Selamat malam!

Hey! Just a little update from down south. Days follow pretty much the same pattern, with much work, some gym, then home and sleep. I’m very happily surprised that I still have two arms – because cars are sometimes driving extremely close with extreme speed, so that they almost touch you. We’re also clearly entering the rain season here and the city has changed. Around Mega Kuningan, the nicer area with many embassies and five star hotels, there are no beggars but when it rains, young boys appear on the streets with huge umbrellas and offer to escort you, keeping you dry from the rain for some little fee. The city sewage system is also either useless or it rains so incredibly much, that whenever it rains the streets are absolutely flooded. This causes painstaking traffic jams all over the place and moving anywhere in a car is a nightmare. Last Monday I was on my way to Jakarta International Community Choir rehearsal, which actually is just 8-10 km from my place, but I ended up sitting in the taxi for 1,5 hours until I got there. Both me and the driver were going crazy with honking cars and mopeds everywhere around us. From now on I hope from the bottom of my heart that it doesn’t rain on Mondays when it’s my choir day.

While you’re sitting in the traffic jams, watching the taxi meter rising, poor children usually appear from the darkness and stand behind the taxi window with cute puppy eyes begging for money. Sometimes they sell something, sometimes they sing, and it doesn’t apply to kids only; last time I saw a pregnant girl standing in the 35 degrees heat outside my window with her huge belly, singing and playing an ukulele. Poverty is everywhere and it’s tough to see. It’s still really hard to pass a poor woman sleeping on the street with an almost naked newborn baby sleeping by her side.

Darkness falls always at 18:00 and with it, the rats and cockroaches come to the streets. I don’t think I know anything more disgusting than rats and cockroaches. They run around and you really need to watch your step. On my home street Jalan Tiong there’s a dead rat body flattened by cars – you can just see the fur on the pavement and its disgusting, long, thick rat tail. I try not to look at it every day I go to work.

One of the hardest things is, however, standing out from the crowd so much, and people let you know that you are a stranger here. Most of the time they just want to greet me in a friendly way, ”hello mister” is the most common way (most of the time that’s all they can say in English). All the hello-misters, how-are-you-misses, good-morning-madams etc are said in a friendly way but are very exhausting. So dear Indonesians, thank you for the friendliness you show towards foreigners, but please don’t be upset if you don’t always get the most positive, excited response – it’s because you are probably the 100th person to show this special attention to us during that same day. Oh and while I’m at it, dear motorcycle-taxi (ojek)-drivers, if I want to have a ride on your death trap, I will come and let you know, you don’t need to stand by my ear, pull my sleeve and keep repeating your ”ojek ojek ojek” mantra!

Quite expectedly, I have also got sick. This Saturday I went to a nice shopping centre called Grand Indonesia with Catharina from the Danish embassy and we had lunch in a food court. I ate Indonesian Mie Goreng, which is like fried noodles. As soon as my plate was empty, my stomach started aching terribly. Catharina and I were supposed to go to the cinema but I just had to go home, cause I couldn’t even stand upright anymore. I got the taxi home and crawled to my bed in incredible pain, until I was sick and it all came out. Surprisingly, also the stomach ache ended soon after that and I thought I had had a temporary food poisoning. Today I had lunch at an Indonesian café with my colleagues and immeadiately after eating the same pain returned. I couldn’t work, actually I couldn’t do anything else than crouch and hold my stomach, so the embassy driver took me to the SOS international health clinic. The service was outstanding and a pretty girl named ”Happy” took good care of me. The clinic was very nice and fresh and I am glad I have a good travel insurance ;) I’ve heard of so many weird diseases that travellers have had in this country that I was almost sure I’m either having typhoid, an amoeba or a parasite, but after the tests I heard to my great relief that I have neither. The only reason for my misery was that my stomach can’t handle local food. Indonesian food is quite spicy and oily and apparently the acids in my stomach reacted in this violent way. I am therefore not eating anymore Indonesian food – actually the pain was so bad that I don’t even feel sorry about it right now. I also heard my bacteria are totally messed up – I have too few good bacteria in my system which means natural yoghurt is on my daily menu now. I got some painkillers and nausea-preventing medicine and take it for a few days. Stomach continued aching until the evening and I only hope it will have passed 100% until tomorrow.

Despite having been sick I’m quite excited at the moment because the day after tomorrow it’s time for my first holiday! Work has been quite busy, so it sure is a well earned one. My mum and little sisters come to Bali for 10 days and I meet them there. We’re planning to do some shopping in Kuta, monkey-spotting and jungle trekking in Ubud and serious sunbathing and relaxing in the Gili islands off Lombok. In a couple of months Rob comes to Thailand to spend Christmas with me and we’re going to travel around there for a bit over 2 weeks, which is another major highlight of my time here. Now I’m so excited to go see my dear family soon that I’ve actually started packing record early, 2 nights before leaving!

Let me just finish with a little anecdote about Catharina. She’s a totally charming girl who, like all of us western girls, would not mind getting tanned. As you can imagine, there is a big culture difference, because here the beauty ideal is to be as white skinned as possible. Shops are full of whitening lotions and everytime we see them we agree that those lotions are the last thing we’d need or want :) On Sunday Catharina and I went to a local beauty parlour. I had a pedicure, and my hair was washed, blowdried and cut, and my total bill was 6 euros! It’s so nice to pamper yourself a little bit, because you know that soon you’re back in Scandinavia where you can never afford such a treat. Catharina had a hair mask and a manicure but she seemed somehow irritated. When we were leaving the parlour she whispered to me, obviously upset, that her manicure had got a terrible ending as she saw to her horror that the handcream, which was rubbed all over her hands and arms, contained whitening lotion. The coming days will show whether her tan, which she's worked so hard for, is soon just a memory. Poor Catharina!

Hope you're all enjoying these autumn days! I'm off to the island of gods and eternal summer and have hopefully the possibility to drop a line or two here once in a while!