Eric Stone's Blog, page 6

SAMPAI JUMPAH LAGI, INDONESIA

Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta, Indonesia: Once again I'm sorry to be leaving. You know how there are places in the world that feel like home, that stimulate all your senses and excite your intellect and make you laugh and where you just plain feel comfortable? Well, Indonesia is one of those places for me. It's hot and sticky and I don't do great in that kind of weather. I've developed a nagging cough - I think from the one-two punch of massive pollution and going in and out of fierce air conditioning in Jakarta. I call it "Sakit Jakarta" - Jakarta Sickness. At this very moment I am alternately sweating and chilled - and I'm pretty sure I don't have a fever. And yet I love this place, I can't get it out of my system.

Go figure.

I love the contrasts. Indonesia is one of the most modern, traditional, rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, natural, artificial, fast-paced, slow-moving, challenging and comforting places I know.

Last night I moderated a panel and gave a presentation on road trips across America, at a new U.S. Cultural Center in Jakarta called @america. It was in Pacific Place, a huge and super swank new shopping mall next to the stock exchange building. (There's a Bentley dealership on the ground floor.) Very few Indonesians can actually afford to buy anything there - even the food court is high-priced for most of them. But plenty dress up in their best to come and ride the escalators and window shop and look around.

My fellow panelists were highly educated, sophisticated, well-traveled Indonesians, as were most of the people in the audience and I felt as warmly welcomed and well-received by them as I did by the people in Jatinegara, where I was the night before (see the last blog), in a neighborhood that is poorer than anywhere in Los Angeles. Much poorer.

I don't know any other country that extends as genuinely warm, friendly, humorous and gracious a welcome to outsiders as does Indonesia. And I don't think it's just me viewing the place through rose colored lenses. I wish I knew what the secret is. I wish it were a virus and we could infect the rest of the world with it. My own country, the U.S., could use some.

So I'm loathe to leave. But I am looking forward to some good tacos.

JAIPONGING THE NIGHT AWAY

Jakarta, Indonesia: Would I take my expensive camera, complete with two expensive lenses, to one of the poorer neighborhoods in the U.S. at night, to sit around on the street with locals drinking beer and shooting pictures of them doing something that is at least occasionally frowned upon by society at large - banned, even?

Probably not. It would be unwise.

Here, I don't think twice about it. One of my very favorite places on the planet is under a highway overpass at night, on the edge of a very dark, very poor, very dirty neighborhood called Jatinegara, where I am usually the only non-local to be seen. Even Indonesians from other parts of the city don't go there - some are afraid to. (I fruitlessly try to explain that while yes, Jakarta has crime, even increasing amounts of violent crime, it wouldn't even make the top 25 in crime statistics in the U.S.)

People in Jatinegara are, in my experience welcoming, friendly, helpful, happy to attempt conversing with me in my terrible Indonesian and proud that someone from far away is interested in their neighborhood and their lives.

There, six nights a week - they take Thursday night off - two stages are filled with musicians, singers and dancers performing Jaipongan. Rather than attempt to explain it, I will refer you to Wikipedia - which in this case, so far as I can tell, does a reasonably good job.

Men dance on the ground in front of the stage - sort of dancing with the women on the stage, who they shower with money - usually one and two thousand Rupiah bills (12 to 25 cents U.S.) - but also dancing with each other in a sort of martial artsish friendly competition for the attention of the women on stage.

Some of the women on stage might, or might not be, available for takeaway (so to speak), but you'd probably need to be a regular and get to know them first.

Last night I was there, by myself, enjoying one of my favorite things to do anywhere. I might have even danced a little - luckily there is no photographic evidence of that.

Here, though, is the other photographic evidence of my night out:



And okay, so he's not really a jaipong musician, but I'm pretty fond of nose-flute guy. He's good, too.

NOTHING TASTES LIKE CHICKEN

Jakarta, Indonesia: Excepting, maybe, chicken. This seems like an issue here in the country where chickens were invented. Well, from whence they sprang - like potatoes and chilies from Peru and rock and roll from Africa by way of Mississippi.

Today I went to a local branch of the famous Taipei dumpling house, Din Tai Fung. It is fast becoming a large chain. (There's a branch in L.A., in Arcadia, as well as many throughout Asia.) Their specialty are Xiao Long Bao, (XLB) what are translated on their menu nearly everywhere (except here) as "juicy pork dumplings" - what New Yorkers (oh, those quaint rustics) refer to as "soup dumplings."

Here, in deference to the majority Moslem population of Indonesia, they are "juicy chicken dumplings."

It's a bad substitute. People are already wrong when they say that, for instance, frogs legs taste like chicken. They don't, they taste like frog's legs. They're wrong, too, about snake, especially cobra. Dog absolutely tastes nothing like chicken. And pork, most decidedly, does not taste even remotely like chicken. When I want an XLB, I want that porky goodness that doesn't taste like anything else.

Now I happen to love chicken. It is among my favorite meats. Yesterday for lunch I went to my very favorite nasi Padang (Minang) restaurant in the whole world - Natrabu on Jln. Agus Salim here in Jakarta. At a nasi Padang restaurant you sit down and piles of plates are stacked in front of you. You only pay for the plates that you eat the main ingredient out of. (Traditionally you can spoon the sauce from any plate onto your rice, and if you don't eat the solid stuff you don't have to pay for that plate.) It is the spiciest food in Indonesia and I love it.

I was spoiled for choice. And a full five of the choices - of which there were about 20 - were chicken (ayam): ayam goreng (fried), ayam pop (sort of poached in oil, served with a sharp red chili paste), ayam panggang (grilled with a tasty paste), ayam bakar (baked) and ayam in a creamy, spicy coconut milk sauce that I forget the name of. Any one of them would have been splendid. The chicken here is smaller than in the U.S. where even the chicken breasts have implants - and darker, too. It has a lot more flavor.

But it ain't pork, and it's never gonna be. They do, however, pit roast up a mighty fine crispy, crackling suckling pig in Bali. Buddhists and Hindus are happy to eat pork.

This week in Jakarta I have launched upon a new strategy. I am limiting my exposure to the outside world by day. When I go somewhere I take a taxi from my air conditioned hotel to the air conditioned wherever I'm going. Not only is the heat and humidity taken care of, but the air is more breathable. My lungs, though still experiencing a certain level of sakit Jakarta (Jakarta sickness) do feel better than they did after I overdid it during my first week here.

But I do go out at night. Last night I went with my friends Tim and Carol to Jatinegara, which is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Jakarta, maybe in the world. We were going to see people playing, singing and dancing jaipongnan in the street under an overpass next to the railroad tracks. We got there too early, at 8pm, and nothing was going to get underway until at least 10. We didn't want to hang around for hours, especially as they both had work to go to today, so we walked around for a while and have made plans to go back at the right time tomorrow - Friday.

There was plenty going on in the neighborhood though, and here's the photographic evidence: