Jakarta floods of 2013

After Singapore, I returned to Jakarta.  The day I arrived, or perhaps as a result of events the day before, I arrive to a very flooded city.  The main highway out of the airport toward the city was closed because it was under water, so the taxi driver had to take an alternate, back-road route to get around it and back on the main road.  I had definitely never taken that route before.

I got to witness it all first hand.  I was supposed to do a couple of school visits that day.  One had already been cancelled on account of the floods, and I learned later that the area where that school was located was one of the worst hit areas in the city, so it was hardly surprising they were going to be closed.  The other school visit is what allowed me to get out on the roads and see for myself what all havoc had been wrought from the storms.  At one point, there was an SUV behind me with a large, red rubber dinghy strapped to the top. I joked to myself that it would be funny if you had to ditch your car and hop in your boat, it would be conveniently located on the roof of your vehicle.  Well, when we got to one of the really flooded areas, what did I see but people rowing down the street in that exact same red dinghy!!  I wondered if that was a common one for people to buy.  In any case, I ended up seeing three dinghies in total floating down the street. 

People seemed to be making the best of it.  Kids were swimming in it, like this fellow below, who brought out his inflatable tire tube and decided to have a grand old time in the new swimming pool!
In another case, there was a guy that decided to wash his truck since there was an abundance of water, and that would prevent him from having to haul bucket after bucket from his home or wherever he might retrieve it.  It's times like these I'm humbled how people can see the positive in what most of the rest of us would simply label as calamity.

Having said that, though, there was definitely some real sadness that I learned about.  While we were stuck in water and moving very slowly, all kinds of people were coming up to my window and knocking, holding small cups or other sorts of containers to seek donations.  I've never seen people begging in the streets in Jakarta, and I didn't know why this was happening.  I thought perhaps it was simply because I was stopped long enough that people had time to approach the vehicle, but I learned a very different story.  I asked about this to some local person, either at the fair with someone I had developed good rapport with, or perhaps with a local colleague.  Regardless, I learned that in some parts, the flood damage was severe, so much so that some people had lost everything.  While some only had to deal with minor water damage to their homes, others' entire properties were destroyed, so they were forced to head to the streets to try to get some money.  This saddened me greatly, and while I know that giving them some cash on the streets wasn't going to help, I don't know how else to contribute to them.  I never thought to ask someone I know there if there was a way I could make a donation to a local charity or something to help out.  Maybe I can still do so in some ways.  In any case, perhaps this is just routine for people in Jakarta now.  Many local people were saying floods of this magnitude happen every 5 years!

So as not to end on a sad note, I left describing my driver until the end.  This guy was really hilarious.  He was out directing traffic when we were stuck in an intersection with wall-to-wall traffic.  I thought it was a one-way street, but then I saw a few vehicle trying to cut through in the opposite direction or simply slice through the middle.  I'm still not sure what direction that road was, buy the driver was determined to get through it.  He was a wry little man, a little aged, and you could just tell that he knew what he was doing!  The only thing I didn't like about his rolling down the window to yell at people or opening the door to get out was that it allowed the perpetual monotone of a fire truck's siren to blaze even more loudly into my ear!  I'm surprised I didn't get a migraine from hearing that for about 45 minutes straight!  I had fallen asleep just before we got to that really flooded area with the dinghies, and when I woke up, he had given me a little packet of some sort of deep fried cracker-chip things he had bought.  It was so sweet!  I don't know how many packets he must have got for himself, though, because the rest of the time, I kept hearing him crunch them, including on the drive back!  Finally, speaking about that drive back, we came through a fairly well-flooded--though starting to recede--section in the city centre close to the Hyatt hotel, and by that time, there was so little traffic around that he decided it was a good idea to plow right through the water as fast as the flood water would let him!  What made it better is that he started laughing, almost hysterically, and that, of course, made me laugh, which let him know I approved, and that made him laugh even harder!  I wish I could have got a recording of the way he laughed.  He was just too cute and too funny, and I hope to get him again the next time I need a driver in Jakarta!

Singapore fun

I'm back in Southeast Asia on a work trip again, and the more I travel here, the more I have places to go and people to see.  I had made friends with someone that was on contract with the Canadian High Commission last year, and we had a great time hanging out while I was in Singapore.  It was also nice to see my friends, the other recruiters.  We're pretty much the same bunch every time, and I love to see them.  The irony is that we don't live near each other in Canada, but somehow Southeast Asia is nearer since we always get sent here for work!

My time in Singapore was otherwise uneventful.  I have favourite places to eat now, like at Arab Street and Bugis, and the only sightseeing I did was one afternoon at the Gardens by the Bay.  By now, if you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that I love to take photos of flora, and this place was basically somewhere I could take photo after photo of flowers!  I hope it won't bore you too much!

I don't have much else to say about the Gardens, other than that I saw only the flower dome and cloud forest exhibits as I was too tired to see anything else after that, but I did want to mention that the one negative part about the place is that they play music and nature sounds.  When you walk into the flower dome, you feel like you could meditate there for hours.  They have photos of animals that typically live in both the cloud forest and various climate zones of the flower dome, but you don't actually see any of them; they just play bird sounds over speakers that are fairly conspicuous amongst the plants.  It kind of takes away from the charm, but the place is still quite relaxing. On a related note, if you ever go there, when you get to the cloud forest, you're supposed to go right to the very top level and then work your way down after seeing the main floor.  It's not posted anywhere, but there were only down escalators, making me think that they're expecting you work your way down from the top.  Photos will come eventually!

Bangkok photos

Here are the photos from my free day in Bangkok. Again, I remind you to click on the album to open it up in Picasa albums.  You can even zoom in on photos once you're in Picasa.  I discovered that with my last Pennsylvania album, and it allowed me to see those insects that much better! ;o)

Bangkok Fall 2012

A few more notes on Bangkok

Well, gone are the days when I didn't used to have jet lag.  I woke up after 2 hours of sleep and couldn't fall back to sleep after trying for an hour and a half, so I thought I'd get up for a while so I can start to feel tired again.

I don't have much more to say about Bangkok, but I do have to say a few more things before I add my photos.  My first impression of Bangkok was one of mild disgust.  I mean, the culture and the country seem pretty cool, but I had really disliked the number of old white guys walking around with young Asian women.  On this trip, I learned I wasn't alone.  Some of the other recruiters I met who have had more experience travelling in Thailand than I have had the same impression of Bangkok as I did.  So at least I'm not alone.

Regardless, I must say that I do find Thai people to be really sweet.  The hospitality is the same as other Asian countries, but there is something about the personalities of people there that I can only describe as sweet.  All the security guards in my hotel, for example, would not just say hello, like in other hotels, but they would actually salute me with a heel click of their boots as well!  I don't know, that's about all I can think of as an example, but otherwise it's just hard to put into words.

As for my day off in Bangkok, I went to Chinatown and then to the Grand Palace where the temple of the Jade Buddha is located.  I think I didn't see all of it.  It all started to look the same to me after a while, and even though I had a map, I felt like I got lost there.  It was a long day anyway.  I had planned to travel to places and back to the Sky Train station by boat, but I only got as far as Chinatown and then had to take taxis the rest of the way because the boats stopped running between 11am and 6pm, which I didn't find out about until I had wasted 45 minutes sitting at one of the piers waiting for the boat taxi to come by.  The palace closes at 4pm, and by the time I realised that the boats weren't running, it gave me only about one and a half hours to see it or maybe less by the time I got there.  By the time I got home, I was exhausted with a massive headache from dehydration, though I tried to drink enough liquids.

I'll post the photos later.  I think for now I'm ready to try to sleep again...

Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia photos are here!

I hope you enjoy these! Please don't forget to click on the album so you see larger photos and not just thumbnails.  If clicking on the album doesn't work, please go to the following URL.

M'sia, S'pore, I'sia Fall 2012

Bangkok - A note on sex, cultural myths, and stereotypes

At the education fair I attended today, I had an unexpected, but refreshing, encounter with two young prospective grad students.  Somehow we ended up on the subject on some strange guys they met while they lived in other countries.  The one girl remarked how popular she was to German guys while living in Germany for a year, and her friend remarked how popular she was with Saudi international students she met while living in India for a year!  We were laughing about these incidents, and I shared a couple of my own crazy stories, and the girls both stated they  thought it was weird how in India, people there were more racist against skin colour differences (though they later admitted the same thing happens in Thailand).  I told them Indians want white babies, and they just laughed, and I commented that in Asia generally, white skin was more valued, which is why they had all that skin whitening cream here.  Then it suddenly dawned on them how true that was, but they didn't know why, and I told them I'd heard it had to do with class because a woman with fair skin meant she was wealthy enough to have servants to do everything, and she could keep her skin pristine, while a servant might have to work hard labour out in a field all day and become dark.  And we often do just want what we don't have.  We have our tanning lotions back home.  I've heard that in Sweden, they find darker skinned brunettes more attractive because that's exotic for them (remember that's just hearsay!), while in countries where skin is darker, it's the fairer people that are considered exotic. 

In any case, both girls stated they had experienced guys just wanting to have sex with them just because they're Thai, and these men had these stereotypes that just because these girls were Thai, they'd be loose because of Thailand's raging sex industry.  I told them girls from the West experience the same thing, that often guys from other parts of the world think we're easy because of what they see on TV because they see our movies or soaps, and that makes them think we're all having affairs and having sex with everyone we meet. 

We laughed about these things; I mean, here were two articulate, educated young women, who were anything but easy.  They were not prostitutes or girls who worked in a massage parlour.  I reflected on our conversation later and realised how it was a sad state of affairs when girls from such different regions as we come from experience the same types of assumptions no matter where they go.  When I was in Mexico, I was told that Canadian girls had a certain reputation there because the guys get exposed to the crazy drunks they meet in Cancun during spring break, and there are many of us that think the same of Mexican girls or Latin American women in general because we think they're so seductive.

This is a grim outlook, my friends.  All women everywhere seem to have some stereotype about them that makes people think they are loose.  When are people going to learn not to generalise?  It makes me sad that women have to experience this every day.  And I can't blame men alone for this.  There are many women who think this about women from other countries or cultures, too.  That's what's more curious, because we hate it when people stereotype us (about our sexuality and otherwise), and yet we would do it other women.

I may be a while pondering this...

Fun times on an unexpected free day in Jakarta

Due to some miscommunication, I ended up having a free day in Jakarta that was originally supposed to be filled with school visits. Considering I was initially going to be working 15 days straight, including my travel days, until my one free day in Bangkok, I wasn’t overly upset to have another free day.  The only thing is that I didn’t then have a plan as to what to do.  So I asked at the concierge if they do any tours, and like the Shangri-La the first time I came to Indonesia, they work with a tour company that offers various tours.  They included the two tours I had already done, and the only other really appealing tour was a day tour that included a trip to the National Monument, a batik shop (where of course I couldn’t resist getting a couple of items!), a miniature park of Indonesia, and the Museum Indonesia.  This tour was a little more comfortable than the one I took in Bali where the two ladies that were with me didn’t speak English.  There were two ladies with me today, too, an aunt and niece combo, but they were from the Philippines and spoke excellent English, especially as one of them had lived in Chicago for a number of years.  It was so much less awkward this way!  (And hey, if you think I’m being linguicentric, it’s not that I expect everyone to speak English.  Those Czech ladies, I thought they might speak another European language, as many Europeans tend to be multilingual, so I offered Spanish and French to them with no luck!)

National Monument

Aside from being a symbol of the country’s independence, this monument has a history of the country hidden beneath the ground on which it was built.  Several diaramas depict the country from its origins of its people being Mongolian migrants to the end in which it gains independence from Japan and Holland after the Second World War.  I took a few photos of those that I thought were more interesting, noteworthy, or had significant historical value, such as when city names were changed or regimes changed.  It’s interesting to see the profession of the country, and it’s also interesting to read it from a local point of view.  For example, at one point in time, Jakarta was originally called Sunda Kelapa and was then changed to Joyakarta (you’ll see the photo of the description about it).  But there is no scene depicting the time when the Dutch changed the name to Batavia nor when the Japanese changed it to Jakarta because they couldn’t pronounce Joyakarta.  You see a history of uprisings against the Dutch, and you get the impression that Indonesians were fairly successful at keeping them at bay, yet the Netherlands colonised the region for about 350 years, so the uprisings couldn’t have been that successful, though I have no doubt that many were killed in those battles and that perhaps certain cities or regions were more successful at maintaining some level of independence than others.  That is why, readers, you must remember that history is never objective.  You can try as hard as possible to be objective when you write it, but it will always have some level of bias.

It was also interesting to learn about some of the populations on the smaller spice islands who were able to navigate by their sense of smell for the spices that became so much in demand in the West.  Imagine not needing a compass or having to navigate based on the skies; you could simply smell where you wanted to go.  I’m just amazed by such an adaptive ability; I hadn’t heard of anything like that before.

I did also learn where the name “Soekarno-Hatta” came from for Jakarta’s airport.  I knew that Soekarno was Indonesia’s first president, but I didn’t know who or what Hatta was.  Turns out he was their first vice-president. 

Miniature Park

This is not a park of miniatures but a park that allows you to see all the main parts/islands of Indonesia in one shot.  There are more than 72,000 islands, so you couldn’t really represent all of them, but it was interesting to see the very subtle difference in styles of fabric and architecture of homes, as well as the ways these homes were decorated.  In the first photo of the homes, you’ll see 3 large horns decorating the roof, and apparently houses were built this way to indicate how many daughters you had.  So this family would have had 3 daughters.  On another island, we learned that if your husband died, they would place him in your bed, and you had to sleep with him for a month before he was buried.  I can’t think how morbid and frightening that would be—not to mention dangerous if the body starts getting eaten by insects and stuff.  It’s not like they had air conditioning in those days to keep the body cool!  After you were finally able to bury the body, it would be placed in a decorative casket and raised up to the top of a large rock that had holes in it, and the body would be moved into one of those holes for all eternity.  Large rocks, like you’ll see in my photo, were meant to be used for one family of multiple generations.  I also can’t imagine how difficult it would be to get those bodies up a ladder into those holes.  The tour guide showed a photo of one funeral, and it didn’t look like they were using any sort of pulley system.  I’m hoping I just didn’t notice it!

The tour allowed us time to shop for souvenirs.  I wasn’t about to buy anything since I’ve generally stopped doing so because I thought I had bought everything I’d ever want in all my travels—but then I saw instruments…danger zone alert!  There were these beautifully painted maracas, but the size and shape of an egg.  I couldn’t resist, and besides, I got them for $2.50 each, so how could I resist??

Museum Indonesia

There isn’t much I need to say about this as you’ll see everything that really needs to be seen in the photos, and little description is necessary, so I think I can contain it in the photo captions.  One thing I should mention, though, is that while in many parts of Indonesia, batik is the main style of fabric art, in a few places like Bali, the art of weaving is more practised. In some cases, it even looks like their styles are influenced by Indian textiles.  Lots of what I saw also demonstrated differences in wedding attire across the country.  It’s pretty neat to see the different types of jewellery and head ornaments, aside from the fabrics and clothing styles.

Anyway, I love that I still get to learn new things the more I travel to Indonesia.  It’s an interesting country with wonderful people and tasty food, my two main attractions to any country!