Jakarta to Bali

We arrived in Jakarta on November 15th and were met in style by Wayne and Sidney, close relatives of Jenna. They were both working and babysitting their son Sam and his friend Jacob when we arrived, so they sent someone else to meet us at the airport. We had a blast at their house, even if it was only for a quick 15 hours or so. We even had bagels, which we’ve seen only through closed eyes since September.

We didn’t really have much of a chance to see Jakarta, since as mentioned above, we left no more than 15 hours after landing. First impressions: traffic, plenty of the combination shopping mall and condominium complexes that I’m beginning to think of as the standard ex-patriate pod - hermetically sealed against the developing world. You can live for days without leaving the mall/condo. The city is also poorer than Bangkok, or less committed to beautification. In Bangkok the slums are hidden, while in Jakarta they are clearly visible from elevated highways.

Very quickly we all hopped a plane to Jogjakarta, the second city of Java, once an important capital city and major trading centre. Today it is a busy city of several million people, but seems a little light on tourist attractions. It is, however, cheap and possessed of a number of good value restaurants. We were a little touristed-out anyway after Bangkok, and having two six year olds in tow takes a slightly dull sight and makes it unbearable. So we paid lip service to the idea of seeing important sites and made a fleeting visit to an old palace in the middle of the city. But we really spent most of our time splashing around in the water. Jenna and I checked into a modest and quite lovely hotel with a quaint little swimming pool, then immediately took a cab to go meet Sidney, Wayne, Sam and Jacob, along with Jacob’s dad, at the Hyatt Grand. The pool at the Hyatt made our hotel’s pool look like a puddle. The Hyatt pool had water slides, linked sub-pools, and enough space for a water-football game. We all had a great time.

The main attraction of our hotel was the owner’s collection of birds. We first noticed them at dawn. I was awakened by songbirds, close to the room. I went outside and discovered that there were nearly 100 different birds across the courtyard (and that the owner had considerately caged a small but quite loud bird in the starfruit tree in front of our room). Most of the birdcages were arranged in a penned and roofed area on the other side of the swimming pool. The owner looked to be a retired man with time on his hands, and I noticed that it took him nearly two hours just to feed his birds - every morning. In addition to parrots and talking birds, he had dozens of smaller songbirds that I couldn’t begin to describe. Each bird or pair had its own cage, most of them the old fashioned cylindrical kind that tapers to a ring at the top, suspended from the roof or supported from below. The birds must have made the man particularly happy, because two hours of pouring water and cutting papaya before you get to really start sweeping up the bird crap is not my idea of a good time. I feel that if you’re going to put that much energy into an animal, you should at least get a meal out of it in the end.

Which brings us to Bali. I’m currently writing from Ubud, a hill city in the middle of Bali. We are renting the upper floor of a villa here, and from our window this morning I had a lovely view of a flock of ducks waddling around and eating in our neighbour’s rice paddy. I am pleased to watch them waddle around and be cute, and content in knowing that they will soon be “bebek tutu” (smoked duck), a classic Balinese dish. Feeding ducks that will one day feed you: that I understand.