Indonesia

INDONESIA

Back, again, to Perth international airport - kindly conveyed from home by my daughter.

The flight north to Jakarta, Indonesia took about the same time as a flight across Australia!

I travelled JetStar for the first time - the Qantas ‘low cost’ offshoot - which cost less than $500 return (including meals) - and, to tell you the truth: I could see no difference from the full cost experience other than that you needed to pay if you wanted to endure the mediocre in-flight entertainment, which I declined.

I was met at Jakarta airport by the client’s manager, her husband and two small boys and, luckily, the complexes’ food and beverage manager (I say ‘luckily’ because she was the only one speaking English - she’s married to an Aussie). They had asked for a photograph of me in advance, so did not really need to hold up a sign - picked me out right away.

It was raining very heavily when we landed, but it cleared up after about half an hour.

We drove - on the left side of the road - on impressive highways through Jakarta at around 100kph (slowing down through several toll booths) for an hour to reach our destination: Bekasi.

I asked why so many of the advertising billboards were in English and that prompted a discussion until I was told that the government was trying to discourage that trend.

I knew that I was to advise a complex of 84 accommodation units. I knew that they’d been built to cater for Japanese businessmen in the halcyon days in the mid-1990s and that they’d become run down over the years, and were now hit by the world-wide financial recession. Only about half of them were now habitable because the rest were just too dilapidated.

We drove off the freeway, through Bekasi by a river that looked as though it was running upside-down; and turned into the complex. I was expecting a traditional block of high-rise accommodation units - oh no!

It was more like a complete village, tucked away down a private entrance driveway, with its own security check-point.

The internal roads were winding and cobblestoned, and there was a series of two-and three-storey, terrace, ‘town-houses’ with an apartment on each floor. They had a small shop, a library (all Japanese books!), a huge swimming pool, a full-size tennis court, a gymnasium, putting green, fishing pond, spa (defunct), karaoke room (defunct) even a Japanese restaurant....and all away from the traffic noise.

The place had obviously been remarkable and rather stunning in its hey-day. The overall look was like that of a once-stunningly-beautiful woman who had let herself go and was now well past her prime, not even bothering with camouflage make-up!

......Some of the VILLAS in the village-style complex - the large swimming pool was in the centre of the complex......

The apartment they allocated to me was on the ground floor and rather expansive. Large rooms: lounge/dining area, a television (but only local programming!) kitchen (basic), two bathrooms, two large bed rooms (one set up with desk, table and six chairs; handy for meetings)...lots of built-in cupboards, rather basic with limited décor; even a room for the maid, with a squat toilet. BUT: comfortable enough and perfectly adequate.

I was presented with my first ‘pocket money allowance’, which sounds rather grand at 500,000 Rupiah, but not when there are around 10,900 Rupiah to US$1!! This is another one of those countries where you are very quickly dealing in millions (even billions and trillions) - it’s challenging when designing forms to accept such huge numbers.

Strangely, some transactions are quoted and transacted in US$, even prices in some shops, but smaller amounts - like Rp.500,000!!! - are quoted in local currency.

I was standing in my new, spacious apartment - feeling slightly stunned and wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself into (again) and, after the initial impression had settled over me like a cloak, I thought: ‘Well, this is the first time I’ve ever been given a whole village to play with.’

There was a distinct ‘Japanese’ feel to the premises - some of the architecture, the decor, clumps of tall bamboo, even the menu in the restaurant, etc...

The menu itself was basically in Japanese and Indonesian Bahasa and difficult to follow - but, on my first night, I just asked for chicken teriyaki - and it was absolutely delicious. Minimal service, no serviette, etc - but we’ll get around to fixing that. Language was obviously going to be a challenge - for my first breakfast next morning, I asked for “scrambled egg” and, in broken English, I was told “no scramble, only boil-ed.” I received two fried eggs! OK - no problem, I’ve been ‘going with the flow’ for many years now!

If any readers laboured through my last Cambodia odyssey, they may recall my mention of the discordant ‘music’ permeating the humid atmosphere for hours, and my comment that at least chanting emanating was mosques several times a day was soon over. WELL, guess what? Indonesia is the most populous Muslim nation on this earth and there were several mosques nearby.... the highly amplified chanting started from around 3.30am. Add in the additional side-effect of more chanting ping-ponging from several other mosques in the area and you can forget about ‘sleep’ for a while. Apart from the regular daily sessions, usually there was chanting also going on during the day - something to do with celebrating something or other. On some days a woman was ‘yodelling’ into the microphone for hours because “it’s Tuesday and the women are...” .... doing something or other!

On some mornings the chanting seemed to reach a zenith; it’s impossible to estimate, but it sounded like at least twenty highly amplified ‘sermons’ nearby all competing at 5am, plus echoes from more distant minarets. Some would talk others would ‘sing’ still more would just go “Ahhhhhh” with wavering tonal variations. The decibel level felt comparable to a 747 in take-off mode. The climax was like the end of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture - well: without the canons!

Waiting patiently in the wings (so to speak) the very second that the closer chanting faded away, the local roosters started up their own version of morning prayers. I’m not sure if they were giving a critique on the morning’s performances, or just seeing who could crow the loudest! One of the louder more persistent roosters sounded like a large, venerable old fowl, except that he had a speech impediment and could only ‘cock-a-doodle’, with no ‘do’ at the end! BUT - on the mornings when the noise was extreme, even they seemed shocked and stunned and the poultry could not summon a paltry peep ... for a while. Often, some gentleman close by would then have an irrepressible urge to purloin a microphone and present a highly-amplified sermon from around 5.30am for another 30 minutes.

Paradoxically, at around 6am, it all goes very quiet and peaceful - by which time, of course, you are wide awake and might as well get out of bed.

The complex was not connected to a scheme water supply; there was a bore inside each unit. This required a water pump and an automatic switch to maintain pressure. The bore and pump were located in a narrow, concrete 2-storey shaft. So, adding to the general ambience was the fact that the water pump would turn on and off all day and night and the noise would reverberate loudly in the concrete shaft and throughout the villa.

I’ve grown accustomed to the usual wildlife and night noises in the tropics, such as: geckos wandering around the ceiling ‘barking’ merrily away, the loud call of a huge lizard (called a ‘tokai’ in Cambodia), on this one there was the added ‘whistle’ of bats sending out their radar emissions when they were not devouring mangos from the huge trees. The sound that I do NOT like is the ubiquitous mosquito because of their propensity to inflict diseases such as malaria. In Indonesia there are outbreaks of dengue fever - a volunteer friend of mine contracted dengue in Indonesia which caused him a lot of health problems, including affecting his eyesight.

This is all just by way of explanation - not a complaint. My situation was practically luxurious compared to what some volunteers endure. Like the guy who was assessing fish stocks on a remote island and had to tolerate a few weeks cramped in a small boat with several other guys!

A few days into the assignment, the matriarch of the family was asking my opinion on what colour to paint the façades of all the houses and she asked if I wanted to see her factory (not her ‘etchings’!). Naively thinking that it was close by, I said “sure”. She summoned her driver and we drove through tollways for an hour to an industrial estate and a huge factory that made and printed plastic bags. There were row upon row of machines turning granules into tubes of plastic sheet, then into bags and then printing to customer’s specifications. Then, out the back was another enterprise: distributing ice cream. Mother sent someone out for a local lunch for me - rather spicy but very tasty. I didn’t want to know if it came from some seedy local roadside cart. No bad effects though, so: survived again!

Next day, she took me to lunch at a nearby mall - Pizza Hut, would you believe? On a subsequent day: we went to a huge mall and had chicken and prawn in porridge!

The husband of the local representative for the organisation I do these assignments for was in Bekasi and he took me to dinner (we also had a couple of beers!) - he worked for an organisation extracting methane from rubbish, then burning it to create less harmful CO², for the carbon credits.

Don’t you just love life - when you never know where you are going to be next, or what you will be talking about, or what sights are to be beholden?

The ‘deal’ from the client included three meals a day, in the Japanese restaurant (it originally catered for Japanese people working in industries around Bekasi). Problem was: the menu was in Japanese and local Bahasa - and I couldn’t read either. The staff had about three words of English between them - and I was the only customer for every breakfast, lunch and dinner. I quickly ran out of the names of Japanese dishes I could recall. When you’ve ordered ‘sukiyaki’, ‘tempura’, ‘teriyaki’, and eaten some small, whole fish ... where do you go next ...I didn’t want to risk ‘sushi’!

Having just emerged from two months in Cambodia - I thought that I’d consumed enough rice to last me rather a long a while. Guess what? Yep: more rice! This time with an added accoutrement: a bowl of miso soup served with every meal.

Virtually every meal was consumed using chop sticks. One day I was persevering away with my sticks and the waiter came up to me and asked, in broken English, why I was using chop sticks, because: “When Japanese eat sukiyaki, they use spoon”. Cheeky bugger!

Some offerings were somewhat meagre by western standards - like a ‘meal’ consisting of a piece of fish about 2-in x 3-in…pretty though, and tasty! ….and served with boiled rice and miso soup. The staff thought it strange that I could only consume about half a bowl of the obligatory plain, boiled, white rice served with every meal.

One of the staff kindly supplied me with some basic ingredients to cook my own meals in my apartment: eggs, vegetables, fruit, but no meat and, to begin with, nothing to cook in!

Indonesia is the fourth most populated country on this little blue planet of ours with around 240,300,000 people - no wonder wherever I went: I was the only occidental in sight. It’s somewhat of a contrast from living in a country with a total population of around 1,500 people: Niue, where I lived for 2-1/2 years?

Like similar countries with a thin veneer of extremely rich individuals and multitudes of impoverished, there is rampant corruption. BUT - they do seem to be trying to do something about it: the Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (would you believe) was arrested in connection with arranging the murder of a prominent businessman (seems they may have fancied the same ‘second wife’), the Director of Legal Administration was charged with extorting millions through a government web-site, and headmasters were being investigated for selling exam papers to their students, before the exam, and so on....

This year every student from nineteen high schools failed to graduate - the theory being that they were provided with answers to the questions, but the answers were incorrect, some of the exam papers even mixed different subjects!

I was chauffeured into Jakarta one day for a meeting to discuss some radical changes I had proposed for operating the business I was advising. We had lunch at a Chili’s restaurant - the franchise was part-owned by the family I was advising. I was told that the Chili’s franchises in Australia had all been shut down because the wage structure was too high to operate the business successfully. Just a glance out the window of the restaurant and I could see: a Burger King, Starbucks and Pizza Hut!

A bit more on the traffic - Jakarta is a city of some 9 million people and although they seem to have some good arterial highways, the result is often a traffic standstill. The main highways feeding in and out are toll roads and they pay tolls as low as Rp.2,500 (about .20 cents) - I was wondering why they even bothered, but I guess it’s just the sheer numbers that justify the cost of even building the multiple toll booths? The cars, trucks and motorcycles weave in and out of the streets in Jakarta, straight through traffic running at right-angles to their path, through red traffic lights; all hell-bent on their destination through convoluted one-way streets - if you did not know your way around, it must be totally confusing!

Like much of Asia where I’ve been, vehicles just drive into a gap in the traffic flow they really have no chance of fitting into and others give them JUST ENOUGH space to squeeze in. Drivers just head straight into bumper-to-bumper traffic at cross roads without stopping. There are beggars and men all over the roads selling newspapers, knickknacks, drinks and snacks - even on highways, no doubt anticipating a traffic jam. Drivers ignore signs over lanes that obviously say ‘buses only’ and the narrow ‘emergency lane’ just adds another layer to the traffic flow!

With so many people, I guess it’s just logical that other numbers will be correspondingly large? For instance there are 104.4 million people officially unemployed and, of them, 55.4% only have an elemental education and there is no ‘social security’ system. 69.5% of those that are considered employed are in the ‘informal sector’ and I guess that refers to casual workers and the self-employed.

In spite of Indonesia having more Moslems than any other country, I met several Christians and was told their numbers were increasing. Sermons addressing church services had gone from around 30-minutes to 3-hour marathons. On two occasions when I was being driven from Jakarta back to Bekasi, the drivers slipped a CD into the player - and, to my great surprise: out came American Christian gospel songs.

Indonesian elections were due to be held in July and, as anywhere, the media was full of mentions of the manoeuvring of the candidates, several parties and their convoluted alliances. But, what concerned our little corner of the world was that the owners of the complex had let some empty villas to the government for them to store ballot boxes for the Senate election (steel boxes containing paperwork for polling stations with a slot in the top to accept completed ballots - each with its own label and padlock).

The boxes kept coming in by the truckload for days, and they were stored in seven villas (bedrooms, kitchens, even bathrooms) - all 20,000 of them!! Most days over the weeks that the boxes were being unloaded and stored I collected keys that had fallen out of the padlocks, I collected about 20-40 a day, so we are talking about hundreds of padlocks without keys. Heaven knows how they were going to get into the boxes without keys - perhaps I should have just joined the general attitude and sold the keys to someone wanting to rig the election?

I’ll leave you to imagine the racket made by 20,000 galvanised steel boxes being unloaded from trucks by teams of chatting guys onto cobblestones, then conveyed into two-storey villas surrounding my current abode - a goodly number of them in the unit directly above mine! This all went on for over several weeks, and until 8pm some nights.

The elections seem to be a multi-step process. They vote for candidates, then for the President. The first stage had resulted in literally hundreds of court cases for assorted infringements that resulted in judges sitting in relays of 24-hours a day to clear the cases within a set time-frame. Claims included cases of literally millions of deceased people on the electoral rolls. There was a story of a guy described as a ‘scavenger’ who was in possession of heaps of ballot papers he claimed to have purchased for a few cents ‘a kilo’!

An on-going story in the newspaper was that the Presidential candidates had to undergo a medical check before being permitted to stand. They had to fast for 24-hours before the test and (get this) any female candidates had to ‘abstain from sexual relations’ for ten days prior to the test. There was only one female candidate (age: 62) and the English-language newspaper carried the story on the front page under the heading that she may find it difficult to comply with the restriction!

On another visit to Jakarta, I was taken to a large shopping centre. All those international traditionally expensive brands you can think of were represented (although I did not see one customer in any shop); along with 320 restaurants. We had dinner at a Korean restaurant with soup located in a burner on one side of the table, and then a waitress cooked our assorted barbecue on a burner on the other side.

Jakarta is, of course, located in a region where there are heavy monsoonal rains. When it does rain, apparently the traffic pretty much comes to a standstill as the thousands of motorcyclists tend to stop and congregate on the roads under the highway overpasses to shelter from the rain, effectively blocking off the traffic flow.

I went through a phase where I’d pretty much done all could do at the time - I’d made all sorts of suggestions and then, figuratively, passed the ‘baton’ to the owners. They seemed to get the message that my time was fast running out and, one Sunday, the driver was sent to collect and take me into Jakarta for lunch and a chat. I’ve ruminated on the traffic lottery previously…well, this morning we actually collided with another vehicle that was turning right, right in front of us. Remember that the vehicles were driving on the ‘right side’ as in the ‘correct’ side of the road” that is: on the left (hope that you followed that logic?). We barely kissed fenders, but the other guy was livid, even though he’d cut in front of us. The ‘damage’ to his vehicle would disappear given two minutes with a dab of compound. BUT - we drove into a nearby police station and they chatted away for about 20-minutes before we proceeded. Not sure of the outcome because the driver had no English!

Anyway, lunch was in a shopping centre where a bunch of facile adolescents on a stage were entertaining children with their microphones whacked up to maximum decibels. The restaurant had a Mexican influence and was owned by the wife of the guy I was working with - plus the omnipresent matriarchal figure of his mother. Mum was obviously very successful in her own right and we got on well together considering she only had a few words of English, and I had no Bahasa; we were born in the same year - a month apart. The lunch became something of a tasting session as we worked our way through the menu!

Another eating experience was at busy local eateries where the waiter rushed up laden with small dishes of assorted foods which he scattered across the table - the contents of some looking decidedly dubious. Then he fronted up with yet more - so there were about twenty assorted small dishes to choose from. The purpose of the exercise was that you only paid for what you consumed.

On another occasion I was collected by a driver and met the owners in a newish huge, multi-story shopping mall in central Jakarta - talk about ‘posh’ … I felt like I should have been wearing a dinner suit (not that I even own one, or a suit of any description come to think of it). As with even the less up-market malls, there was also valet parking. Once again, all those internationally exclusive brands were represented in spacious shops - but (once again) there were no customers in those shops. There was an entire floor of restaurants. We chose a ‘village’ where you were handed a large ‘credit card’ when you entered - you then wandered around the selection of eateries offering a variety of cuisine (the wife also had an outlet there), tendered your card to charge the meal, your choices were delivered to your table and you paid for whatever was on your card as you left.

I was taken to another accommodation complex developed by my client in a satellite town outside Jakarta. This group of town houses had also suffered from Indonesia’s troubled past and it had been closed for TEN years. The development had some 80 townhouses, plus impressive public rooms with tall ceilings on two floors - all abandoned. A couple of the units were occupied just so there was a presence to try and ensure that everything was stripped out and sold. ….all in all: a rather depressing sight!

Just before departing Indonesia, my client (Oemar) had a sore neck and difficulty lifting his arm and he decided to visit a well-known healer to see if he could help. I accompanied him, his wife and a friend and we went to search for the healer. We negotiated a multitude of tiny, winding streets, through villages that no tourist would ever see. We eventually abandoned the car and walked through miniature alleyways asking people where to locate the guy. We started to call the people giving directions as our vocal GPS units! This is a country where most streets are not named or, when they are, they may have more than one name; and houses are not numbered and, where they are numbered the occupants may just use a number that pleases them, so it could be repeated several times.

Anyway, back to the plot: we were eventually told that he was not home, but at the local mosque. So, more wandering through side streets we located the mosque, but it was deserted. A lady across the street came over and found him for us. The guy was a sprightly 87-year-old who told us that he had 68 grand children, 20 great-grand children from 22 kids of his own from 3 wives. He got to work on Oemar’s arm and shoulder. Then I showed him my left hand - there may be a few who do not know that I had a stroke way back in 1987 and my left side does not function too well and my left hand tends to be a claw.

So: he got to work on my left hand - there we were, shirtless and sitting on the floor outside a mosque in a basic village being manipulated by a venerable old gentleman. He finished up putting a splint on my hand and arm, wrapped up to the elbow with an elastic bandage. He gave us both a bottle of a thick brown concoction that he said was basically honey and a small plastic bag of medicinal oil that he blew into and said out names before they were sealed. Oh yeah: sorry but my hand was no better for the exercise - interesting experience though, wish I’d taken the camera!

SO - they've asked me to go back in a few months to access and review a new management team we put in charge of running the complex - we'll see.....