The adventure continues

So there I was, standing over what was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made in a long time. Failure to perform this task with precise execution could have lead to death, as I’m sure it has happened to some poor soul that now resides in Davey Jones Locker. The tiniest slip would have, in the least, surely ruined my day. The door closed leaving me in darkness save for a single ray of light passing over the room. I could wait no longer:  number 1 or number 2. 

This weekend, I was privileged enough to venture out to the Thousand Islands with a solid crew of friends.  It was a wonderful escape that has filled my head with wistful ideas of abandoning this structured existence, buying a boat, and trolling around for, like, a really long time.  The most important aspect of this trip is that it takes place in Indonesia, which means it was bound to be full of failed promises, dodgy characters, and a complete disregard for personal safety, yet at the same time met with fantastic surprises, extraordinary beauty, and enjoyable chance encounters.

I will not waste time describing the Thousand Islands other than they are a chain of islands that are the antithesis of Jakarta. I encourage you to check out some pictures.  Trip starts out in a flooded fish market. Please imagine all the sights and smells you attribute to a fish market, now remove all drainage systems and refrigeration, turn up the temperature 85F with high humidity, add copious amounts of garbage, while we’re at it how ‘bout a couple of wet stray dogs.  There is a certain ‘funk’ about the place, and not the James Brown kind of funk, the bad kind. We are boarding our ‘ferry’ to the Thousand Islands, which is strange because there is just about that many people pushing about to get onto the dozen boats that are leaving. No gangplanks, no handrails, water everywhere. As we pile into our ferry, I am reminded of the alarming statistic I had made up and convinced myself was true: two out of every five articles written about Indonesia in Western newspapers are about a ferry that sunk and killed almost everyone on board. Naturally I take a seat close to the door.

After a standard waiting time of one hour, we begin to motor. Shortly after we leave I move to the top of the boat for some sun and fresh air. It is worth mentioning that there are no seats on this ferry, you just kinda find a place to through your stuff and then sit on it.  We change boats two hours later piling 18 people onto some wood that had been glued together (I am completely embellishing here) but roughly equivalent to the boat featured in Rookie Of The Year. It was enjoyable, although the holes and gaps in the blue tarp roof caused leakage. Ah yes, it had just begun to rain. I in no way wish to portray this as unenjoyably or negative, I am loving every minute of this journey so far.  

We arrive at the island, its wonderful. We have a great meal, go snorkeling, get stung by jellyfish, have cold beers on a white sand beach, built a raft and it almost worked.  After locating 8 extra beds the crew finally found some well deserved sleep. The next day we go to the worst excuse for an aquarium I’ve ever seen, but it somehow was more fun than most aquariums I’ve seen, way less educational.  We saw some giant lizards, had pancakes, then prepare to return home.

Naturally, we show up to the ferry late and consequently are stuck up top, but even there it is cramped. It is in moments like those were I curse the length of my legs. It is only an hour into the trip when I realize nature is calling. Making my way over the heaps of bags and awkwardly arranged people I find the toilet. At the risk of creating the assumption the only thing in my travels worth writing about have been those involving the toilet, I continue.  I step inside and just burst out laughing. The toilet is simply a hole cut into the bottom of the boat. The laughter subsides when I realize I should really have been wearing shoes, then I just feel gross. It was entirely possible to fall into the toilet hole, but not a handle in sight. Thinking about it, even if there was a handle I probably wouldn’t have touched it.  In deep cogitation of how long I could hold it, I make another realization. The boat is rocking, there is no light, I’m not wearing shoes, and just like aerial bombardment campaigns of WWII, you can never drop every bomb on your target. So despite my desire for Ocean Dumpah, I opt for more specialized equipment and have to pass. Kyle Hay, you still have me on this one.  

After successfully not falling into the toilet, I climb outside of the boat and scurry up to the roof to find my place in the intertwined mass of bodies. I’m finding more and more, I can never have the experiences I am having here in the States, or many places in fact. The very things that make the US great are in some ways the same things that make it slightly lame.  I don’t think Americans should opt for more archaic forms of washrooms, but perhaps should loosen their neckties and relax a little bit. After all, you can never have a good adventure unless there is some adversity to overcome. Even if it is simply deciding between number 1 or number 2.

people with mullets are often the best at reminding us important things

So I find myself nearly four months into living in Indonesia and am still struck with moments of excitement at the sheer fact of living abroad. The people around me must think im nuts when one of these moments comes around because I grin like even more of an idiot and get excited about normally insignificant things. The rational side of me wants to quell these feeling and play it cool so I’m not walking around like a fresher. But I cant help it.

It has been a long dry spell for writing this blog, which should not be too surprising to those who know me.  There is no way to sum up the time ive spent here with any meaning. There is simply no time, but it has mostly been school, school, excessive sweating, Jakarta lung (the official unofficial term for perpetual phlegm one coughs up daily due to pollution) school,  B A L I, gili islands. bali again, school, school, riots, ear infection, school. Yeah, that’s pretty much it with a whole lot of good coffee, lighthearted conversation, and a few cold beers in between.

Yet somewhere between the copious amount of smog and spicy food, sometimes It still feels like I could wake up back home to the smell of bacon on Sunday mornings and nothing would have changed much and I could pick right up where I left off. That’s how it goes sometimes I guess, finding a new routine in a new place.  Side note, the Indonesian guy with a mullet next to me has cut a violent fart, and thus destroyed my reflective moment.  Some sort of reminder perhaps to live in the moment, albeit a stinky one.

Stay curious and enjoy the wonder of it all.

Ojek Adventure!

             I was never educated on how one becomes a man in Indonesian culture, but today I think I can say I have sprouted a few Indonesian hairs on my chest. It was never my intention to ride home on a stranger’s motorcycle weaving through congested traffic without a helmet, yet somehow that is how I got home from school today. Alive.

            I must have looked horribly out of place as I swung my American sized frame on the back of an Indonesian sized motorbike.  I was terribly frightened as we pulled out of the school my hands were riveted to the steel bar just at the rear of the passenger seat.  In the midst of my fears I still managed to preserve my dignity and manhood by not wrapping my arms around my drivers waist and squeezing.  All I could think of was how angry my mother is going to be when she finds out I wrecked on the back of a dodgy motorcycle.  My grip tightened as the space between the battered steel fence on my left and oncoming traffic on my right grew smaller. Had I chose to re-create the titanic scene, believe me it crossed my mind after I pushed thoughts of my family reading the incident report out of my head, my hands would have been lopped off in a mix of rust and blood.

            The first ten minutes of the ride were a torrent of fear, anxiety, payer. As we turned off the main crowded road, we drove down a crowed, tree lined winding road that ran alongside a polluted river. Just as we turned onto this road, something happened. As we weaved into the new traffic flow, I saw three people riding on one crappy motor-bike. The driver had a bag loaded with random things wedged between his legs. The second passenger was texting someone. The last person on the bike was casually hanging on with her hands as her feet were lifted a couple of inches off the ground, no more foot pegs, she was wearing rubber sandals. As this calamity whizzed past, the young girl texting looked up and sent me a toothy smile exposing a brand new set of braces. Behind a dusty pair of glasses were a pair of kind eyes, that seemed to say ‘good on ya white dude’.

            With that, my grip relaxed and my mind eased. My posture became confident and no longer tense. I brought my hand up to my face and gave my scruffy chin a few meditative strokes before resting it in my lap. No longer staring at pavement wondering what obstacle will impale me, I looked around and noticed I was a part of a massive ocean of people moving in orchestrated chaos. In that moment, something clicked, I was truly experiencing this place for the first time. I breathed deep and appreciated the carcinogens and dust in a new way.

            I’m no Indonesian, but as I dismounted from my transport, I rolled out a solid “Mantap” [awesome] to my driver  that was returned with a smile and nod. I haven’t come close to mastering Indonesian, I still can’t eat spicy food, people still stare at me, but today was big. Just another step closer to understanding this fascinating and crazy place.  

'Macet' is not just a jam, it is a way of life.

    If there is one thing I have learned about living in Indonesia it is that everything is not as it seems but somehow exactly how it seems.  A full contradiction yes, but in that is a true sense of Jakarta.  It is horribly apparent how spoiled I am to have grown up in a country that has traffic laws and abides in them, uses actual solutions to problems other than covering them up only to appear fixed,  and I can drink water from the hose on a hot day.  Jakarta is a swirling mess of chaos that seems to carry on yet somehow works.

     Two days ago I had the fantastic opportunity to be stuck in a five hour traffic jam coming down the side of a mountain without moving an inch. The whole journey took eight hours to get from point A to B.  The same trip, mind you, only took two hours when we first went. Perhaps the best part of the story is the abhorring bout of food poisoning I have ever had in my life, and I have been known to have a few really good stories about me and an irritable bowl in an exceptionally inconvenient time (ie Disney World 2007). Anyone who has had food poisoning knows how terrifying it is to be more than twenty feet from a toilet, let alone getting on a rickety bus, or on a supposed two hour bus ride, or in Indonesia, or amongst your administration and new friends; nobody wants to be know as ‘the guy who soiled himself on the bus’.

     I will spoil any thoughts of this story ending with me in total embarrassment and in need of a change of clothes to let you know thanks to  a wonderful cocktail of activated charcoal, excessive pepto tabs, tums, Imodium, and an unknown Indonesian intestinal pill, I haven’t needed a toilet in three days.  But nonetheless, I was unaware of how successful my full on assault against my gastrointestinal organs would be. As far as I knew, I was a time bomb, living life minute by minute in absolute terror and fear. 

     So I eased into my bus seat to try sleep through the bumps and tosses of the bus.  Busses here normally are stop and go, hard on the gas, hard on the brakes. Think late night taxi ride in Chicago. But as the stop went from moments to minutes, minutes to tens of minutes my heart sunk deeper and deeper until I felt it might actually be purged along with the rest of everything in my lower abdomen.

     By the time forty five minutes had passed, we were informed this could take a while So a few of us got off the bus and strolled amongst the roadside stalls that lined the mountainside. This would have been something right up my alley on any ordinary day. Very dodgey, yet perfectly simple stalls ran by non-english speaking men and women with worn in expressions, all set on a mountainside that doubled as a tea-plantation, with the sun beginning to set.  Perfect, almost. But as time passed into hour two of being stuck we knew we were in for the long haul.

     What I noticed as peculiar was that everyone seemed to carry on as normal. The line of cars backed up for probably miles, but not a shout of frustration or horn-usage. It simply was how things worked. If there were regularly five hour traffic jams without a good reason in the states, people would be sued, assaulted, or killed. But as drivers turned off their cars and lit their cigarettes, there wasn’t even an air of understanding or acceptance, it just was. Disgustingly clogged streets is how things work around here, it is know in Jakarta as ‘Macet’ [Mah-chet]. Its no different than a queue in the grocery store, or trying to get a vending machine to accept a wrinkled dollar bill, its just one of those things we have as part of life.

    As hour two passed to hour five, my friends got to sample some good local street food while I reluctantly passed. We watched the sun set over the mountains in a cramped tin roofed food stall, resting precariously on stilts as it hung over the hill. It turned out to be a nice afternoon, although at the time everyone was still trying to go with the flow (which in this case going with the flow actually meant just sitting there as the situation was flow-less). Once we started moving again, we felt exhilarated only to be stifled by a slow going three hour journey for the remainder of the drive. But we made it, and maybe we are a bit more patient and understanding as a result.

It will take a while to get used to the erratic normality of chaos in this city. It is constantly moving, and like being tossed overboard in a swift river, you’ve got to keep your feet in front of you and your eyes looking ahead. Its fun, but ultimately exhausting to foreigner. But hey, over here it’s the way life is, so I might as well get on on board the train, if only the city had one, so I guess I’ll hurry up and get on the bus prepared to wait in the ever present macet. 

Un-posted update from Hong Kong 6/20/2012

It has certainly been a fast paced and interesting week.  I have the immense pleasure to report that I am writing this on the plane from Hong Kong to Jakarta. Hong Kong was simply amazing. I have never been so thrust into a city that was so busy with life moving at such a fast pace as Hong Kong. It has instantly become one of the most interesting cities I have been fortunate set foot in and will definitely be added to the highly prestigious CL favourite cities list.  I cannot help but assume I will be travelling back there soon to explore it in proper fashion.  

 I find myself constantly being caught in moments of intense excitement and childhood wonder as I move about this new place. Everything is new, and everything holds a new opportunity to reflect on what a fantastic opportunity that I am embarking on.  I am blessed to have such an experience.  I am also blessed to have just had an unannounced glass of apple juice brought to me by the flight attendant mid sentence, it is perhaps the best I have ever had.  I guess that is a good reminder to stop and smell the roses occasionally.  There will be without a doubt a full senses overload upon arriving to my new pseudo-permanent home.  New sights, sounds, friends, as well as different, weather, food and surely uncomfortable bowel movements. But in all this newness and uncertainty I will need to remind myself to take time to reflect and give thanks; for plane tickets, new friends, and apple juice.

Perhaps it is the whirlwind of the last week, but I feel completely unprepared for any of what I am experiencing.  Driving across the country with my dad and brother was amazing, seeing my mom and extended family was even more wonderful.  I arrived back home at 3:00am the day of my departure for Hong Kong and it has yet to ‘hit me’ that I have left.  With a constant list of things to do and time passing by faster than I could check items off, I barely have time to process it all.  So in this moment of relative reflectiveness I want to thank everyone who helped make this adventure possible, and those who always support me. From California to Chicago, Lawrence to Lubjavik, everyone inbetween and beyond - thanks. Especially Mom, Dad, and Erik for allowing me to be strange and completely impractical, yet always giving me the nod to follow my heart.

So with only 3 hours left until Indonesia, I’ll Breathe deep, take a snooze, and make a mental note to stop and enjoy the apple juice once in a while. 

A trip across the world starts with a road trip to Colorado...

In a massive rush to get everything sorted for perhaps the most exotic of adventures to date, there is still one last journey to be made with the family.  I have had the pleasure of driving the vast expanse of agriculture and dodgy truck-stops that make up the Great Plains several times, however, this trip will be something special. A 'one last hurrah' of the Larsen men before I emigrate to Indonesia. I can only imagine the drive will be filled with beef jerky, great tunes, at least one good sunrise/sunset, as well as mild to excessive farting. 
The destination being Golden, Colorado for cousin Leif's wedding. I can't help but think of it as two-fold, offering a chance to see my extended family before I go. It is especially awesome, complete with cake and an open bar. 
I take off for Indonesia next week, and I will have the honor and privilege to learn and live in a beautiful country for two years.  But first, a cheeky trip with the legendary Larsen men.