a car window... And I must say that when Will rolled his window down there was no guarantee that it would roll back up. But, hey, windows that don't work and wild animals with no cages is all part of the Indonesian experience!

Close encounter with a brown bear

Lions being regal

A young camel trying to get in our car

We were fortunate enough to see hippos mating

And speaking of no cages, we also got the chance to take pictures with a baby lion, tiger, and orangutan (well, “baby” might be stretching the word too far. Look at the size of these things!). We also learned that “orang” means human and “tan” means forest, so they were named after humans in the forest. And after feeling the baby orangutan’s feet holding my hand, I’m likely to agree with the assessment.

Will with a young orangutan

The young tiger was not interested in having his picture taken

Kim and Amin (supposedly just a baby)

After the reserve, we booked it to a resort near Taylor’s village where Will and I stayed for the night (we didn’t want to take kick Taylor out of his bed, not to mention he kindly informed me that he is fighting an ongoing war with the rats who are trying to reclaim his home as their own, and the rats are winning.) It was one of the nicest resorts I’ve seen in awhile. We got our own cottage (aka, huge room with king sized bed and big bathtub and sitting area), and the view of the mountains was great.