Revisiting Kuala Lumpur

Hello from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and truly one of my favorite cities in Asia.  I came here last February for an extended visa run and this trip has allowed me to explore the city and its surrounding sights a little more.  Primarily when I think of KL though, I think of delicious and cheap Indian food.  After spending my Thanksgiving evening in-flight, as soon as I checked in to my guesthouse here last Thursday, I dropped off my backpack and headed across the street for a 1 am dinner of Masala Thosai.  Delicious.

I came to Malaysia to meet up with my good friend and former co-volunteer in Indonesia, Katie.  I flew in from Jakarta, she from Siem Reap, and we both met at a bus station in South KL to catch a three hour bus up to the Cameron Highlands for a weekend of relaxation, hiking, tea drinking, strawberry picking, cool air, and views of rolling green hills and tea plantations that so sharply contrasted with my last three months in Jakarta.  I will post photos when I get back to Jakarta!

We came back to KL Sunday night for Katie to participate in her VIA conference- I just found out mine will be in Bali in January!  Being here has been interesting to see fellow volunteers that I last saw during our training in Chiang Mai a year and a half ago, and who are coming from working in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar.  While they are at conference and after I submitted my Indonesian visa application to the Embassy here, I have had time to wander the streets of Chinatown, Little India, go running in the park below the Petronas Towers, and visit an amazing Hindu Temple set in some caves just north of the city.  I continue to marvel at the vibrant diversity you can see on the streets of KL at any moment, but would have to look much deeper to find in Indonesia.  Signs here come in four languages, Tamil, Chinese, English and Malay, so that while I know my Bahasa Indonesia can get me by when speaking with a Malay person, Chinese and Indians here usually just want to speak English with me.  I was amazed yesterday, when going out with co-vols how many of our combined languages came of use.  Katie made everyone a little curious as she skyped back home to Cambodia in Khmer, I spoke Malay with the cab driver to get to the Tamil/Malay movie we went to see, one friend chatted up a group of visiting Vietnamese teachers in his fluent Vietnamese, and afterwards at a Chinese restaurant another friend figured out our orders.  I just wish that when we were debating outside a Burmese restaurant that one of the Myanmar volunteers had been there to decipher the menu...

So it is exciting to see so many people come together, especially now that we have each been working in our posts for over a year and have experienced so much.  Getting such a diverse group of people together in a multi-cultural city has made the experience even more interesting.  I am even more excited now to be heading to Cambodia tomorrow to see Katie's life in Battambang and then to see the temples of Angkor Wat and run the Angkor Wat 10K Race on my birthday on Sunday!

Jambi comes to Jakarta

This last weekend I got to spend time with my oldest Indonesian friend Sumi when she came to Jakarta after attending a conference in Bogor. I didn’t really know what we would do when we met up, but when she said she needed to come by my place first because she had luggage I knew at least that meant she would be staying at my place. We went out for dinner Saturday night and ended up catching the new Harry Potter movie, though since we bought our tickets late, we had to sit in the front row with our necks crooked the whole time.

But it was fun to catch up and just chat with my old roommate/coworker; it was also good for me- a whole 40 hours of non-stop one on one Bahasa Indonesia conversations. It made me think back to when I was new in Jambi and we spoke mostly English with me trying to squeeze in my Bahasa to practice. Everyone at my office told me I would be fine in a few months and sure enough I was despite personal disbelief, and now I wouldn’t even try to speak to them in English. It is also really comfortable to speak with Sumi because she knows my ability more than anyone and our conversation is really smooth. Often when I speak Bahasa with an Indonesian who doesn’t know me, they are so surprised that I can speak their language, and they have their few lines of English prepared, that they are awkward to speak with in the beginning and aren’t really in the “listening to a bule speak Indonesian” mode.
Sunday we went to Blok M, one of the more massive shopping malls frequented by the Indonesian middle class. I found a blouse for $5 and a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim for $3 and called that a pretty successful afternoon. For lunch we grabbed some ayam penyet from a roadside warung and then went back to rest a bit- the heat had been pretty brutal. Dinner was also street food and I really enjoyed this return to more traditional Indonesian life with her after having such a crazy hybrid lifestyle in Jakarta. I also really enjoyed being the host after all that Sumi has done for me. When Monday morning came I helped her catch a bus to the airport and promised I would come back to visit Jambi again in the spring.

Livestock everywhere, must be a holiday

It was almost impossible to miss that yesterday was Idul Adha, the Day of Sacrifice in Islam and one of the most important days of the Hajj pilgrimage. This day is most visibly marked by a nationwide mass slaughtering of goats and cows where families will buy one of these animals and then give away most of the meat to the poor. And remember this is Indonesia, where freezers, if you are lucky to have one are the size of a lunch box, so this meat is eaten immediately!  In local communities, mosques are usually the center of activity and people give according to their individual means so the poor can receive this charity.

The first evidence that this holiday was approaching were the large banners that pop up around town advertising the prices of “korban” (the animals to be killed) and contact number for you to order your own. Soon one noticed that livestock was entering Jakarta from all sides. You might see a truck barreling down the highway with a lone bull in the back, or maybe a goat tied to a tree in front of a shop down town. But most common were the random holding areas where these animals will wait their fated day in patience. I was somewhat surprised to see one pop up in my little neighborhood (it went next to the broken badminton court), but even more surprised to see one in the front parking lot of the National Ministry of Education with about 30 cows. A friend of mine even recounted standing outside of Grand Indonesia, one of the nicest shopping malls in Jakarta, and witnessing a herd of goats run across her path with seemingly no one in charge of them!

The evening azan on the day before also made it impossible to ignore the holiday because it lasted for almost five hours! Now I am not one to complain about a little call to prayer, in fact I think it is a beautiful sound. But I think my neighborhood mosque needs some singing lessons because it is just painful to listen to them struggle through, especially at 10:30pm when I want to go to sleep!

The day of Idul Adha is a national holiday and was a perfect mid-week day off. I avoided any animal butchering and went on a adventure to find some cheap headphones. And it did turn out to be a travel adventure within the city; I ended up taking four different kopaja bus lines that I had never ridden before and befriended a group of giggling 12 year-old girls who seemed to want to escort me between bus transfers.  The trip was a success as I once again can listen to music on my morning runs and I avoided having to see any animal butchering.

Rubber Time

Last week I made the mistake of arriving on time to a seminar. It was scheduled for 9am and my coworker even advised me to leave at 8am in case the traffic might delay my arrival. Following my more realistic estimation, I left at 8:30am and arrived at 8:55am- to a completely empty conference room and overly eager greeters. Should have known this was coming. Jam karet, or rubber time, is pervasive in Indonesian society- even the airplanes are notorious for being late. Last month I was invited to attend Tifa’s Board Meeting so that I could learn more about the grant-making process and I was surprised to realize, when I showed up at exactly 12pm, that even though the meeting was held at fancy Jakarta hotel it could still begin two hours late. Thankfully another coworker showed up on time and we got a head start on the buffet lunch as we waited for the others.

Honestly, by now I kind of enjoy jam karet; the luxury to leave and show up whenever is most comfortable for you without worrying that others will find your tardiness rude. The thing I just can’t understand is why do some Indonesian’s still show up on time and how do you know for sure if an event will be late? No one wants to make the mistake of assuming it won’t start on time but then arrive rudely 20 minutes after an event has begun.

I have found a couple consistencies thankfully. Internal office meetings, never start on time in Indonesian offices; conferences or seminars with attendees from different organizations, also never start on time, and moreover, showing up late is completely fine, as is not silencing your cell phone to a string of text messages announced to everyone by some popular hip hop song or even holding a whispered conversation. I know that this custom hasn’t pervaded the community of Westerners here yet because when I showed up late to a breakfast with friends from the embassy and blamed it on the traffic, my apology was necessary. Beyond that I am still testing this phenomenon out, kind of feeling my way through the dark and trying not to make any blunders.

Jakarta Update

The thin layer of dust on cars in Jakarta was pointed out to me by a complaining coworker yesterday.  Some of the ash from Mt. Merapi’s explosion has apparently made its way west to Jakarta.

And on another note, even though Obama almost had to cancel his trip to Indonesia because the ash made Jakarta flight travel temporarily dangerous, Obama has proven that Jakarta’s traffic congestion really can get worse after all.  Maybe less people will complain that his visit is for less than 24 hours once they can get home in reasonable time.

Luxuries of the Big City

Being in Southeast Asia has resulted in me becoming somewhat addicted to massages.  It is a habit that I am afraid will be difficult to fund when I return to the US, so I am thankful that won’t be happening anytime soon.

Yesterday afternoon I found a pleasant café (which I rode a kopaja to without incident!), and settled in for a long afternoon of working on graduate school application essays.  Feeling satisfied with my work but a little in the neck after peering over a laptop for too long, I decided to treat myself to a massage.

This was my first massage in Jakarta, yes I had gone a whole month and a half without, and it definitely was a different experience from the massages I used to get in Jambi.  To begin with, it was $11 for the hour compared to the $2.50 in Jambi (as a bule I paid $.50 extra since I was larger than Indonesians).  Additionally, the massage was conducted on a real massage table, in a well-established salon and I had a nice thick towel to cover me.  I found this quite disimilar to the thin carpet on the floor of a neighbor’s living room where I would be wrapped in one of the woman’s floral sarongs.  The woman at Bersih Sehat was also very professional and sensitive to my needs, even using some aromatherapy, which further contrasted with the women in Jambi who would massage the same area over and over until I contorted in pain, all the while releasing a continuum of grunts and even burps from their physical exertion.  So it was a pleasant but pricier experience; for me, a little Jakarta culture shock all over again.

Hope noone else saw that

The other day I thoroughly embarrassed myself when I slipped and fell as I was getting off a Kopaja, one of Jakarta’s broken down looking public buses.  As normal, the bus itself never fully ground to a stop, so when I leapt off it I was already a little unstable.  The mud, black with traffic pollution my tumbled landing and when I stood up, hoping vainly that the people waiting at that bus stop hadn’t noticed by embarrassment, both of my knees were stained black.  Frustrated but stubbornly determined, I continued to transfer and get on another Kopaja that would take me to the coffee shop Anomali for my planned afternoon of writing grad school application essays.

Later that night though, when I met a friend from my office, Arini, for some street food and to see a batik exhibition, I relayed my embarrassing story.  Her laughter, not restrained in the slightest, indicated my “specialness” in this incident.  It’s true I have never seen anyone so much wobble no matter what speed the bus was going when they alighted.  And being the only foreigner I have seen to ride these buses, I must have played my part well as the foolish white person seemingly lost in Jakarta.  Arini finally informed that the trick is to lead with your left foot, since even though it is not intuitive to do that, it is more stable.  I have promised that next time I will try the left foot, and try not to make a fool of myself on busy intersections.