Be Gentle, it's my First Day

The first couple days in Jakarta have been way less weird than I would have thought. I knew it would be hot, and it is, and I knew it would be kind of smelly, which it also is. People are super nice, and there are all these American chains to make a bule (westerner) feel at home. A lot of life goes on in malls here. I'm staying in a huge pink hotel tower with a mall next door, and honestly most of my time has been spent in one or the other of those hideous buildings. The office of the Jakarta Globe is in the same mall, so I'm going to have to get used to escalators and muzak.

The first night I got here (after god knows how long without sleep) my friend Jim who got me the job and is also my boss took me out with some of the other editors. We drank a thousand Bintang beers and did a small tour of ex-pat bars, starting with some place that was super nice and had food and a fountain inside, then on to some place with simple wood paneling and a pool table that might have been one of my regular spots in SF or New York, and finally to a place called Top Gun, which was full of thumping music, gross dudes, and prostitutes.

I did get up to Jakarta harbor the next day (Sunday). Took a tour with a nice guy named Bram, who wants to be a travel agent but right now has to settle for walking gormy westerners around the neighborhood. He got me on board one of the big cargo ships, then we took a boat taxi to this little fishing neighborhood/village, where he walked me around to take pictures of people who live in apartments way less nice than mine. Open sewers line the sidewalks and the joint smells like a thousand toilets filled with rotting puke. But it's cool looking all the same, with little shacks built out over the water, and tiny streets that go through buildings and over rivers.

We took an orange "tuk tuk" cab (a Vespa with a bench built onto it) to this famous old Dutch colonial place called Cafe Batavia, where you may as well sport the white suit and pith helmet. It's all teak and big, slow-moving fans, with cowhides under the bar and white people at most of the tables. Super nice, though. And the bathroom has a urinal that takes up a whole wall and is made out of mirrors. I've never had such a refreshing view of myself.