Smell the roses

One of the perks of being perched right on the Equator, is that you can sometimes take the time to smell the wonderful flowers that grow wild everywhere. Here is a little collection of tropical beauties.

Clear cut nemesis

Indonesia may be the largest Muslim country in the planet, but its general take on Islam could not be further apart from the bogeyman image it has become in the West. For example, you still see little sidewalk restaurants open at noon time during the fasting month, you have girls here who sometimes wear the Muslim veil, sometimes don't - depending on whether it fits with their daily outfit or not...

On the other hand, Malaysia (aka Indonesia's archenemy), has been experiencing a worrying islamization of its public life since the late 80's - worrying, because it creates a malaise within its important non-Muslim minorities.

I was struck by two parallel news on the issue today. On one hand, we have the PAS, a conservative Muslim party that controls one of Malaysia's northern states. On the other, we have Gus Dur, one of Indonesia's former president; today, he heads one of the two main Muslim organization in the country which, with its 40-something million members that including most of the islamic schools, might be one of the largest in the world. 

Today an Islamic court in Malaysia has condemned 4 Muslim men to 7 days in jail for having taken part in a beauty pageant for transvestites. The same day, Gus Dur announced that he accepted to become one of the official counselor for an Indonesia transvestite organization.

Gotta love the contrast :-)

Another example of the relaxation of Indonesia's Islam can be seen in this picture, taken in Jakarta's Istiqlal mosque, the biggest in Southeast Asia. If you go there on Friday right after the biggest prayer, you'll find a lot of men just taking a little nap: one of the favorite activity in this type of climate at this hour of the day, and far more comfortable to be done here than at the office or while sitting in Parliament.

A step closer to the gods

The picture below is of Mount Merapi. One of the most active volcanoes on Earth, it towers 3000 meters above the city of Jogjakarta, the cultural capital of Java. Its last eruption was in 1994: it spewed a little bit of lava, a little bit of hot gases - enough to burn alive 43 people who were too slow to flee its wrath. 

As we're on nerdy holidays in Jogja, we decided to climb it.

The Mount Merapi climb is a staple of the travel agencies that dot the touristic city of Jogjakarta. At first, I figured that the word "climb" was just a product of the promotional spirit of the tour operators (for example, why do they feel like they have to say "visit beautiful Borodubur temple"? Is there an ugly version that is worth visiting too???). Alas! It is nothing of a nice hike, let alone a walk. That's a climb alright!

The program goes like this: a tour guide picks you up at your homestay or hotel in Jogjakarta around 10 PM. You arrive around midnight in Selo, the village that is the highest

on the slope of the volcano. You start the climb at 1 AM in order to schedule an arrival at the summit for sunrise. Sounds good doesn't it?

Well... They do say in the tourist brochures "not to underestimate the difficulty of the hike". We sure did. See where this picture has been taken? That's where you start, and you have to climb all the way up in just under 5 hours. Here, please read my words carefully: 5 hours is a LONG time. Long, very very long when you're sweating like you're in the Sahara desert without a Gatorade. Even longer when you think that afterwards you'll have to go down these slopes that are so steep that during the climb I was wary of just standing up straight for fear of falling down in the dark.

We departed on a beautifully chilly full moon night. The first part of the hike is a simple paved road, albeit quite steep. Pfff.... Easy. I am still pretty young, and if not in fantastic shape still not totally ridiculous at the gym. But after 30 minutes, huffpuff made a well noticed appearance. One hour later, and I started to pull myself along by clinging to the branches of trees along the way. At first it was discreet; I still mainly clung onto my superior bipedial status. But after an hour or so, all pride was shed: I used all seven tools at my disposal - feet, hands, knees and, yes, ass. All of them are useful when your climb mostly consists of big and small stones rolling beneath your feet, particularly treacherous when ascending at night, regardless of how bright the moon might be. Let me correct that though: I prefered the climbing at nighttime to the descent in the bright daylight, because the latter was the hardest part; the one where Ass was my most prized tool.

We eventually made it up to the summit; all 3000 meters of it, conquered just five minutes before the sun rose. It must have been 5 degrees Celsius up there, a far cry from warm enough to dry our clothes that were totally soaked with sweat. But then Nature's show started, and it was breathtaking; my crappy picture can not even begin to render 10% of its beauty.

Our magical new technologies can give you an idea of how something looks like, sometimes how it sounded like (although I did not record the faint traditional Javanese song we heard at 2 am rising up from the valley where a ceremony was taking place), maybe how it felt like (if I'm not too bad at telling the experience). But there is something though that simply cannot be shared: the smell of the volcano that sometimes hit our nostril during the climb, when the wind brought some of the white smoke that continously pours out of Merapi's crater.

But maybe it is a good thing. I quite like the fact that we had to sweat through our t-shirts, jumpers and windbreakers, even though it was so cold that we could see our breath; that afterwards we had to spend a mini fortune in "remedial massages" to get rid of the four-days long painful soreness that was the price to pay for this hike. Because as a reward, we got the privilege of knowing the primordial odour of the entrails of our planet.

I'll tell you what though: it kinda stinks.

This is a group of students from the military academy who climbed to the top the same day as we did. Here is a game: try to find who does not fit in the picture...

Good Food City

I don't know if it's just a god-sent hazard, but I met in the last few days 3 people who admitted that the crazy city of Jakarta has transformed one of their long- favorite pastime into a real obsession: eating. Turns out, it's also one of my passions... and perhaps the most fulfilling (filling) actitity you can indulge in in the Indonesian capital.

This was pretty surprising for me at first, because our first encounter with Indonesian food was not the most thrilling. You have to understand: we were living in Thailand at the time, where cooking has been transformed into a God-inspired art. Then we went on holidays in the small (and poor) island of Flores, in Eastern Indonesia, where we thrived on nasi goreng and mie goreng (fried rice and fried noodle). It is the de facto national dish, but not that good when served for breakfast, lunch AND dinner in tiny restaurants where it is assumed that if you pay, you're supposed to have rich food, i.e. drowned in oil. Bof.

Then you arrive in Jakarta. As you're in Southeast Asia, everything is ridiculously cheap, therefore no restaurant is out of reach of your expat wallet. And good, classy, yummy restaurants abound.

Then recently I discovered a treasure of tantaliaing morsels: the Jakarta Good Food Guide: a truly independent guide, very well done and extremely complete. You eat its 611 pages without the slightest hint of indigestion. Bravo!

The author has even been through the trouble of sampling street food throughout the city. Because, as you would have no doubt already guessed, the average Indonesian cannot really afford French, Japanese, Morrocan, Indian, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, Italian... fine food every meal. Me neither, come to think of it. So you find at every street corner little eateries called "warung" who serve any dish from throughout the archipelago. And there are a LOT of different specialties, considering the vastness of the country and its varieties of culture.

Then you even have a kaki lima section. They are these little vendors who ply the streets of Jakarta with their carts, generally offering one specialty only: here on your right you have a gado-gado guy, an indonesian specialty of vegetables prepared with peanut sauce; just on my street, in a distance of approximately 200 meters, I have every day: a fried tofu vendor, fruit vendor, gado-gado, fried noodles, as well as a warung offering grilled fish.


There is only one problem with these guys: very often they don't help with the infamous traffic jam situation of the city; it is not rare to be stuck on a narrow street because a guy is walking in the middle while pushing his cart.



Even side walks are not really supposed to be for pedestrians to walk on. I met recently with the newly elected governor of Jakarta, who was apologizing for... well, a LOT of things that are not running smoothly in the city. He said for example that he had meetings with kaki lima guys, who insisted they wanted more sidewalks in the city - a rare commodity. But it's only because then it becomes a very conveninent spot for their shops. Adds to the city's local flavor too!

Gorgeous underwater pix

You might have noticed through this or that previous post that we are avid amateur divers. Indonesia is the place to enjoy this "sport" (as far as I know, this is the only "sport" where the aim is to move and exert oneself as little as possible). We've heard people rave about the clear waters of the Red Sea, or about beautiful Maldives; sure, they must have their strengths, but Indonesia is, scientifically, the best place to be as it is located in the heart of the Coral Triangle, the most bio diverse place on Earth's seas. In a way, it's like saying that Canadian forests or Gabonese jungles are fantastic; you know they can't compete with the riches of the Amazon.

National Geographic magazine recently ran several stories about underwater in Indonesia. Their photographer is David Doubilet, whose pix are absolutely amazing. If you want to enjoy the magnificence of the underworld, go to his website.

I know I shouldn't do that, because I respect the work of professional, but I could not resist so I'm putting here one of his pix, stolen from the site.

Magical, isn't it?

Fresh weed ahead

Welcome to Nusa Lembongan!

It is a small island off the coast of Bali, where we spent a couple days recently. People mainly come here for surfing (great waves, just off the beach, attract a crowd of cool guys from Australia) and the amazing diving. The water here is very cold because it is located on a deep strait; therefore the strong currents bring to the surface a crowd of cool creatures from the depths: manta rays, the odd whale shark, and, between August and October, the weird mola-mola fish. There are also lots of little colourful creatures to see, a requirement at any great dive site.

But on top of that, we found an exquisitely friendly island. It has to be said that Bali is one of the most charming places on Earth, absolutely amazing (do I use this word too much?); but in its South, where the tourism industry is most thriving, one can get tired of the touts. "Hello Mister! Transport? No? Tomorrow maybe?". Grrrrr. Well, you have to understand them: there are a lot of locals fighting for limited resources, but it does get tiring to be targetted as a walking wallet.

None of that in Nusa Lembongan. Made, a Balinese guy from the dive center where we were staying, put it this way: "In Bali, we depend exclusively on tourism, so you have to fight your friend in order to find a job. But you might lose it after few months because the competition is so tough. We know that tourists also get tired of this fierce battle between us. When I grew up in the village and I saw Bule (white people), I was always waving and saying "hello" to them, because I was curious and just wanted to be friendly. It's only when I moved to the biggest tourist regions that I understood why they rarely replied: they just thought I wanted to sell them stuff. It's very disappointing".

That's the reason why this young guy moved to Lembongan: here, there is still a village-life atmosphere, where people are friendly because that's what they are. One of the reasons is that their entire livelihood does not rely on tourism; the island produces seaweed that provides a decent income for the locals.

This is where the raw product from your beauty cream might come from. People farm it right on the beach that lays in front of the village, where the cheap hotels are. Apparently it is sold mostly to cosmetics companies, but it can also be eaten in deliciously salty salads. Try it, it's delicious.

Yum!

At certain times of the day, depending on the tide, you see the farmers doning their snorkeling gear and wading in the water to harvest the seaweed. It appears to be a family thing, with kids helping with the task - when they are not just playing around on the big buoys that hold the basket full of seaweed.

Then people sort it, dry it, and zou! it's sent in your Marine Spa bath salt or whatever it is you use to have a clean and smooth skin.

Maybe it was just the fact of being a lazy Bule on a week end, but it was very nice to see that life seemed to be so peaceful there. I swear, when we were walking on the beach at the time where people were working in the sea, we could hear laughter all the time. Granted, maybe they were just making fun of my crazy hair or not-smoothed-by-seaweed skin, whatever. That was a very nice moment.

Watch your snores

Gone are the good old times... Sitting at the Parliament and other official gatherings is not what it used to anymore. Oh!!!!!!.... Sigh. Bapak Presiden, who goes by the great name of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (such a delicacy for a foreigner's ears, isn't it?) is getting tough and not tolerating a good old nap anymore, as reporter Desy Nurhayati tells us today in the Jakarta Post.

"National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) chief Paskah Suzetta learned a lot from the embarrassing incident at the National Resilience Institute (Lemhannas) last month, when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono paused during his speech to rouse a regional official who had apparently dozed off.

The President went so far as to ask the Institute not to pass the official for failing to live up to his leadership standards, which included the ability to withstand sleepiness.

To ensure no repeats of the President's rebuke, Bappenas displayed a warning on the large screens on either side of the stage where the President would deliver his speech, just an hour before the opening ceremony. "During the President's address, participants and guests are not allowed to sleep, talk to each other or switch on their cell phones," read the reminder.

But apparently the warning was not enough.

Yudhoyono himself reminded the participating governors, regents and mayors from across the country to focus on the four-day event. "I know you may be physically tired, but please don't fall asleep. Even if you start to nod off, you have to wake yourself quickly because the people you lead want you to return home with a special gift, which is a better development program," the President said, to general applause from the floor.

Despite the warnings, more than one phone rang and several officials were seen closing their eyes during the President's speech. If the President had noticed these defiant few, his rage would have far exceeded the anger that marked the forum at Lemhannas."

Gotcha, golden pooper!

Well, that's it. Our unwanted, noisy and, as I discovered today, amazingly stinky guest we already introduced you to, is finally gone. After four months, the pest control company has managed to get to him.

Cute, you think? Not that much, because apparently over years its pee could have seeped through our roof (i.e. his home) and delicately perfume our bedroom just below.

We could have chosen not to get rid of him though, and instead feed him ripe coffee beans, then brew the most expensive drink in the world. Forget about gold and bauxite, oil and nickel, coal and tin, and get acquainted with the newest high valued Indonesian commodity: cat poo. More precisely, the dejection of this little wild cat, the civet (called « luwak » here) after he went on the rampage on the coffee fields of the archipelago’s highlands.


The « kopi luwak », fragrant black drink obtained by roasting the coffee grains collected from the animal's poo, is the best coffee in the world – it is not I saying it, it is Science: a Canadian scientist has already done the required lab tests that prove it – therefore its price reaches the heights of its perfection: up to 3000 USD a kilo if purchased in a hip Balinese café. « It is good and it is rare, hence its price », says Wirawan, the owner of the café whom I've met few months ago. « But what we sell, it’s mostly a story ». The story of an inner voyage that produces a less bitter, quite chocolaty drink – and a nice slab of cash for whom knows how to market it.

I've had the chance of tasting the coffee - for free, one the perks of my job. It is indeed deliciously velvety and strong. I wouldn't pay the 20 dollars for an espresso cup though; and considering that our late guest would not have been able to produce that much poo to allow us delicious kopi luwak every breakfast, I won't regret him. Not one bit.

Zip up, ladies!

A local administration in East Java has recently come up with an idea of such brilliance that it forces you to sit back in awe when confronted with this genious. I think all the righteous fighters for good morality ought to intern for a while with this Enstein of behavioral science who gave birth to such a revolutionary concept.

Fact nb 1: prostitution is evil.
Fact nb 2: women are not much better.
Fact nb 3: the old tradition of massage can lead to funny business.
Fact nb 4: men can't resist temptation.

Solution: all masseuses in massage parlours have to wear a padlock on the zipper of their pants (or their skirts, for this matter, although I am still wondering how that would work).

Yes, it's a new regulation that was passed recently. Apparently, according to some reports, the cashier in the massage parlours keeps the keys (locked up, I guess) and may release them from time to time in order to allow the evil temptresses to visit the bathroom whenever nature calls. I read that they keep a second set of keys just in case there's a problem with the first ones. Losing the one and only set, you have to acknowledge, would be a major inconvenience for the girls.

Luckily enough, the decision has caused an outrage here: the minister for Women Affairs has slandered it, saying it is an insult to women, and it has become the subject of ridicule throughout the country. Which is a shame though, because I can think of plenty of other derivations of the philosophy that would make our lives so much more moral: think of using wooden spoons (and mittens of course) when touching the client's back, or imposing chastity belts in clubs. That'd be only for the females though, because you very well know that all males can remain Masters of their Domain as long as they know the sweets are on display only.

If not, they could be forced to wear the koteka, the traditional outfit of some of the tribes from the far-flung Indonesian region of Papua.


That ought to do it.

Orangutan life

Here is an audio bit mentionned in the earlier post, Man, Forest, Man of the Forest.

You'll meet with Lone Nielsen, a blond Dane who lives in Central Kalimantan, in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, where she manages the orangutan rehabilitation center of a local NGO.

We talked in the little forest that borders her camp; it's the playground of the baby orangutans that she cares for. If you listen with good earphones, you might feel like you're there with us, in the rain forest...

That's Third World, man...

Living in a developing country brings some surprises. One of them is these filthy rich people.

No joke, when you go to Kem Chicks, a high end supermarket that sells items for expats in Jakarta (big choices of peanut butter, whole turkeys come Thanksgiving...), you actually have the choice between several types of outfits for your large house staff. Sometimes when you go to the restaurant you can also see rich people's kids in the corner, tended by their nannies while Mum and Dad enjoy care-free time with their friends. Life's sweet. Not always for the nanny.

Jakarta hotel shows kids how to make their own beds

JAKARTA, Feb 24 (Reuters Life!) - In a country where the rich rely heavily on servants to perform the most mundane household chores, being able to make one's own bed is something of a novelty. About 20 small children, Indonesians and Westerners, escorted by their nannies, took part in a training session on Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton in Jakarta, where they were shown how to make a bed properly.

In Indonesia, it is common for wealthy and many middle-class families to employ several servants including housemaids, nannies, drivers, and gardeners. When the servants take their annual holiday after the fasting month, some families complain of being unable to cope without their cleaners and cooks, and move into hotels for the duration.

Several of the children at Sunday's event, who ranged in age from two-and-a-half years to seven years, watched with interest as they were shown how to tuck a sheet under the mattress and fold tidy corners. "It's to show children that making the bed is part of the house chores. And we try to show them from an early age how to do it in the hope that they will do it themselves," said Gloria Vera Kristie, the Ritz-Carlton spokeswoman.

Most of the kids seemed to enjoy the training. Some preferred to just lie down on the bed, while a couple were less enthusiastic. "I don't want it. Murni does it," said one four-year-old, referring to her housecleaner. (Ade Mardiyati)