Quarter Year

The whole ‘having a driver’ business is new to us: Mul didn’t even mention Alex, sitting behind the wheel, when they picked us up at the airport. After a while we understood that it’s normal to ignore the drivers, maids, nannies and cooks, to talk as if the person that’s there is not there. When we went for a drive, Mul said it would be just the four of us – him and Michelle, me and Azure. Alex drove us.

On that first day in Jakarta, Azure needed a dress for New Year’s but the mall’s parking lot attendant didn’t like that our car was trying to force its way in through the service entrance. Mul can handle any problem, though, and he ignored the workers’ NOs and used the service entrance anyway. Another time he told us it was illegal to drive in the bus lanes, people got in big trouble for it, then he did it anyway. We asked what would happen if he got pulled over and he said nothing would happen: he knows the police chief. He said that success in third-world countries is determined by who you know.

Mul runs a number of businesses, his main income coming from cell phone products. In addition to running phone auctions, he sells ringtones and wallpaper, so he’s constantly using his two phones – one was a really nice Blackberry. They had an extra phone for us, which was really convenient, and Michelle had two phones as well. So many phones!

One time Mul was on the phone as he drove us through the gates of his complex. His maid was waiting farther ahead at the curb and he waved her across to the driver’s side of the road. She hesitated to cross in front of his moving car, but he waved insistently, so she went, assuming he’d stop. He didn’t, and he almost ran her over, still talking on his phone. She handed him whatever we were there to pick up, and as soon as it was in his hand he pulled away and almost ran her over again. She had to jump back. I don’t know if he saw her.

Mul and Michelle were very generous, taking us out to some very nice meals we wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. The first night we had a Korean BBQ dinner that he said cost $400 – the meat was amazing and the service spectacular. The next day we went to a hole-in-the-wall noodle joint that he said cost $40 for the five of us. He said it was too expensive, and I agree considering you can find noodle dishes everywhere for $0.50. These noodles were very good, and Mul again generously paid. Sometimes the kids came with us and had their own simple food – Azure noted that Sebastien, the youngest, craved the same thing kids in the US crave: fish sticks and french fries.

When the kids got loud or fussy Mul & Michelle would pass them off to one of the nannies who would take the kids away to eat. Though it’s certainly foreign to us, my impression was that the kids’ needs were being met all the time. At restaurants the nannies sat at a different table and ate food brought from home. A number of nannies sat in the lobbies, all dressed in similar ill-fitting pastels made for dirty work, taking care of kids for the busy parents inside. When we tried to talk to one of the nannies they were surprised and usually didn’t answer. They were the background.

The kids’ nannies live at Mul’s apartment and spend all their time with the family, on call 24 hours. I asked if the nannies had families themselves and he said, “Of course,” but I’m not sure how that works. The nannies eat what Mul buys for them. In-home helpers are cheap because Mul provides a room for them to stay. He said a nanny costs $80 a month.

Mul said his bar tabs sometimes reach $1400 on a big night, but that’s the price of playing the game among the Jakarta elite. “It’s who you know,” he says, and Mul knows a lot of people. On drives Mul would point out the latest immense real estate developments and he would drop for us the owners’ names. More often than not, Mul knew the owner and had done business with him or was somehow related. Mul instructed his driver to take us past the mall with the most cell phone sales in Southeast Asia.

Mul is really excited about getting into the mining business. Mul knows which companies are successful and why. He’s ambitious, quoting a Chinese proverb that says, “Above every sky there is another sky.” He said everyone cares what brand of clothing you wear, what cell phone you use, what cars you have, what neighborhood you live in. Mul rolls with the high rollers, everyone he hangs out with is someone important. In Jakarta, they practically worship successful companies and brands.

Mul said his family is Christian. They are Chinese-Indonesians and retain strong Chinese traditions, living in the city’s “second Chinatown,” the most exclusive gated community in Jakarta. The stunning houses soar, standing testament to the community’s business success. Apparently, in 1998, Jakarta’s Muslim majority rioted because they believed the Chinese-Indonesians controlled all the wealth and withheld it from the rest of the country. Mul retorted that there are poor Chinese-Indonesians, too. He said, for example, that their driver is half-Chinese, and he only makes $150 a month.

Mul put us up in the brand-spanking-new, $130-per-night Bandung Hilton. The pure white sheets attracted me, they were so clean and luxurious. Azure and I never stay in hotels like the Hilton. Mul obviously appreciates the luxury, service and respected brand name. While rain rolled off the floor-to-ceiling self-cleaning windows, we watched the Rose Bowl on a flat-screen tv and I took a very hot shower. The next morning featured the most extensive breakfast buffet I’ve ever seen, broken up by cuisine. Az and I eagerly sacked the American section’s eggs, waffles, cereal and toast. The Chinese section had noodle soups, hum bao and other stuff I didn’t recognize. There was Indonesian, Japanese and even an ice cream bar for kids of all colors.

We ran into Michelle’s family at breakfast. They’re very genuine people – her dad develops organic fertilizer and is lobbying the government to endorse its use. Her cousin is helping. This was encouraging to hear.

Mul and Michelle skipped breakfast because the maids dropped off their kids and they’d played late into the night, the maids returning to their own hotel across the street. I imagine that hotel is filled with the maids for families staying in the Hilton, all dressed in ill-fitting pastels. The kids seemed tuckered out the next morning, and the maids accompanied them with their grandparents while the five of us toured Bandung with Mul’s friend.

We had a wonderful Sundanese (people of Bandung) lunch in a stunning, unique restaurant called the Leaf Village. We ate in outdoor huts that wandered up the misty hillside among enormous ferns and leafy trees. Azure was sick, so she layed down in the hut while the rest of us enjoyed the food without her. Afterwards, Alex drove us to a lookout where we watched the sun drop behind some nearby mountains. This part of Java is magical. I hope Az and I get a chance to tour the countryside someday.

On the next-to-last day Mul had a special treat for me – he took me to a gorgeous spa with four different pools, temperatures ranging from hot tub to icey. We relaxed in the steam room, jumped in the ice bath, then shivered to the sauna. After I brushed my teeth and shaved we got hour-long massages. Mul treated me to the whole evening and I appreciate his generosity.

The next day Az and I were on our own so we went to Pizza Hut, desperate to rebuild our stomaches with some Western food. Michelle joined us shortly after, having put her daughter down for a nap. Michelle is interested in photography but doesn’t know how to use an SLR, so we treated her to a tutorial, introducing ISO, aperture and shutter speed, and how they affect a photo. She seemed to appreciate the instruction, I hope it could start to pay back their generosity.

Mul showed up and we finally said our goodbyes. They were off to a surprise party, so they had their driver take us to the airport. On the way I tried to ask him some questions, remembering a conversation we’d had with a taxi driver in Bali, but it didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think he felt comfortable talking freely with his passenger.

There are bugs in the room, and this evening I came home to the nastiest spider I’ve ever seen, relaxing next to our lightswitch with an air of entitlement. It’s definitely not the paradise Lonely Planet promised, but I reminded Azure, half-encouraging myself, that if we could overcome our dependence on nice rooms we would save a lot of money (and therefore travel longer). She reminded me that nobody at home would consider any of our rooms “nice,” and we do save a lot of money because of it. Oh yeah. Azure wrote a hilarious post about the hotel here: http://www.quarteryear.com/us-vs-bugs

Right now, at 8pm, prayers are echoing in our room from two separate mosques, one voice from the east, one from the west. It’s beautiful, if haunting, and it’s a little bizarre that one muezzin is a child. This area does feel different than other parts of Bali. The young men leer more. Hindu locals have told us that this is what Muslim areas are like. I’m sure Muslim locals would say the opposite. I don’t know the religion of the young men, but, compared to the rest of Bali, Medewi is much less welcoming.

Two miles past Medewi beach we rode toward the water. Groups of young men perched on their motorcycles hanging out next to the ocean beaches, tons of men. There were some women here and there, but mostly just young men staring at us, calling out, “HEY! HEY MAN!” I don’t like when people yell at us. When we first encountered this in Kuta I wanted to ask the touts, “How would you feel if someone yelled, ‘HEY!’ at you?” Maybe not that bad, it turns out. At a homestay in Ubud the owners did exactly that to get a family member’s attention, yelling down to the courtyard, “HEY! HEY! HEY!” It really rubs me the wrong way, but that’s how they do it. A nasty old woman there was responsible for both the yelling and the loogie-haucking outside our window, several times a day.

Back in Medewi, to the west along the shore, a series of pens at the edge of the beach hold cows who graze the trees and grasses. Across the road rice paddies sprawl under the most plastic bag scarecrows I’ve seen anywhere in Bali. The bags are tied to strings that run across the mature rice, and when a farmer notices birds eying his field he yanks the strings and the bags jump. If that fails, a lady standing in the field yells and swings a large flag toward the flocks. From here a number of Hindu shrines dot a village road that lead us inland. We stopped to watch two cocks start a pickup fight.

We crossed the main road and drove toward the mountains, an hour before sunset, surprised that the small towns here aren’t as poor as we expected. The brick houses are well-constructed and the neighborhoods are cute and clean, even deep into the hills that roll down from the national park. The road pierces the jungle for miles and just when we were convinced it would cross to the opposite coast, it petered out to gravel. We turned around.

High in the hills we ran into a mobile vendor who sold us some tasty fried tofu snacks wrapped around beansprouts. The people were nice, most smiled at us, as is usual outside the cities. We were so deep I’m sure no other white people had been up that road any time recently, and the people who didn’t smile at us gawked in surprise. One side of the road teased glimpses across a valley that’s raw and thick with coconut palms and primary growth, jungle toppling onto itself. I wanted to take a picture of the natural beauty, but it would have been a picture that demands a pre-delete button, Azure and I joke. You know your next picture will be a throwaway, so you press “pre-delete,” then take it anyway.

We coasted down the hill and stopped at a grocery store for some carb snacks – chocolate bread, jackfruit chips and peanuts. At a gas station Azure offered a chip to the driver behind us, and he happily took her up on it. Everyone lol’ed.

We stopped at some food stalls and ordered bakso (soup with balls of “meat”), though after watching a lady make an egg-filled, veggie-rich soto ayam (chicken soup) we second-guessed our decision. The bakso held its own anyway. While deciding where to sit we did the usual smile-at-people routine, and one little boy called, “Tourist! Tourist!” but his mom shut him up quick. It reminded me of something that happened regularly when I said something stupid as a kid. Specifically I remember the Canadian Exchange – a yearly event when players from a Canadian soccer team stayed with families from our American team, then a couple weeks later the roles reversed. I welcomed the Canadian kid to our home, saying, “Welcome to the lifestyles of people on Somerset!” imitating Robin Leech. My mom shut me up quick, even though it was just silly in my mind, because of course we weren’t rich & famous. It was just another house, to me. Maybe we were rich compared to that kid, though, I don’t remember.

One of the years I stayed with a Vancouver family who lived in an apartment. They ate french fries with gravy and had a toddler daughter named Sidney – I felt sorry that she’d grow up in an apartment. I called my parents collect (they were proud that I could pull that off), but I was homesick and scared because the family was unexpectedly different. I don’t know if I felt sorry for them or uncomfortable about being outside my bubble – probably a combination – but I remember crying.

Today, in Bali, as we drove through some of the poorer neighborhoods and watched the pickup cock fight, I thought about how last year we passed similar Colombian poverty and felt sick from a distance. This year we’re in it, on a bike of course, but we face the differences and keep pushing ourselves to understand it. As we went deeper and deeper into the mountains I started feeling nervous. I glanced at the gas, we had plenty, so I had to ask myself, “You’re not nervous about the scooter; do you trust the people?”

On this trip I’ve come to the conclusion that fear is not a good reason to not do something. Fear is an emotional response to perceived risk, and our perceptions are so often wrong.

Back at the food stalls Azure ordered a delicious pancake thing heavy with chocolate, peanuts and condensed milk, and the cook battled flying ants as dusk dropped to night. We drove home through a storm of flying ants, they were all over the road, maybe attracted by the headlights. They floated thick like Seattle’s cottonwood blooms in truck headlights, then rolled like dry leaves as the trucks passed. As we crossed the bridge into Medewi two swarms of larger bugs pelted my neck and chest, at first I thought it was gravel. It was disgusting. As soon as we got home, and I snuck past the enormous spider, I washed my face and hands. Not much you can do about that.

Ari has a buah-hati, a sweetheart, he knows he wants to marry, but he doesn’t want to propose until his wanderlust has run its course. He says his girlfriend has low self-esteem when it comes to simple things, so he tells her to practice confidence in the mirror. Each nuclear family is called a “kaka” and this family compound includes four kakas. When Ari marries his buah-hati they’ll start the family’s fifth kaka in the unfinished house where we ate. The house, when all is said and done, will cost about $8000 to build from foundation to roof tiles.

While Ari’s sisters cooked, their many young children ran around or stopped to stare at us as, landing in the lap of Ari’s father, a 71-year-old Bapak (the title of all older men here, and the honorific you use when addressing them directly).

Though there are no family names, Ari adopted de Madia (the French, “from,” combined with the Indonesian, “the middle”) to indicate his philosophy – he doesn’t want to be too rich, nor too poor, just hanging out doing his thing in the middle. It’s also a reference to this village being “madia” of Munduk, which refers to the wider collection of villages in the area.

Ari prepared the herbs that flavor the soup: tumeric, a strong red onion, lemongrass, garlic and candlenut (which I’ve never heard of). At one point they ground fresh sambal on a dark mortor, with the setup beforehand being a single chili, a pinch of salt and some shrimp paste reposing right in the middle of the stone platter. Just gorgeous. Then a sister ground the ingredients and added them to the soup.

When dinner was ready we walked the compound’s paths to Ari’s new construction, the shell of a house that was just finished enough to protect us from rain during the outdoor dinner. We sat on the concrete floor at a low table. There was no door, just an opening, and where there would be windows was just a frame looking out on a tree, behind which the valley extended.

Dinner started with vegetable soup that tasted just like the soup from Julia’s on 65th. There was white rice, fried potatoes and sweet chili corn fritters that stuck to our teeth. Dessert was taro cake, a gooey, sweet paste that’s topped with coconut. Ari mixed arak (palm liquor) with lime & honey, which he warned was really strong, but I found it weak compared to the drinks I mix myself at home. He poured the cocktail into shot glasses (his Japanese sake set) and we sipped them after the meal. We drank water from a bottle.

Later in the night there was a lightning storm that, through the unfinished window, lit the sky behind Ari as he spoke. I managed to catch a shot of him lighting a cigarette, face illuminated by the flame. Over thunder, Ari translated our conversation with his uncle and Bapak. It was pretty damn magical, yet another night I couldn’t have imagined had I not experienced it firsthand. It justifies traveling.

More on Ari’s uncle & bapak tomorrow.

The girl working there was named Iluh and Mike met her yesterday while I was buying water. He was asking about chocolate to anyone who would listen and she had told him that her friend was a chocolate grower. Thinking that we could go see how chocolate was made, Mike set up a meeting with her for the following day (today).

We met her at 1pm and she closed down the “tourist information office” to take us. There was no formality to this, she just closed the door and locked up shop and walked us to the trail. I don’t know what her motivation was, since it was not a paid tour, but we think it has something to do with the Bali Childrens Project, and organization that I believe sponsors the office and tries to get donations to put Balinese children through high school. We learned the it costs $40/month to put one child through high school. She had been sponsored/adopted by a woman named Joyce who is from California who is the director of the project.

I think she also wanted to practice her English, so I asked many, many questions. Here’s what I can remember…

The difference for a child who goes to school vs. one who does not go to high school is that the one who doesn’t go will work in the fields. Those people make 30,000/day ($3) and cannot find work everyday…maybe one week a month she said. The children who go to school can work in tourism like she does. At a hotel or something like that.

I asked if there are any other jobs, not tourism and not farming and she said not really. I was going to ask more but we got distracted by something.

I asked what she went to school for. She said English and computers. Computers being word, excel, the internet. I had forgotten that those things were learned and not intrinsic. I take that for granted.

I asked her if she still studied English and she said no, that that would cost more money and then I said she could learn from books and she giggled and said she guessed she could.

I asked what she talked about with her friends when they hung out. She said she didn’t hang out with friends because she worked in the office from 8:30-4:30 then went to work for another foundation called “HELP”.

She had been “adopted” by Joyce and John, but only lived with them for one month of the year when they were in Bali. Her mother had died a long time ago and her real father was very poor. She had not lived with him in a few years and didn’t see him very often, which she was sad about. Another man she referred to as her father as well, but called him Bapak. He was the director of the foundation and spoke English well. I think she and her sister had lived with him and she still lived with him when she was not living with Joyce and John. I think it was a “normal” situation.

As we walked along the path, she would stop and point out various plants and trees. It was very informative. At one point when we had been walking for about 45 minutes, Mike asked if the chocolate plantation was down in the valley where we were going. She said no, that we had passed it. Where are we going then? To see the waterfall. We weren’t really aware of this and so we asked about the chocolate production and she said that people dried it here, but did not make chocolate with it.

We stopped at the waterfall. It was very beautiful, maybe 120 feet high. It was thin and the mist was very refreshing.

We asked why they didn’t make it here and she said because no one knew how. They make it on Java and I asked why they didn’t send one person to go learn how to make it and then bring the information back and make it here. She laughed at that. Actually laughed. She thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. We had a very one sided (Mike and I) conversation about possibilities and she really did not seem to comprehend the need for any of that. We explained that we were being very American, but we asked her if people create new jobs here. She said no. People are either farmers or in tourism or sometimes work in shops.

It was difficult to ask all the things I wanted because of the language AND cultural barrier.

When she talked about low wages for farmers, I thought about labor unions.

When she explained the two career paths I thought about all the industries that are absent from Bali. I thought about marketing, I thought about investments (though they do have very primitive investment schemes, her organization gives baby pigs to poor families. Seven months later, that family must pay the organization $70 for the baby pig, but the grown pig can be sold for more. The family makes money by raising a pig)
I thought about invention fairs for children and groups who come up with new services for the communities. Trash collection does not exist here and so the streets are full of litter.

It is very very simple here. People work 7 days a week. All day. They will work for almost nothing and cannot even survive on their wages. And innovation is almost non-existent here. In fact, I get the impression that people who step outside the box are laughed at. There is a sense that if one thing works, others should do the same thing because it obviously works, so when you drive down the road it is mango stand mango stand mango stand for about a mile, then grape stand grape stand grape stand for another mile. One woman will sit and sell the same fruit as the woman next to her for hours a day. I think the competition here kills profit and hurts everyone, but how do you even start explaining what that means. In town it is the same thing. Every store carries the same things, every restaurant, the same foods. It is a funny novelty for us, but I can see it is not helping the people rise above anything.

I asked if she had been outside Bali. She said she had been to Java, but not all the way to Jakarta. She said that she would like to travel someday and California is where she would like to go. She asked me what the difference was between California and Bali. I couldn’t even answer that question. I explained that California was big, perhaps 20 times the size of Bali. I wasn’t sure. I asked if she meant the California that she sees in movies and she said yes. I assumed she meant Los Angeles. I couldn’t even describe Los Angeles. It is very big is all I could think of. Are there a lot of buildings, she asked. Yes, more buildings than trees. I decided to tell her about plastic surgery, since it is a fun novelty. She laughed when I indicated larger breasts and she seemed truly confused when I told her some people will get new noses. She didn’t understand. I asked her what she thought California was like. She didn’t answer except to say that she thought the people would be very nice. Joyce is from California, so I would assume she thinks that all people are very nice.

Iluh is very small. She might actually be a foot shorter than me, which would make her 4’8” tall. She is definitely the smallest person I have ever seen. Her English is not great and I tried to envision her walking around in Los Angeles. It made me a little sad. I am afraid she would be overlooked and I doubt the girls at the tourist office would invite her to their homes to make traditional Californian food as she did to us. On one hand I hope she makes it to California, even though the odds are stacked against her. She makes $40/month right now. We paid $900 to get here. It would be great for her to see another country so different from Munduk, but would it be kind to her? I am not sure.

We walked back from the waterfall, never getting to see a “chocolate factory” but that was okay. When we arrived back at the “tourist information office” there were people on the steps waiting for it to open. They were hot and irritated and Iluh didn’t seem to notice. They asked us if we had went to find her to open it and I felt so stupid saying, no, she just took us on a 2 hour hike. Sorry about that. Mike asked her something about recycling before their irritation halted the conversation. We aren’t asking anything touristy, we said, go ahead. They got hotel information, but ended up using our recommendation instead. They are staying next door to us now. I told them they could get hiking maps from the hotel. It took 30 second to set them on the right path because they were Americans. We knew how to talk to them and what to say.