A Last Gasp

Pangandaran

I’d be surprised if you’ve heard of this place.

I hadn’t heard of it myself until a few weeks back, when Remi, a Dutch guy I met in East Java, recommended I come here.

I’m so glad he did.

He told me the place was beautiful, that there was loads to see, and that there were only a few tourists here, including Westerners.

He was totally right on all points.

This is the sorta place that when you come here, you just wanna stay longer. And then longer, and longer.

It’s so relaxed, so chilled, so easy.

The whole coastline consists of vast expansive beaches, occasional cliff headlands, and then more beaches.

It’s perfect for appreciating nature, watching sunsets, chilling, eating, and reading books. And jamming.

There’s a couple of bars that have live music every night of the week. I’ve been out to them pretty much every night, brushing up on my covers.

Ya man Rastafari.

The town itself is small but quite busy, but it’s well away from the beaches. And as you leave town in any direction there’s small fishing villages dotted along the vast coastline, there’s forests, coconut plantations, and rice fields.

The final stretch to the beach, Pantai Pangandaran. There’s a charge of Rp 10,000 (about AUD1) to go through. But once I went through once, they never charged me again. They remembered that crazy bule on the bike.

Notice the big cigarette billboard. They’re everywhere. Smoking rates are off the charts in Indonesia. People smoke everywhere, including indoors. Every bar smells like Australian bars used to. Over 70% of men smoke in Indonesia, but only 5% of women.

Does that mean women here are 14 times smarter than men?

Just for comparison, Australia has about a 10% adult smoking rate, pretty much the same for men and women, and around 5% for young teens (12-15). It’s one of the lowest rates in the so-called “developed” world.

But before we get too carried away with all that, don’t forget that vaping rates are rising rapidly, with 22% of 18-24 yr olds now vaping, and 17% of 25-34 yr olds. Let alone younger teens.

Vapes are cheaper than cigarettes, flavoured just for teens, they don’t smell bad like cigarettes do, and teens think they’re safer than smoking cigarettes (they’re not, because nicotine levels are still high, and noone outside the manufacturers know what else is in them). They’re well marketed, and have no stigma attached to them like cigarettes do. Research has shown that vaping also leads people who have never smoked towards cigarettes.

Don’t worry, Big Tobacco still definitely knows which side its coffins are varnished on.

Gangster street art

I skipped the unlucky meatballs, but I did try some grilled Pete. He was so sweet, but we all knew that anyway.

Pangandaran city beach. I was here every day.

The bar we spent a lot of time in, The Better Social Bar. Two Dutchies from Amsterdam, Marika, and Carlo (Dutch-Surinamese) were staying at the same guesthouse as me. We hung out a lot at night, with a bunch of Pangandarans.

A ship actually landed on top of this building during the tsunami in 2004, and some amazingly enterprising local turned it into a hotel and café.

If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

But I do admit this wondrous building really takes kitsch up to a new level.

The sheer magnificence of nature. This was one of many.

Del, the guitarist, was really good, and he has an amazing voice too. He came and jammed at the guest house pretty much every day.

First one of these I’ve seen in Indo

Around about art

I think it’s slightly hot for penguins, but hey, what would I know

The view from Warung Alex, which I had to visit.

They had yummy gado-gado, which is a delicious and pretty common vegetarian dish consisting of steamed veg and spuds, steamed mung bean sprouts, and a boiled egg, all drenched in the most delicious spicy peanut sauce. Mmmm. I could have one right now actually (it’s 1am and I’m getting peckish). But I couldn’t be arsed going out again.

Ho hum

Rice paddies right in town

Widow maker, Indo style

Rice farmers know about water, how to use it efficiently, and how to share it, so everyone gets some

Sorry, boring

My little home. My room wasn’t that great, but it was ok, I’m getting way less fussy I gotta say

American influence. I did meet a young American, young American, she wants a young American, in the guest house. His name was Umar, he lives in Missouri, had a great accent, and his parents are Somali. He’s such a nice guy, he told us about what Somalia’s like, it sounds pretty amazing and pretty crazy. You can only really go to cities, towns and other places that your tribe controls.

By far the dominant nationality of bule around here is Dutch. About 9 out of ten white tourists that I’ve met in West Java are from there. And don’t talk to them about being from Holland. Holland comprises only two of the twelve provinces that make up the Netherlands.

These guys can balance plates almost as well as any Chinese acrobat. More spicy Padang food. It was really good.

Another one. That's definitely a red flag.

Sasi (pronounced Sussy) and Yani (pronounced Yarn-ey), Yr 12 and Yr 10 students respectively, came to the guest house one night specifically to chat with me in English. A local guy I met, Kur, runs English classes, and asked me if I could chat with them to help build their confidence. Marika joined us later.

It was super fun, and really interesting to share stories. They’re of the Instagram generation, and they swoon over all the hot teen heartthrob pop singer megastars that everyone else likes these days. But don’t ask me to name even one of them, the pics they showed me went in one eye and out the other.

To my surprise, Sasi and Yani’s main sport is swimming. And volleyball. That surprised me because traditionally swimming isn’t a massive Asian thing.

And as we were talking sport I had to show them a video of Australia’s main winter sport, Australian Rules football (AFL). I spared them any mention of cricket.

They were seriously gobsmacked by the AFL, by the incredible screamers (you know, when they climb right up on each other’s backs and mark the ball), by the weirdness of the game, and by the crowds. They couldn’t get their eyes off the screen.

But I guess they’re teens, so what’s new?

Carlo pumping out a duet with Ai, a really good local singer, who was totally firing on this particular night, supercharged with arak, the local rice liquor.

Yeah, you know how shy I am, and how much I hate the spotlight, but I decided to get up and push through my fear, just this once.

And this once.

And also this once. You can see how shy I was and how much I was hating it.

On our last night in Pandangaran, a local guy waltzed in to the bar with a large pot full of barbecued local wild pig, cooked up in ginger and garlic sauce. As you do. He’d been out to shoot the pig himself. He brought a plate over to us and I had some, it was delicious. So nice of him. My vegetarianism doesn’t exclude accepting kind gifts from generous and hospitable pighunters.

Pantai Timur

One day, in amongst all that resting, I headed east on my treadly to Pantai Timur (East Beach), and then further, away from the coast. It was really so beautiful, a sunny day, hot but not too hot, with a blistering headwind on the way back. It was fun.

Another fishing fleet. There’s loads of seafood sellers and seafood eating spots all over the place down there.

A dolphin, yeah well that makes more sense

Can life possibly ever surpass this?

Yet another rooftop restaurant Covid victim

Pulling in the fishing net. They attach the long rope to their bodies by using another small piece of rope, and then slowly walk backwards. When they get to the back of the line, they detach, and move up the front, into the water. Pulling in the net took them a whole 45 minutes.

Notice how high the rope pile is so far. It got way higher than this.

Rickety is probably too good a word for this pier, in tropical storm country.

Pantai Batu Hiu

One late afternoon I headed west on my bike, and once I left the main drag and headed off the beaten track the countryside became so amazing.

The whole area is basically coconut plantations, fruit trees and gardens, but interspersed with forest. The villages are small, super clean, and the people so incredibly friendly. It was such a perfect time to be there, in the dusk light, in the cooler part of the day.

The area reminds me of the back blocks of Kerala, in southern India. Whilst riding around I was transported back to many wanderings there, in countryside much like this, especially around the beautiful cliffs and beaches of Varkala.

And then I made it to the beautiful beach, another vast expanse of greyish sand, dunes, and coastal vegetation.

One end of the beach is bounded by beautiful sandstone cliffs, the other end I couldn’t see, it seemingly went on forever.

Because of the straight flat road along the beach, with no obstructions, the spot attracts many young men at dusk, who go there in groups on their motorbikes to race around.

They’re the most wholesome bikers you’d ever meet, looking super cool and gruff, but being totally friendly and polite to me at the same time. Many of them waved and said hello as they passed me, some filming me riding along the coast.

That’s something I’ve experienced a lot of in this country. Lots of people wanting to take pics of themselves with the bule, or filming me riding from their scooters, as they amble along next to me. Sorta funny and cute. For some bule it can be annoying, but not for me, I’m so used to it, it’s sorta nice to let them satisfy their curiosity for awhile, give them a bit of joy.

Small dam in the back blocks

Prawn cultivation

Bussing to Bandung

So, all good things must come to an end. To make way for new good things.

I’m leaving Pangandaran, I’ve had to rip myself away from all this chilling out, because I need to get back on the road.

In order to renew my Indonesian visa I needed to show evidence of passage out of the country. My original intention was to jump on a huge ferry on the national carrier, Pelni, from Jakarta to Batam Island, close to Singapore, and then grab a local ferry to Singapore.

The trouble is, as a foreigner I’m unable to book those ferry tickets online. That left me with no other option than to buy a flight out of Indo. When dealing with the government bureaucracy at the Imigrasi office, you have to dot your “i”s, cross your “t”s and roll your arrrrse. Show proof.

Showing a flight booking confirmation wasn’t enough. They needed to see the actual proof of purchase of the ticket. The reason for the last bit is that there’s websites that will, for a fee, buy a real plane ticket for you, and then cancel them after three days.

You can buy anything these days.

If I was dealing with some random dude with a stamp at the border, it’s a different story. I’d maybe just sing him Hotel California or some Ed Sheeran “song” and he’d just be friendly and distracted and let me through. Even give me a longer visa stay than normal. Those were the bloody days.

And flying definitely isn’t my preferred option. Besides the fact that I’m trying to reduce emissions, flying also means I need to go through the annoying rigmarole of pulling my bike apart, wrapping it in protective stuff like bubble wrap and cardboard bits, and packing it into a bike box for the flight.

That takes a bit of time and organising, given that biking’s not very common in Indo. I need to source the stuff I need, and then I have to do the packing.

So, long story short, I don’t have time to ride to Jakarta.

Instead, I’m bussing my way to Bandung, about 6 hours away from Pangandaran, I’m gonna spend a couple of days there, and then I’m gonna train it to Jakarta.

My bike’s already on its way, on a truck.

The local luxury bus to Bandung. Noisy but efficient.

The higher mountains and plateaus of interior Java beckon.

Sad to see. These buskers had a dancing monkey whose face was covered with a human baby mask. Poor thing. It was like watching a horror movie.

Buskers beggars, and hustlers

So Jalan Braga is the main drag in the city centre of Bandung. It’s Saturday night, and it’s absolutely pumping. The throngs have completely swamped the narrow sidewalks, moving along at a crawl.

It’s fascinating.

No one seems to have anywhere to go or anywhere to be. People look around, take selfies, stop to listen to an out of tune violinist playing a rendition of a Bee Gees song, “To Love Somebody.” The slow crawl grinds to a halt for a bit.

Eventually I duck into a downmarket little eating hall. Downmarket compared to many of the establishments around here, that is. I haven’t been to a street with parts so chic and ritzy since I left Oz.

But not Oz Europe North America chic and ritzy.

Hustlers wander through regularly. Kids begging. Buskers, doing the rounds of the tables, even though there’s already an old guy playing guitar and singing nearby. Well, he’s actually younger than me. Oops.

There’s lots and lots of people trying to sell lots and lots of things, all over the place. Kids toys. Stuffed animals. Paintings. Colourful balloons. People with massive photography lights blocking up the pavement while they take semi-professional photos of people and sell them.

Disabled people on crutches hobble around collecting money. Someone dressed in a massive and totally filthy Pokémon suit and a soft hat also tries to collect. Many many street musicians of all varieties belt out tunes left right and centre.

There’s rats scurrying about.

The traffic is nuts, and loud.

It’s a cacophony of sound, and a Baz Luhrmann wall of moving vision.

Yeah, this place is sensory overload. I love it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a sensitive autistic person, for example. They’d last approx 5 seconds.

Needless to say, there’s countless variations of every food you can imagine.

But there’s not a lot of vege options in this particular food hall. Unsurprisingly. Indonesia is a solid meat eating country, like almost every country on the planet.

India is the only country in the world that has a significantly large proportion of vegetarians (around 30-40% of the population). Mexico comes in at number 2, with around 20%. This compares with around 10% in Germany, Denmark, the UK and Finland (the highest proportions in Europe), 12% in Australia, and around 5% in the US.

Indonesia, on the other hand, has an estimated proportion of vegetarians of less than 1%.

So ya gotta know where to look to find veg food.

Or know how to get them to whip some up for ya.

Everyone’s headin to the city centre

Hijabstory is basically a massive store full of ladies Muslim fashion

The crowds at the beginning of Jalan Braga

My dinner menu (which was about 20 pages long). When they say close, they mean far away, as in closed, as in no longer available.

There was no icecream in this food colouring/sugar dish, I had to eat it all.

I really don’t know what they’re getting at here.

Jalan Braga, or Braga Road, in Dutch. Yes, today is holiday. And yesterday tomorrow next day forever, if possible.

Incredible colonial building.

Bert Newton and Denise Drysdale

Food hall dinner spot

I didn’t see many homeless in Bandung, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around

Taken seconds after a motorbike accident, which I witnessed. Luckily, the bikes were moving slowly, but one rider was injured.

Walkin The Streets

I really like the vibe of Bandung. Even though it’s a big city, people are super friendly, everyone smiles back if you smile at them. Or sometimes they get there first.

I’ve done a lot of walking around. I’m bikeless, after all. I prefer to walk through the backstreets rather than take a Grab (Uber) or ojek (a motorbike taxi). When I’m wandering those backstreets I’m invariably mobbed by bunches of kids all wanting to say hello, asking me my name in Indonesian, to which I reply “Oleś,” which they can’t repeat very well, so then I say “Alex” which they can all say.

Then I ask each of them their names one by one, and they roll over in fits of laughter as I say the difficult ones really badly.

The older kids push the younger or more shy ones to talk, it’s pretty funny how terrified some of them are initially, no matter how much I laugh and smile at them.

Occasionally an older person knows a word or two of English, and they’ll call out to me, but when I reply in English they generally don’t know what I’ve said.

Everyone’s so curious to see this bule walking the tiny lanes of their kampungs. And I feel so safe in these really run down poor districts, even alone at night.

Narrow kampung laneway

The original pine-apple. A super sweet palm fruit, the size of an apple. It should be called a palmapple.

Montong durians are one of the most creamy of all varieties. They pong just like most other varieties, although growers are breeding pongless varieties of durians these days.

In case you don’t know what durians are, they’re like slimy jackfruits, but they have the most incredibly strong putrid smell, which is so bad that they’re banned from hotels and public vehicles in some places (like Singapore).

Durian researchers have created a new variety that only starts smelling 3 days after it’s picked, so it can be transported pong free, but then start to stink like nauseatingly bad foot odour later on, so all those people who are into that sort of thing can still get their smelly rocks off.

Their dads were cheering them on

There’s a lot of tiger monuments in Bandung, not sure why.

Random Dutch arches.

At last, a dog! Doing what dogs do.

I wonder if they knew what this song is about? Or the movie for that matter.

More poor horses in the traffic. There were lots.

Not a happy chappy, this one.

Beautiful kampung entrance

And a plainer one

Amazing how they got them to all jump out at the same time

Taman Hutan Raya Ir. H. Djuanda

Today I walked to this beautiful forest park on the outskirts of the city.

It was so nice to get out of the noise and the traffic, and be amongst the trees again.

The first part of it was like a huge botanical gardens, Indo style

Then you hit the forest

These trees are African mahogany, originally brought over by the Dutch from one of their many colonies in Africa.

Root system of a fallen tree

Yeah, you’re seeing correctly. Real plastic tulips deliberately placed in the forest.

There’s amazing cave and tunnel networks within the cliffs and steep hills of this area. Two separate sets of tunnels were built many years ago, within the forest park.

The first, Goa Belanda (Dutch cave) was started by a Dutch colonial hydroelectric company in the 1900s, but was greatly extended and reinforced by the Dutch military in 1918, and then again in the 1940s, when they built a massive network of tunnels and rooms, which they used as a military fortress to protect themselves from attack.

Yeah, of course there was train line in there

The Dutch first came to Indonesia in 1595 to get spices, and they made so much money from the trade that the Dutch government created the United East India Company, and granted them a charter to wage war and build fortresses in Indonesia, in order to protect their trade. Of course, this enabled the company to get their merchandise for as little as possible, and maximise profits. Such were the ways of the days.

When the company went bankrupt in 1800, due to the ongoing cost of war, corruption and mismanagement, the Dutch government formally took over Indonesia, and it became known as the Dutch East Indies.

The Dutch rule was tenuous in those days. Indonesia was, and still is, such a diverse country, and rather than being one homogenous nation, it resembles a collection of smaller kingdoms and nations, with many cultures and languages, many of whom are fiercely independent. So while the Dutch controlled much of Java, many other provinces remained fiercely independent, including Aceh (northern Sumatra), Bali, Borneo and Lombok.

It really wasn’t until the early 20th century that the Dutch managed to finally take all of what is now known as Indonesia.

In 1940 Germany invaded the Netherlands, and martial law was declared in Indonesia. The Japanese invaded Indonesia in Jan 1942, and took the whole country in 3 months.

The Dutchies’ smart cave idea obviously didn’t work.

Four million Indonesians died during the Japanese occupation, of famine and forced labour. 30,000 European civilians died as well.

When Japan was defeated in World War II, the Indonesian independence movement proclaimed Indonesia as an independent republic.

But the Dutch weren’t having that. They fought them for another five years, before finally surrendering.

You’d think they’d’ve had enough fighting in WWII.

But, kicking and screaming, the Netherlands finally recognised Indonesian sovereignty in Dec 1949. So thoroughly nice of them.

Btw the second set of tunnels is called Goa Jepang (Japan cave), and is basically more of the same, this time built by the forced labour of locals, as a military base and fortress for the Japanese army.

Luxury bedroom

I stopped at “Holland Spot,” and had an amazing herbal concoction called jamu. The first swig blew my sinuses to kingdom come, due to the strength of the peppermint in it. I didn’t expect that. Let alone the power of the ginger and the rest of the herbs in it. It was amazing. It felt like my belly had been scrubbed from the inside.

I also had an amazing long chat with the staff there, it was so interesting.

Ja, Those Were The Days

Besides Indonesia, the Dutch had colonies all over the world, most notably in Africa, in Surinam and Guyana in the north of South America, and in the Caribbean. In Africa they colonised the Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Angola, Namibia and Senegal. So they weren’t just a small colonial power by any stretch of the imagination, no sirree, they had a massive empire.

The Dutch were heavily involved in the African slave trade, which has the dubious global honour of being the largest forced movement of people in world history. 12m African men and women were either directly kidnapped by colonial troops, or purchased from other European or African slave traders, and then transported by ship, mainly to the Americas. 90% of slaves ended up in the Caribbean or South America, and the rest in North America.

So if you’re on a good thing, stick to it.

The Dutch decided to replicate their hugely profitable African slave trade in Indonesia, which led to up to one million people being forcibly removed from their homes in eastern provinces (especially Maluku), and from Bali and Sumatra, and transported to Java (mainly), where they were forced to work on plantations, building projects, ports, and as domestic labourers in private homes.

You can imagine the impact on so many people’s lives and in so many communities.

Yeah, the 350 years of Dutch rule in Indonesia left a huge and lasting legacy on the whole country.

On The Rails

It was a seriously stunning train ride from Bandung to Jakarta, with the most amazing scenery almost all the way there. The route passes through the high volcanic plateaus of western Java, and it’s a sight to behold, even from a train window.

A common sight. Banana trees bordering cassava fields.

Jakarta

And then finally we began our amble through the endless endless outskirts of Jakarta, one of the largest cities in the world by population.

On yer marks

Yes it’s just what you think it is. Plastic coconut palm fronds attached to a tower.

Whilst the city centre of Jakarta houses over 10m people, if you include the continuous unbroken urban areas surrounding it, the population is 32m, making it the second largest urban area in the world, after Greater Tokyo, which has 37m.

Tokyo’s population is declining, as is Japan’s overall, but Indonesia’s

population is still growing rapidly, and isn’t expected to peak until around 2050.

The city is incredible. It’s so vast, fascinating, chaotic, polluted, rich, desperately poor, diverse, organised, and completely disorganised.

It’s basically everything.

It’s a throbbing heaving mass of humanity, every single person trying to make a living, many in the most desperate and difficult ways. Of course there’s the super rich, their chauffeurs driving them around in a big black Mercedes or in sleek SUVs. They’re not struggling at all. Not materially anyway. Corruption is a huge problem in the country, and it permeates right through all levels of government and business.

There’s a lot of beggars and homeless on the streets. People do all sorts of things to get some cash, enough for a meal.

I give the beggars and the hustlers money every time. And many locals do too. Not only can I easily afford it, but these people seriously have no other way of getting food into their mouths. Welfare in the country is very minimal. Pensions and some sort of superannuation payments only really exist for ex civil servants, military personnel, and those who worked in very large corporations. That leaves about three quarters of all workers without any pension whatsoever.

Imagine that.

There’s old ladies sitting on the dirty sidewalks with little plastic cups, trying to get some change. That’s their pension. There’s people who paint themselves green, or silver, or gold, and stand on the sidewalk motionless, sculptures of gross inequality.

There’s buskers absolutely everywhere, plastic cups tied to their ukuleles or guitars, so they can move around the streets and still get donations as they play. Many major intersections also have sellers, acrobats, buskers, whatever, entertaining and hustling their captive audience while they wait at the lights.

Today a young boy came up to me begging, he was wearing a filthy clown suit, with a plastic clown mask attached to the side of his face. He had some sort of physical and intellectual disability.

Many people in old wheelchairs, often with missing limbs, beg on the pavements.

It’s really confronting.

And then there’s the ritzy areas, pretty much all situated in central Jakarta, in the vicinity of the main square, Merdeka Square, where the massive penile National Monument resides. Those areas are all leafy and manicured, in an Asian kinda way.

But despite the struggle for life here in this city, despite the intense poverty and inequality, I feel completely safe. Violent crime on the streets is low, compared to many other cities. Widespread theft doesn’t appear to be a problem, I’ve noticed that people are very relaxed with their things (me too). I’ve regularly seen them leave their bags on their seats at cafés or eating places, if they need to get up.

Shop owners and food vendors don’t try to overcharge the bule. Well, sometimes a small amount. I know what the prices are, so I can tell. Maybe it’s because I speak a little Bahasa they think I’ve probably been around awhile and know the prices, so they don’t bother trying.

But actually that’s not the feeling I get at all. They’re just honest. Hospitality is way more important than profit.

The people in Jakarta, and in Indonesia generally, are remarkably polite, friendly generous and incredibly hospitable. Yesterday at breakfast I was chatting with a guy, a life insurance salesman. He finished his food before me, and left. When I finished and went to pay for my own food, the warteg owner told me that the other guy had already paid for my food and drinks. Amazing.

A warteg, btw, is a warung that serves Tegal food, from northern Java. It’s delicious, with loads of veggie choices. It’s been my breakfast stop every day here, there’s a few around this district.

I had the most amazing dinner at another warteg one night. The owner, Didi, was super keen for his son Wahid to chat in English with me. We had such a great time. They were the most beautiful people.

Wahid had the ball game down pat. He could do the bottom/top bounce thing at will.

Kota Tua

I’m staying in a poorer area, Glodok, but it’s not the slums. I’m in a district near Kota Tua, the Old Town, which is jam packed full of grand, and mostly rundown colonial buildings, all built amongst wide boulevards, canals, and large open spaces.

1927 art deco

They forgot to prune their pot plants

Here too

That white thing in the coconut palm is a kid. I watched these three from across the canal, on their way home from school. Suddenly one of the boys shimmied up a high coconut tree, climbed around up there, stepping with his full body weight on the skinny palm fronds, and then tried to harvest a coconut. He couldn’t pull it off the tree.

So then his younger brother ran off to a shop and borrowed a massive knife, like a smallish machete, and proceeded to throw it up the tree to his brother. He tried a few times, and eventually his brother caught it. Unbelievable.

Then he leant down off a frond and dropped a coconut out of the tree. His younger brother caught it.

Not exactly the sort of thing little Aussie kids get up to on the way home from school these days.

With the spoils. Spines still intact.

Batavia was what the Dutch colonists named Jakarta. It was called Jayakarta before that.

Cute villa that’s seen better days.

Petak Sembilang Market

This amazing market, only a short walk from my guest house, sells everything.

In fact, it sells too many things.

Like juvenile lizards, for example. I’m hoping they’re not young Komodo dragons, a vulnerable species from Komodo Island in the east of the country. The dragons are the largest species of lizard in the world, they grow up to 3m long.

On Komodo Island they feed them goats as a tourist thing. I’ve always declined that particularly macabre spectacle. Unfortunately animal traffickers steal the dragons from the forest and sell them.

Root vegetables, kumquats, and bound crabs, (bound for dinner plates)

Delicious looking pomelos and cute little bananas

Pet shop fare

And these too

I really can’t, for the life of me, tell you what these are just yet

But I can now. They're sea cucumbers (gamat)

More bamboo, ginger, and a variety of spuds

Smelly work in the smelly laneways. I saw all sorts of animal bits lying around on chopping boards, in buckets, and on the street.

Chinatown

My guest house was a short walk from this amazing district, and it just so happens that I’m here in the lead up to Chinese New Year, January 22nd, so the place is absolutely heaving.

And this time it’s a real Chinatown.

When my baby’s walkin’ down the street I see red

I see red

I see re-ed.

Yeah, the New Moon on Jan 22nd heralds the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit, which happens to be both mine and Manu’s Chinese birth sign.

If you look around the circle you can see the twelve zodiac animals, all so cute. We’re moving out of the Year of the Tiger, to the Rabbit, and next year will be the Year of the Dragon, etc.

They’re breeding like rabbits

I’ve got rabbits coming out of my ears

Sweet glutinous rice cakes

Fake money wheelers and dealers. The Chinese believe that burning fake money allows their deceased family members, their ancestors, to purchase the things they need for a comfortable afterlife.

Red, by the way, symbolises happiness, success and good fortune in Chinese culture. It’s associated with the element of fire, representing life, vitality and light. During Chinese New Year people wear new red clothes when visiting family, the kids get money given to them in red envelopes, all of this representing prosperity and good fortune for the year ahead.

It also means good fortunes for all those retailers selling their red clothes, and all the other crap.

It’s a huge thing in China and in Chinese communities worldwide, it’s their most important holiday period. So that means that a whopping 20% of the entire world’s population will be celebrating this weekend.

Just imagine the packaging, the rubbish.

Just like Christmas.

In practice, like Christmas in Christian places, or Eid al-Fitr in Muslim places (which celebrates the end of the fasting period of Ramadan), Chinese New Year basically involves major shopping, eating copious amounts of food, giving gifts, and hanging out with family (if you can stand them).

There’s some pretty outrageously spectacular fireworks extravaganzas in the evening around the globe too, I might add. I saw them over Hong Kong harbour once. They knocked my thongs off.

Wow, they pulled this one out of a hat.

Ok, I heard the groan.

How many more rabbit puns can I possibly come up with?

I don’t know, but there always seems to be one more for this little bunny.

Actually, that reminds me of a joke.

Q: How many people can you fit on an Indonesian bus?

A: Three more.

The Massacre

Prepare yourself.

It’s incredible, but you probably haven’t heard of the genocide that took place in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966. I never heard about it in my school history classes. (In fact, Indonesia was probably never even mentioned in my history classes).

In 1965 there were two main factions in the Indonesian military, the leftists, supported by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and China, and the hard right, supported by the US, Britain, Australia, and the other usual Western suspects.

The Indonesian president at the time, Sukarno, attempted to walk a balancing act between these two factions.

On October 1st 1965, a bunch of unaligned soldiers decided they wanted to take over the country, and they assassinated 6 generals, and attempted a coup d’état. It failed. A total of 12 people were killed.

Military figures from the right, religious groups and some political commentators saw the coup attempt as the perfect opportunity to consolidate their own power, so they decided to blame the coup on leftists, and on the Communist Party.

What followed was another devastatingly brutal chapter in Indonesia’s history, which had already been blackened by the atrocities of both Dutch and Japanese occupation.

Over a period of six months from the coup attempt an estimated 500,000 to 1.2 million Indonesians were massacred, both by the military, and by groups that the military trained specifically for that purpose. The victims were mostly members of the Communist Party and their sympathisers.

But, just for good measure, the military and their supporters also decided to target other groups, including members of the Indonesian Women’s Movement (Gerwani), ethnic Javanese Abangan people (who believe in a less conservative version of Islam), ethnic Chinese, atheists, so-called “unbelievers,” and leftists.

The worst massacres occurred in Aceh, Bali, and in Central and East Java, where PKI support was at its strongest. And they were not spontaneous killings btw, but were carried out with a high degree of organisation.

The US and British intelligence agencies supplied the Indonesian military with lists of known Communist leaders, knowing full well that those people would be murdered.

Warning

This next bit is seriously difficult to read, so beware, or just skip it and jump down to the *****

The methods of killing included shooting, dismembering alive, stabbing, disembowelment, castration, impaling, strangling, and beheading with Japanese style samurai swords.

Firearms and automatic weapons were only used on a limited scale, with most of the killings being carried out with knives, sickles, machetes, swords, ice picks, bamboo spears, iron rods and other makeshift weapons.

Islamic extremists often paraded severed heads on spikes. Corpses were often thrown into rivers, and at one point, officials complained to the army of congested rivers that run into the city of Surabaya, due to the bodies.

Rows of severed penises were often left behind as a reminder to the survivors.

*****

The killings left whole sections of villages empty, and the houses of victims were looted. The spoils, and often the properties themselves, were handed over to the military.

Last week, the current president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, finally apologised to the victims of the mass killings, and offered to seek to restore the rights of their families. It’s a major step forward for this country.

Up until that moment, the massacre was hardly mentioned here, due to the power of the military.

Suharto

The atrocities perpetrated by the military and other groups in 1965 and 1966 were directed by a lovely young general named Suharto, who, not long after, ousted President Sukarno, with the full backing of the military. He then became president himself, and subsequently ruled Indonesia with an iron fist as a military dictator for the next 31 years.

Suharto’s regime is generally regarded as one of the most corrupt in world history. He and his family amassed a fortune of between USD 15-35 billion during his reign (Transparency International), which was characterised by croneyism and extreme brutality. By 1969 70% of all provincial governors were military personnel. Suharto systematically took control of all electoral processes to guarantee his continual rule.

He was fully supported by Western powers, including Australia, because he was anti-communist. He was responsible for the invasion of East Timor in 1975, and the military ruled there until 2002, when the Timorese finally achieved their independence. Suharto was gone by then.

Suharto and his family’s blatant corruption and theft were monumental in scale. They directly owned 3.6m hectares of prime Indonesian land, and owned or had control of 564 companies, many of them huge corporations. Government contracts went exclusively to these family companies. Major foreign multinationals could only really do business in Indonesia if they awarded contracts to Suharto’s family, or to his cronies.

They managed to keep this up for over 30 years.

During the Asian Financial crisis in 1997, which hit Indonesia worse than any other Asian country, the general population were plunged into economic ruin, the currency plummeted in value, and the people had finally had enough. Students protested against Suharto. The military massacred some of them, leading to riots and looting in Jakarta, and the deaths of a further 1000 people.

The status quo couldn’t last. Suharto’s political allies could see the writing on the wall, and they finally abandoned him. He was forced to resign, and spent the rest of his days fighting corruption charges, as did many of his family and cronies.

Hardly any of them spent any time in jail though, surprise surprise, The few judges that did convict any of them were assassinated, and on appeal the defendants were mostly found not guilty. A hugely successful scheme to buy judges was uncovered.

Suharto also avoided prison by claiming to be medically unfit to stand trial.

Eventually he became so medically unfit that he medically died.

Sights With Sore Eyes

Enough of that depressing bloody dribble. Human rights, corruption, brutality, bah!!

I’m in Jakarta, it’s exciting!

Jakarta really has everything. So much to see, through the itchy smog. There’s so much happening, it’s a massive bombardment of the senses.

Peak hour. It’s so difficult to walk on the sidewalks, there’s so many obstructions, including motorbikes zipping past in all directions. On the bloody footpath. I had a few close calls.

Does jogging in smog mean you’ll die quicker or live longer? I’d like to see the research.

Heading towards the cbd

Got the Islamic design vibe goin on

Another amazingly strong herbal concoction. By comparison, Byron Ginger Nektar tastes like ginger-flavoured water.

The ingredients include copious amounts of brown and red ginger, lemongrass and pandanas leaves.

Don’t know how I got in

Never buy this. It’s one of the worst soft drinks I’ve ever tasted. It tastes like Jakartan sewer water mixed with a bucket of refined sugar. The grass jelly tastes like gelatinous ox foot coated with Komodo dragon piss.

Yeo's Grass Jelly soft drink water supply

I had to steel away from this shop

I’ve seen a lot of pot in my life, but this is next level.

One street was full of amazing portrait artists, like this one

These poor guys are a pair of some type of mongoose. I guess they’re mongeese. It really sucks.

For the whole time I was there, this poor trapped monkey kept looking for a way to get out.

The sign says, Be Careful, Broken

Can someone explain to me what this is all about? It looks jaw-droppingly silly to me.

Security around Merdeka Square, which is now closed to the public.

Night action in the burbs

This guy was so friendly

This one not so much

Err, where am I? The Netherlands and Germany and England and Indonesia?

You shouldn’t have bloody toched it in the first place!

The monkey finally sleeping

Gasping. Jakarta’s air pollution is worsening. It is regularly ranked on top of the list of the world’s most polluted major cities. I personally can’t imagine living here for an extended period of time. After just a few days I’m hanging out for some fresh air. And it’s actually the most pleasant time of the year to be here.

Sulawesi food, with blessing

The original stomp box

Late night busking band. The singer could really move.

Spaghetti Eastern

It’s Over

Sad but true.

All good things must come to an end. And bad things. And neither good nor bad things. And slightly good or slightly bad things. And slightly better or slightly worse things. And stupid paragraphs.

This is my very last blog from Indonesia.

Well, at least for the time being.

One last gasp, from Jakarta.

I’m heading across the equator next, because I need to check out if water goes down the drain in the opposite direction to the southern hemisphere.

Yes,  next up I’m heading to the wild and wonderful lands of Malaysia.

How exciting!

My bike’s boxed (that was a peculiarly Jakartan mission-and-a-half), my guitar is also boxed, and all of my bike stuff too. I’ve got a pack full of clothes, and even a cute little day bag to bring on the plane.

I’ve got way too much stuff. I keep saying that, but I’ve decided I’m definitely gonna purge soon.

So when you next hear from me, I’ll be eating roti canai and drinking Horlicks with sweet condensed milk. Yum!

And don’t worry, in case you don't already know what those things actually are, I’m really looking forward to telling you in graphic detail❤️