Gulag Archipelago

When I first announced that I was moving to Indonesia in late 2007, one friend looked puzzled. “Indonesia…is that in Bali?” he asked. Interestingly, living in Jakarta is a lot like Houston, without the Cajun food.

I stepped off the plane onto the tarmax on 14 February 2008, having boarded on a crisp winter’s monring in Houston, and into a swampy moldy morning in Jakarta. The arrival area was thick with clove cigarette smoke, and I didn’t encounter air conditioning — such as it was — until I was ...