Indonesia: Day 3

Wednesday, January 26, 2010

I woke up a couple times during the night, and one of the times I heard the Call to Prayer again… at 4:30 in the morning. I actually got up and around at 5:30 am this morning, even though I went to bed later last night. I’m not really sure how this time zone adjustment thing is going…

I ate some Rice Krispies for breakfast and watched the sunrise. Uncle Harry came to pick me up at what I thought would be 8:00 am, but due to Jakarta’s yucky traffic situation it was more like 9:15. We dropped off his wife Riesa first at work, and then we headed to an area on the outskirts of Jakarta where SeaWorld is located.

Now, the SeaWorld in Jakarta is not like the SeaWorld in San Diego, CA. It’s just an indoor aquarium, but it is full of all sorts of exotic tropical fish. Indonesia has a very rich aquatic life, being an island nation, and there were so many kinds of fish I’d never imagined! I also got to see a preserved Coalcanth, a fish that was believed to be extinct back in the age of the dinosaurs, but they rediscovered this one alive in 2008. I also saw a preserved manta ray that weighed over 900 kilograms, and when it was alive it was the largest manta ray known to man. I also got to pet live manta rays, sea turtles, clams, and even sharks!


After SeaWorld we went to an art village next door. The Indonesians are very artistic, and they are known for their wood carvings. They can carve complete scenes out of a single piece of wood, and with intricate detail.


We drove down to an outdoor seafood restaurant, and that was definitely a unique culinary experience. You pull up to the restaurant, and at the front are ice coolers of freshly-caught fish, urdang (shrimp), clams, and lobster, along with aquariums of live seafood. You point to which ones you want, and the restaurant employee takes them out of the cooler for you and puts them in a plastic basket. He takes the basket to the counter for you and weighs it, and you tell him how you want it prepared. We had GIGANTIC shrimp with sweet sauce and butter, a grilled red snapper, squid fried into calamari, another type of fried fish, and rice. We had a lovely view of the harbor from our table, where they catch the seafood locally and bring it in each day. While I had many doubts about the sanitation quality of the entire establishment (flies EVERYWHERE), we ate well, and I probably ate the best shrimp in my entire life. On top of that, we made a couple of new friends when we fed the stray cats that came up to our table.


The stray cats are an interesting topic. Dogs are often domestic pets of the wealthy, but cats run completely wild throughout Jakarta. The general attitude toward the cats is that they’re just another creature, like pigeons are to us in the US. They’re not treated very well, and all the cats I’ve seen are very small and skinny, and I even saw one limping around the art village by SeaWorld. One interesting feature about Indonesian cats is that they have really short tails, ranging from half the length of our cats’ tails to little stubs. Of course, being an animal lover it’s been hard for me to see all these strays, but it made my day to give a full meal to the ones at the restaurant.


We traveled back through 45 minutes of traffic to the Pacific Point mall. This was also an interesting experience. Of course, there is security at the gate to pull the car in, and more security when you enter the mall (they scan your purse and walk you through a metal detector). Instead of US malls which are build spread out, theirs are compressed into eight to nine stories, and often they build hotels or apartment skyscrapers on top. And this mall was so incredibly upscale that it made the Biltmore Fashion Square look ghetto. But in Jakarta you are either very rich or very poor, and the rich can afford to shop at these high-class malls (there aren’t any lower-class malls in Jakarta).

They have many of the same stores we have, like Guess, Bebe, Louis Vuitton, Coach, and even Gap, but there are no large department stores and no food court. Instead, there are upscale, chic sit-down restaurants, including the fanciest Wendy’s that I’ve ever seen. One of the restaurants, Y&Y, looked more like a hip nightclub, and had specialty seating on their built-in lake (on the fifth story, mind you).


If you’ve ever seen Pulp Fiction, remember when they eat in the restaurant and their booth is an entire car? Well, at Y&Y it is a sailboat table on the water. Or you have the option of eating in their lighthouse, either at the bottom or at the top. All I can say is that it was absolutely incredible, and so creative! But the best part is that the food was not all that expensive, either. It was probably less than the price of going out to eat at a casual dining restaurant in the US.


When my dad got off work, he wanted us to meet him at Pasaraya, another mall. This one was also very upscale compared to our malls, but definitely not as nice as Pacific Point. But this one had more of a focus on cultural art, called batik, and it also had a grocery store and an Asian pharmacy (very different medicine than what you’d find in Walgreens). We met my dad at Starbucks, along with the maid Yanti, who wanted to meet me on her way home. Her English was a little hard for me to understand, but she was so incredibly friendly and warm! She wanted to take a picture with me in the mall, so we asked an employee to take our picture. She said no, and all the other employees said they were unable to for security reasons. I didn’t really understand it, but we gave up trying to ask.

The batik we saw were wood-carved and rope furniture, Bali silver artwork, clothing, Gamelan instruments (my favorites!), dolls and shadow puppets (they’re famous for their shadow puppetry), dishware, and wood-carved statues. There was also jewelry, keychains, masks, paintings, and basically anything relating to traditional culture that you could possibly imagine. It felt more like a marketplace rather than a mall; it was very unusual.


One thing I don’t like about the malls here is that they have WAY too many employees than you need, and they’re all trying to sell you their wares and being over-the-top, in-your-face service-oriented. They sometimes follow you around along the rows of stuff just to see what you show any remote interest in, and then they’ll shove it in your face and show you how cool it is. It’s really annoying.

Another unique feature of the mall is that there is an elevator man who basically stands in there all day just to push the button for you. These malls are WAY overstaffed, in my opinion, but when most make only $100 a month, you realize how easy it is to employ lots of people.

After hanging out with Dad and Uncle Harry at Passaraya, we went back to Pacific Point to meet Riesa for dinner at Y&Y, the really cool restaurant. We sat in the back bar area, where the floors glowed white and a tree canopies the seating area. I felt like I should have been at an ultra-exclusive LA nightclub, but the food was so cheap! I had a strange pizza that I shared with Reisa, which included three pizza toppings in one. The first was my choice, a potato and herb pizza, which was pretty tasty. No one else at the table seemed to think so. Riesa had a mushroom pizza, which I didn’t really care for (I don’t like mushrooms), and then a mushroom and shrimp pizza that I avoided. Who puts seafood on a pizza?!?

After being told that they were out of all of my first three choices for a dessert, I settled on the only other thing I thought I would eat off the menu: a chocolate-covered waffle topped with ice cream. It was good, and I’m glad I avoided all the green-tea flavored cakes and ice creams (weird!).

Now I’m back at Daddy’s apartment, so exhausted from my busy day of walking around so much! It’s 10:15 pm right now, but I’ve been ready for bed for about half the day now! I’m starting to miss the Internet quite a bit, but I’ll just wait until I’m in our hotel room in Macau tomorrow night to get wireless in our room. We leave for China tomorrow morning, so wish me luck!

Time for bed,
Kati