Indonesia: Go Past The Equator, Take A Left At The Volcanoes

And then there was one. Indonesia. My last country in Southeast Asia. My last Third World experience ... for now. After this, it'll be nothing but kangaroos and "G'day, mate" for weeks. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's still plenty of time to savor the priceless experience of being stared at like an alien because of my height and skin color...

Indonesia is a giant archipelago that cuts across the equator and spans three time zones. Home to some 250 million people - the most populous Muslim nation in the world - it sits at the bottom of Southeast Asia and just above (and to the left of) Australia. It's comprised of over 18,000 islands, but the main ones - the ones you might know - are Sumatra, Java, and Bali. I began my trip to Indonesia as I do with most countries: in the bustling, confusing, overcrowded capital. Yes, I'm talkin' 'bout you, Jakarta. It lies on the northwest corner of the island of Java. By now I know better than to expect large capital cities to be even remotely appealing. But, for whatever reason, I feel like I don't experience a country unless I spend at least one day in the capital. Thankfully, one day is all you need in Jakarta. It is, as my guidebook aptly states, "A hard city to love." (Furthermore, under the heading "Sights and Activities" in the Jakarta section of Lonely Planet, the writer warns: "Jakarta is not a city most tourists care to visit.") You mean, Lonely Planet finally got something right?! Amazing!! There's little to see and experience here that falls under the "wow" category, or even the "that's neat" category, or even the "this kinda makes the red-eye flight to this city worthwhile" category. In fact, of the 11 "sights" in the greater Jakarta area that are listed in the guidebook, I visited seven of them by 11:00 a.m... and I started sightseeing at 8:00 a.m. The first thing I visited was this gigantic moment built by the President to celebrate none other than himself. It's set in a large park that seemed to be one of only two places in the entire city that was tended to by gardeners (the other being the President's Palace). Nothing really special about this - just a giant monument. Locals have appropriately dubbed it the "mighty erection." Perhaps the President is trying to compensate for something? Near the "mighty erection" is the main mosque in Jakarta. It doesn't look like a traditional mosque - more like a government building. I don't know what style it would be called - modern? contemporary? newish? - but it's big. Very big. At peak prayer time it can hold 15,000 people. I was delightfully surprised to be allowed in - again, on the condition that I wear a robe because I was dressed "immodestly." I was taken on tour of the mosque including the main sanctuary, right behind me in the picture. The most interesting part of the sanctuary is the design on the interior of the dome. It's an intricate honeycomb-esque design made out of copper. As you walk around the sanctuary, different parts of the honeycomb glint and shine as a result of strategically placed lights. It gives the impression that someone/something is watching and following your every move. Strangely, that sensation made me recall one of the few passages of the New Testament that I know by heart: "Watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh." Bizarre that it came to my mind in a mosque. As if that weren't enough, right across the street - literally, across the street - is the main Catholic church in Jakarta. I couldn't stop wondering how it works having two very different religions housed next to one another. I started imagining a sort of Westside Story scene where both congregations get out on Sunday afternoon and slowly start to circle around one another as if a fight were about to go down, all the while snapping their fingers and taunting each other. Or, they probably just ignore each other. Yeah, that's more likely. On my way back to my motel from the mosque, I decided I'd walk by the Presidential Palace to check out his digs. I knew that there are no public tours of the Palace, but little did I realize that no one is allowed to even walk in front of the Palace on the sidewalk along the street. (Which makes you wonder, why have a sidewalk there in the first place?) So as I was approaching the Palace - which looks a little like the White House, but a fraction of the size - a military officer jumped out of a tiny guard post and started yelling at me. Armed in full camouflage gear and gripping an automatic rifle, he started asking me in a harsh tone who I was, where I was going, what I was doing, etc. I was like, "Whoa, slow down there, cowboy. Just out for a little stroll. No harm intended. I'll cross the street and be on my merry way." I headed towards the other side of the street, but when I got to the median, I turned around quickly to snap a photo. That pissed him off something awful. He started yelling in Indonesian (you can always tell something bad is about to happen when people switch from yelling in English to yelling in their native tongue) and ran towards me. I tried, unsuccessfully, to play the ignorant tourist, but he wasn't buying it. To borrow the lingo of our time, he got all up in my business. I could sense his eagerness to get something going. So I did my best to defuse the situation - i.e., try to get him to take his hand off the rifle. I think I said something along the lines of, "Dude [why I called him 'Dude' is beyond me, but I did], I don't even know who your President is. Seriously, I have no friggin' clue. I'm really not a threat. I mean, really, look at me. I'm wearing cargo shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. I'm carrying a half-full bottle of Gatorade. What's the worst I'm going to do - quench his thirst?" I'm pretty sure the guard didn't understand most of what I said, but it was enough to get him to leave me alone. Crisis averted.

The last "sight" I wanted to catch in Jakarta was the elementary school that Obama attended for four years while he lived here. You'd think this school would be easy to find given that a) tourists would likely be interested in seeing it, and b) Indonesia has strongly gotten on the Obama bandwagon. Every time I tell someone that I'm from the US, they immediately say, "Oh, America... Obama!" He's a major celebrity here, so I figured his school would be well-documented. Not that I really care about the school, but there's supposed to be a bright, shiny plaque there and I figured it would make a great photo opportunity. I got to the place where the map said the school would be, but there wasn't a school in sight. Just a McDonalds. (Yes, I succombed. Big Mac, large fries, large Sprite. If there's a heaven for me, it has to have a 24-hour McDonalds.) But I knew I was in the general area because the school name shared the street name I was standing on. So I asked someone where the school was, and they gave me some directions. I followed the directions only to come upon a beauty salon. I proceeded to ask seven more people; I got seven completely different responses. Some of the responses were of the absolutely unhelpful variety - the "it's over there" answer while pointing at something in the ether that didn't correlate with any street or building. But three of them were incredibly specific - and incredibly wrong. Usually when someone gives directions like "go to the next light, take a left, then a right at the first street and walk 50 meters", you'd assume they know what they're talking about. You'd assume that, and you'd be wrong. I spent an hour and a half looking for this elementary school but couldn't find it. Really, how do people living near a famous elementary school not know where it is? And it's not like I was on the other side of town. All eight people I asked said it was within five minutes walking distance. I'm sure I could give spot-on directions to 80% of the elementary schools that are within a five mile radius of where I grew up. Why this was so hard for them to give me accurate directions will remain one of the great mysteries of my life. Tough noogies for me. No elementary school. No plaque. No photo opportunity. Which makes me wonder, if there's a tourist destination, but tourists can't find it, does it really exist?

One day was all I needed in Jakarta. After my day in Jakarta was complete, I boarded a train headed for the city of Yogyakarta. (An overnight train, mind you, from 8:00 pm to 4:30 am, bouncing along on what felt more like a trampoline than a set of tracks. Did I sleep? Ha! I had the great pleasure of being kept awake not only by the bouncing train, not only by the bright lights inside the cabin that they refused to turn off, but also by the potent b.o. of the guy next to me.) Yogya, as it's called, is supposed to be the cultural, spiritual, and artistic center of Java. I planned to spend a few days here - catching the sights (including a few thousand-year old religious ruins) and maybe taking a one-day class in wood-carving or batik (a process of making patterns in cloth using a wax and dye technique) - and just generally soaking up the spiritual vibes. But, as you may have heard, there's this volcano called Merapi that's been busy lately, spewing out ash, killing people, and mucking up the works in central Java. All in a day's work for an active volcano. I was told that Merapi's ash had yet to reach Yogya. I was lied to. Yogya was covered in ash and was getting worse by the day. So I made the wise decision to fork out 25 cents for a surgical mask. Not a bad look, huh? The ash was so thick at times that I doubled up with a bandana (even though I'm pretty sure it adds nothing to the filtering process). At least a bandana looks better than a surgical mask. So I braved the ash and walked around to see the sights. I was thoroughly disappointed. Have you ever been somewhere that you were told by others is really impressive and then you get there and you think, "That's the last time I trust that person." That was Yogya for me. Several times I thought, "I came here for this?" That, and the fact that I was covered in ash and wearing a surgical mask all day, was enough to get me to cut my itinerary short by two days. (Perhaps my favorite experience with the ash was watching people take off their masks to smoke a cigarette. So let me get this straight: you're careful not to inhale toxic volcanic ash, but you don't think twice about smoking toxic cigarettes? Of course that makes sense... how could I be so obtuse??) The only thing memorable about Yogya - other than being covered in ash - was something I stumbled on by accident. In the evening I saw several other backpackers from my hostel enter into a temple and I, being the follower that I am, decided to check it out. It turned out to be a traditional Javanese puppet show accompanied by music, and I have to say, it was quite entertaining. They make these intricate puppets out of a hemp-like material and carve them by hand. During the performance, a puppeteer holds them against a back-lit curtain. All the audience sees are the puppets. Without understanding the words I couldn't grasp the story in its entirety. But the narrarator had a silky-smooth voice that felt like honey in my ears. Basically, he was a Indonesian version of Morgan Freeman. The show got a solid R rating for nudity (lots of boobs and several over-sized erections) and graphic violence. All I needed was a bag of popcorn and a soda to make me feel like I was watching something produced by Hollywood.

From Yogya to the island of Bali - the island just east of Java and my next major destination in Indonesia - is a 24 hour bus ride. Thankfully I decided to break it into two days with a stop at Bromo Volcano. Actually, there are three volcanoes right next to one another, each with a prominent crater. The volcanoes are all well above a mile high; the air is cold and clear and the morning mist sits well below the volcanoes' peaks. Bromo is semi-active and puts out a constant plume of sulfur-smelling smoke while the other two craters just sit as a testament to their former glory days of spewing ash and lava onto earth's surface. The thing to do here is to wake up early to catch the sun rise over the volcanoes. So I was up at 3:30 a.m. and took a one hour jeep ride up to a point on a nearby mountain to get just the right vantage point. It was an amazing sight. The sun slowly rose into the dark sky and illuminated a post-apocalyptic scene of barren ground and scorched earth. The red and orange painted in the sky contrasted sharply with the dreary black and gray of the volcanoes' craters. I, and many other tourists, stood in awed silence to marvel at something none of us had ever seen before. True, the volcano is not spewing ash miles into the sky like Merapi is right now, nor is there any lava flowing out (as I've seen in Hawaii), but the three volcanoes net to one another serves as a powerful reminder of the potential force of mother nature. Once the sun was firmly in the sky, I decided to get a closer look at Bromo. I climbed up Bromo's crater and stood at the edge of the rim to bear witness to the release of earth's innards into the atmosphere. The sight, the smell, the noise - it was something other-worldly.

So that was Java for me. More time in buses and trains than anything else, with some volcanic ash thrown in for good measure. But, worth it nonetheless. Now I'll have to suffer a week or two on the beaches of Bali...