Bogor

As per the name of this blog, I was very anti this trip having much of anything to do with the lady who wrote eat pray love. No offense to the fans out there but I find that woman's ramblings to be self-indulgent and actually just self obsessed. The whole "I'm so independent but my life sucks so I'm gonna run away cause I dont need a man but I get to Bali and ofcourse I marry a native because I need a man because no I WANT a man because ...VOMIT" Its like Sex in the City for the adventurous at heart...kill me.

I did bring something far more pretentious on my trip though, the pocket sized 'My Life' by Lyn Hejinian.... I read it all the way to Bogor only making it through twenty pages between the absolutely pressing need to savor and reread every word/ sentence and the totally doted upon toddler who had swatted all of her 6 siblings off her mother's lap and was simultaneously defending her position as the center of attention while totally fascinated by my big earrings / white skin... So for my first truly abstract and annoying bit of travel wisdom, I give you Lyn Hejinian...

"A German goldsmith covered a bit of metal with cloth in the 14th century and gave mankind its first button, It was hard to know this as politics, because it plays like the work of one person, but nothing is isolated in history -- certain humans are situations. Are your fingers in the margin. Their random procedures make monuments to fate."

Expect a lot more nonsense of that variety on this blog (tuning out here might be wise if you have a weak stomach for other people's annoying self realizations).

Bogor was intense! The train station is mobbed and as in the rest of Indonesia people are scrambling on to platforms running across train tracks and through other trains to get to where they are going. Leaving the station you are swarmed into mini buses, although I of course persisted on foot, just barely finding my way to the botanical gardens past all the colonial architecture (far more in tact here than in Kota). The brits built this place to get away from Jakarta and initially laid out the gardens, but the Dutch left it in good repair and added to it quite a bit. Now its used to research a bunch of extremely rare species and as the back drop for the presidental palace. Its also like central park redux, families picnicing, children playing in the irrigation channels, and vendors selling trinkets. You can really see where the colonial influence is in these little patches of Monet like bridges and clean, cut grass... but oddly their beauty is trumped by the amazing tree life. Mangroves and huge towering structures with roots that form small caves and coves above the earth's surface truly take your breath away. It started to pour down rain, which I was grateful for, the humidity had reached peak and I had run all over the gardens without a thought to my own exhaustion. Had a tea with the new yorker in a cafe on the grounds while I waited for it to stop coming down so hard.

In Bogor I got a real taste of what is to come heading deeper into Java, being white here, is insane. People want to take photos with you, stop and practice English, suggest you marry them/ their family...its a little overwhelming to say the least and thanks to Eat Pray Love, they are all constantly insisting you rush your way to Bali to find a man. I had to stop and have four separate conversations in the gardens themselves a few of them lovely and very welcome - I talked with a teacher named Inda and all her students.. and a few just uncomfortable.

As I was leaving the gardens I picked up a young man who works as a waiter in Jakarta who followed me into the train station and all the way to Jakarta (this is an hour long train ride mind you). His English was good and of course he wanted me to know all about how he had just broken up with his girlfriend and asked if I liked waterfalls and would I come to his village to see the waterfall near his house etc etc. He was very sweet but I was VERY tired.

Once we made it onto a train and had exhausted most of his English, mostly in me telling him all about my imaginary boyfriend who was waiting for me at my hotel, we got on to soccer. I told him I had really wanted Ghana to win and..."black skin!" he said and made a face. I would have been shocked but this is actually the third time I've encountered this attitude, once with another such hanger on who I had to wiggle my way out of in Kota - who told me that Obama was NOT black he was Indonesian and was quite offended with my stupidity at such a thought. So being me I charged ahead and asked him what was wrong with black skin, and is this something that is commonly thought here? He said, 'Oh yes very much so,' and explained that if a person is mixed race they are fine, but dark skin is bad. Being me I went on to describe my waiting boyfriend as being a doctor... who was black and were going to get married and have lots of babies... I shook him a block from my hotel telling him he should go meet up with his friends and email me at the fake email address I had given him. Dont get me wrong these boys are not threatening or all that mal-intentioned, most are very kind, but its really hard to form any sort of genuine bond to someone who speaks to you on the basis of your skin color alone let alone espouses certain attitudes you are leaving behind in your OWN messed up country...where do you go from there?

Thanks to Nomaduma I knew to bring a ring and after yesterday I shall wear it from here on out and save myself some trouble....imaginary boyfriend "Will you do me the honor..."

-Katy

PS Endlessly boring photos of foliage / botanical garden to follow. Never thought I would say this but, GO GERMANY!!

Some fotos

Today I walked all the way to Kota which is, not a far walk by NY standards but in the sun here the Indonesian's definitely thought I was crazy. But I return the - "You're crazy" and raise them a "Why are you riding without helmets four to a motorcycle with a toddler and a newborn?" Motorcycles are a way of LIFE here there are two or three of them to every car in the traffic jam and they do have a sort of enticing appeal - like riding a mini john deere tractor through times square sorta thing. You'd have the jump on many of the cars slowed down and unable to pass each other, but you'd also be on a tractor....
Kota is one of the oldest parts of Jakarta, its got all this crumbling Dutch architecture, but mostly its a place of novelty. Bunches of young teens come to rent the old two seater bikes that come with nifty hats to wear while you zip around looking oh so silly. I eventually figured out that there IS a train I could have taken instead of my four mile walk but...then that would be no fun? No sunburn No gain.... wait that doesnt rhyme...The Train was by far the best part of my day/ trip / existence. Its perfectly awful on one hand, you're all crowded into this train hanging like monkeys with the doors open and the potential to fall out at any random jolt...there is no airconditioning and you almost mind everyone else's smelling bad except that you stink too so whose to judge. But on the other hand you're whisked past the back part of Jakarta the part where you see how people really live ...the laundry hanging out of houses made of metal roof siding with the minarets protruding up above them in the background. People laugh at you because you are so clearly a touristo and NOT supposed to be there. However, like the Indonesians that they are, they are kind and helpful and altogether good natured about your not having the faintest clue about anything. They help you off at the right stop having to PUSH your hardest the minute before the train takes off just to squeeze your way out onto the platform... only to look up and see all the people riding atop the train, young boys and men dodging the electrical wires. The experience serves to remind one that perhaps you've spent a little too much of your everyday life worrying about safety and wrapped blissfully in a false sense of what is permissible behavior at the expense of what is in some cases undeniably practical.HERE are some pictures!

Last moments in NY with Mom

Duty Free In Doha Quatar *note the sports car*


Shopping Market/Mall


Mall Food/ Foodcourt Bliss

Kota

Everyone wanted to take their pictures with the white people... when asked I said no thanks...

Soekarta's last erection... No for real... thats what they call it...

A Vote of Confidence

Arriving In Jakarta - Craving The Heat

First off lets start with these awesome adventure shots Negin took of me an hour before JFK cause you will all feel better that my sense of humor is still in tact....
Phew glad we got that out of the way now you've all laughed at me so you know I'm still alive and very much myself. Some notes from the beautiful notebook Jane F. gave to me before I left -

10 PM EST - JFK - bought a watch. A last minute splurge but a much desired item as I try to orient my body and mind to different time zones. I ended up buying a junior's watch because I have abnormally small wrists... seriously its a freakshow. The damn thing wouldn't set so I spent the better part of my wait at the gate winding and winding in order to bring the calendar fully around to the 1st.
9 PM on the 4th - The gate is too full to have a seat I find a corner on the floor.
4 AM on the 8th - I am trying to figure out where all my neighbors are headed - mostly they look Indian and very few appear to be Jakarta bound.
6 PM on the 14th - CNN is interviewing Jimmy Buffet about the Gulf Spill. Without the sound I imagine it to sound something like " The Streets of Margaritaville have forever been tarnished by this environmental calamity! We are showing our solidarity with our pelican brothers and sisters by smudging our Hawaiin shirts with chocolate, recognizing that we are forever mired and dirtied by the fetters of blackened capitalist hearts pumping the filthy black blood of their souls into our oceans."...
12 AM on the 19th - My fingers really hurt.
4 PM on the 21st - Lining up.
5:47 on the 28th - Handing my boarding pass with one last longing look at US soil.
11:30 on the 1st - in my seat and the damn thing is finally set.

Thankfully my neighbor was the kindest young Indian newly wed. We bonded. She works on several month long projects in the US and is between there and her new hometown of Bengaluru in the South of India. I asked her if she could give anything to America from India and vice versa what would it be. She mulled it over and settled on giving America the family values and unbreakable ties one finds in the Indian family structure and for India she would give them America's glass ceiling, "Its there but its much higher for you American women". As we got off the plane she offered me a place to stay in the South of India, not sure I'll go but so so grateful to have made a friend it bodes well for the trip and I do hope to meet her again perhaps back in America.

Doha Quatar is the first bout of culture shock I experience. The people of Quatar LOVE the AC ... it was something to the tune of 50 some odd degrees Fareheit for 13 hours... 13...hours. As I sit and watch people pass and eat my TERRIBLE meal voucher food - it occurs to me that head coverings are as much a determinant of feminimity in the Arab world as they are beacons of political and religious outrage/fervor. When you are the only woman with out your head covered - or well one of them - you feel like the lesbian at the Burka party...I meander down to the duty free (by the way Quatar airport is like 13 % airport and the rest is ALL duty free - I took a picture that I will upload later before a cop stopped me of the CARS in the duty free... they have cars... in a duty free). I look for an affordable headscarf but everything is Ferragamo and upwards so I give up and look for a place to settle..... UNTIL I realize that my comrades in late night airport excursions had found a window into the business lounge to watch the end of Ghana's loss to Uruguay. There is nothing like watching the world cup with the world.

I made friends with a Japanese man who could in some english communicate the scores, we were most of us cheering for Ghana and I flirted with a Kuwaiti who had only just moved back home after 15 years in the states. We both expressed extreme sadness over the loss of the last of the African teams - agreeing it would have been great, while the games were in Pretoria, to see Ghana advance. I expressed extreme sadness inside my head at the state of my appearance looking like I'd been hiking through the apocalypse with the sisterhood of Gaya.

The hellish wait ended and I was on board the second leg of my flight unable to stave off sleep any longer. Upon arriving in Jakarta I rushed through customs to catch Germany winning by 4 points! Whats going on. The Indonesians are crowded around a screen and shouting me and my taxi driver stall to watch a few minutes before my exhaustion propels me towards the backseat of a barely airconditioned car (for which I am extremely grateful).

My hotel, Bumi Johar is located past all of the super Americana in the heart of old Jakarta. Its nice and a bit grungy which I appreciate. I watch the end of Wesley Snipes defeating some other vampires in Blade... and I'm out cold.

I figure tonight I will go watch Twilight with the Indonesians...I'm thrilled .. the guy in the internet cafe is blasting and singing American Pop songs - the kind you hear on the backdrop of MTV reality shows ...the kind that are written for the back drop of MTV reality shows. "Its immpoossssible to fiiiyynnnnddduhhh, Tallkkkk is cheaapppppuhh....Cause tonight will be the night I fall for youuuu"...sigh.

Everyone wants to take me to Obama's house.

PS I've done something horrid to my hair. I needed to trim my bangs and now they are so short... like bad short... oh well. Hair grows and I've retained very little of my dignity to begin with.

Love love love

Thank you NEW YORK!!

Six years (?) of awesome... I dont even have the time to photo recap completely but that'll come later when I actually get to my camera.. buried somewhere deep in the depths of the Giant Green Goblin.

Thank you all for an awesome going away get together and all your well wishes. I'd be lying if I didnt say that panic is gripping me at the very core of my being...but I charge forward visa in hand. with dim sense that no many how many trips to the black hole of Paragon Sports I take I'm fully unprepared for what lies ahead.

I leave you with this...

Hi Everybody!

I'm busy packing up my kitchen and listening to This American Life (shout out to Jane Feltes)

Anywhoozle check back with me soon for pictures of the far east, stories of my escapades, and pictures of lots of unassuming Asian people being exploited.

I have a giant green backpack and am looking for suggestions on how to name it...
Suggestions welcome.