December and the Holidays

This latest blog will try to capture everything that has happened in the past couple weeks, which has been a lot.

We’ll start with the boring weeks I had in Surabaya, saving money and resting up for my travels over Christmas and the holidays beyond.  I spent two back-to-back weekends in Surabaya, doing literally nothing, wishing I could go somewhere fun for the weekend.  When an opportunity arose for me to go to Jakarta, I jumped, bought my ticket on Monday and flew out on Friday. I was excite to see Jakarta, and what it had to offer, because many people I know had gone there and talked about it. 

I chose to go on a long weekend, flying there and taking a train back to both save money and give me a chance to see the city longer than I had planned earlier (I will end up in Jakarta on Christmas, also).  I flew into the city, and went to the tourist street of Jalan Jaksa to get a room.  I had a friend I was meeting there, and he was nice enough to show me around the whole weekend.  It was a holiday, so Jakarta was abnormally quiet, and since it was a Muslim holiday and my friend is Christian, he had a weekend with nothing to do, and I had a weekend with local information.  It was a win win.

We started with a walk to the national monument Monas; a giant tower built in the middle of the city.  I believe it is part of the independence movement from the Dutch who colonized the country a while back.  After walking around there, we headed to Kota Tua, which is the old city.  It’s mainly known for the old decrepit Dutch architecture and a big tourist pull and place for the teens to hang out.  It is also a place where people come to take photos of themselves.  Indonesians are HUGE on self-portraits posing in front of things, or near things, or with their friends, or with their friends in front of things, holding things, next to things…  You get the point.  While there we saw some street performers, fire-breathers, and watched loads of people taking pictures of themselves. 

After that, we took the public bus system for a long ride south, just to get a perspective of the city, and enjoy the aircon busses.  It also is free to transfer back, so it’s a cheap, and effective way to see lots of the city.  One the way back we stopped at FX mall, which has some really cool stuff in it.  First, there are these hanging rooms, or sort of attached to the walls, where you can rent out the space for a meeting or party.  Also, when you walk in, there is the bottom of a slide.  The slide starts on the 6^th floor (or 7^th) and winds its way down through the center of the mall.  It’s pretty funny to just see a body fly through a brightly colored tube every once and a while.  Sadly, I didn’t want to pay to do it, nor did I trust it.  We walked around the mall, checking out the views of the city on the higher levels, and mainly realizing I am not a huge fan of malls, cause I don’t have the money or will to buy anything there.  Unless it’s books or technology. 

The next day we took the public bus to Taman Mini, which means Mini Park.  I was expecting to see a hilariously small version of all the different things Indonesia has to offer.  While my friend had told me nothing there is actually miniature, I completely ignored it, and was excited to see tiny buildings and little people.  When we got there, I realized what he meant, and was sadly mistaken on the “mini” aspect of the park.  What it meant was that it took the culture and buildings and everything of Indonesia and put it into a park.  Thus the “mini”.  They had churches, mosques, cathedrals, a castle?, an electric museum, technology museum, aquarium, etc.  They even had a water park.  The two main things I found interesting were the houses they had built around the park.  They had a section for nearly every major ethnic minority within Indonesia, and had typical houses built to show you what

 they looked like.  This means they had houses from North Sumatra, from Java, from Bali and even Papua.  Each house was built to scale, yet greatly differed on its design, décor, paint, and artwork.  It was pretty interesting to see the differences AND similarities that have arose around Indonesia.

We also took a cable car ride over the park.  In the middle of the park they have a huge man-made lake and a bunch of islands made into the shape of Indonesia.  As Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands, they obviously only focused on the main ones.  It still made for a cool view of the archipelago that can only really be seen from space, or really really far away.  It was a nice afternoon, albeit really hot. 

The last day, I acted as Indonesian as possible, and spent the morning and afternoon in the malls of Jakarta.  They have some unbelievable malls there, and we went to Grand Indonesia, Plaza Indonesia, and one or two others all in the same area.  They’re massive, ornate, and modern.  They have one mall where the different sections are world-themed based, so we got to see New York’s Time’s Square, Holland, Japan, China, etc.  They had another mall that’s for shopping at the high-class brand names (which is lame) but Dom would point out the local celebrities for me, who are easy to see.  They’re the young ones who look too cool and too rich, and like they’re trying really hard to stay too cool and too rich. 

The weekend flew by and then it was time to catch my train back to Surabaya.  15 hours of boring sitting in wishing it were more comfortable to sleep because from the station in the morning I went home, got ready for work, and spent 8 hours too tired to pay attention to the kids or my classes…  Overall it was a really good weekend, and I can’t thank Dom enough for showing me around.  It makes all the difference to have a local friend who can show you around, give you insight on a foreign city, and also make sure I’m not getting ripped off with everything I do.

I was home for 4 days, enjoying the last week of work, saying goodbye to my housemates for the holidays (and for good, as Anna went home, and I wasn’t coming back) and seeing everyone for dinners and trying to be as social as I could for how tired I was.  The week went by smoothly, and the last night I was able to sit with Mariam and Alexis, both teacher who knew I was leaving, and properly say goodbye to them.  I’ll miss my time in Surabaya, as I really had a fantastic time here.

Christmas morning I awoke for another 6 am flight to Jakarta, and spent the day in the malls again, as it’s really the only place to see and feel the Christmas spirit in Indonesia.  It’s cooler in the malls, and I even saw Santa, both Asian and Caucasian. I went to see Avatar in 3-D, went to Starbucks, and had dinner at Chili’s.  All in all, the most American I’ve felt in years, even more so then when I was at home, living IN America!

Following Christmas, I went to visit Astrid, a teacher at my school who happened to be there visiting her aunt and cousins.  I got to spend the next couple days with here exploring Bandung, which is where all of Jakarta goes on holiday (read: HORRIBLE TRAFFIC) and she let me hang out with her family, a concept I haven’t had in a while.  It was nice just hanging out with the cousins, aunts, cousin’s kids, and uncles.  We even had a big family dinner at the mall (of course), which was really nice, and got to play with Max and Michelle her two adorable send-cousins.  I got to see the touristy part of Bandung, and also to see some of her Uncle’s artwork.  He’s really well known in Indonesia and does lots of sculptures for hotels, government buildings, parks etc all over the country.  So it was nice to see his work up and around.

We also went to a crater, about an hour or two out of the city, and spend a nice day riding the motorbike around in the hills.  Bandung is cooler than Jakarta and so everyone likes to come to cool off.  The crater was nice, and it was fun hanging out with Astrid and her cousins for the day, racing the bikes around through the traffic and having some really great food.  Sadly, I only had two days in Bandung, and then I was off again, this time to Medan, in North Sumatra.  (Sumatra is another main island of Indonesia, to the west of Java, where I live.)

Medan is a major city in the north of Sumatra, and also north of the equator, which is cool, I guess… but feels the same all around.  I flew into Medan, another 6 am flight (I’m getting tired of them) got to the airport, got a taxi to the “bus station” got crammed into the back of a van holding 25 people, luggage on top, and spent the next 4-5 hours winding through the country on my way to Parapat, and the port for Lake Toba. 

Lake Toba is the largest volcanic lake in the world, I think, and the largest lake in South East Asia.  It’s really cool here, the weather is amazing, and rains at night and in the evenings, and is warm in the day, hot if you’re doing lots of walking.  The island I am on is really gorgeous, and it looks like Alaska, or what I would imagine Alaska to look like, if I ever go there.)  The mountains soar out of the lake about 800m and there are some cool waterfalls seen from the lake.  I have been here for a while, just taking it slow and doing things one day at a time.  The friend I met in Jakarta, Dom, is actually from this area, and by some unbelievable luck, is also here for the holidays to see his family.  He said home is boring, and offered to show me around Toba when he was able to, which has been a HUGE help.  He’s Batak, like the people in this area, and so once he speaks Batak to them (and they learn he’s not a foreigner like me) I get much much much better prices on rooms, and rentals and all sorts of stuff. I owe him big time. 

First he took me to the tomb of the last Batak king, which was, really cool, and made of stone.  We also went up to the north of the island, took a ferry across and then drove up to a viewpoint to be able to see all of the north part of the lake (and on a clear day, I guess you can see almost the whole lake from points).  He’s also secured me some great rooms that overlook the lake for 8-10 bucks a night.  It’s been a nice couple of relaxing days now.  He went back home for New Years, which was nice, because I had no excuse to drink, and spent New Years relaxing, watching movies, reading, and relaxing.  No big parties, no big drinking, just relaxing.  More proof I’m getting old.  FAIL!!!

After new years, I spent a couple more days hanging out around Lake Toba, seeing the island, and also going on a drive up to the top of a mountain in the north of the lake to check out the view.  We got a motorbike, drove to the north of the island, took a ferry across to the mainland and then drove to the top of the highest mountain.  The view was great, but on a clear day and good visibility would have been spectacular.

After Toba, I went up north to Berastagi, a small town heavy in local produce, a couple hot springs, and ringed by volcanoes.  It was a nice (and refreshingly cold) place to visit and relax a couple days.  The first day we went back to the tip of Toba to look at Sapiso-piso Waterfall, which is a really great waterfall that shoots out of the farmland into a big valley.  It was a nice waterfall to see, and we got to walk down to the bottom for some good views.  We also spend a day checking out a “park” and the hot springs that are near the volcano.  No point in going in them though, except if you want to get heat exhaustion…

Berastagi was nice, but soon it was time to head to Medan (3^rd largest city) and chill out in the city.  Some of Dom’s friends work there, so we ended up meeting up for dinner, hanging out and some karaoke, which is a national past-time.

Sadly, it’s back to work now, and the week has been dragging on slow as ever… it’s never easy after 2 weeks to get back into the work groove...