Eat, Shop, Eat

The hotel is full of mostly Asian, probably Indonesian, guests. The staff is polite and subservient, reminiscent of service staff from the 50's I've seen in movies and on TV. They get out of your way when you walk by. The rooms are nicely furnished and comfortable, luxurious even. The Man has no complaints. I do. Inside the hotel room, I could be anywhere. If you told me I was in Boston, or Toronto, there would be nothing in the room to contradict that. I didn't travel 23 hours to not leave home.

I am happy to see H, The Man's friend and colleague from Kabul, still here. He's staying for an extra few days of vacation. The weather is hot and humid, hotter and more humid than Toronto. The rain comes sporadically to cool things down.

My first day in Jakarta started with a sumptuous breakfast at the hotel buffet. There was cranberry, celery, carrot, guava, tomato, and orange juice at the juice bar - all the juices you need to make your own cleansing tonic. There were the requisite breads, yogurt, bacon, sausage, potato, and eggs cooked to your liking, as well as a cold salad bar, and an array of rice, noodles, soups, and meats.

As a child in Hong Kong, I ate rice and meat for breakfast, so I assume a full meal of staples first thing in the morning is an East Asian tradition. But I have outgrown the ability to manage a heavy stomach so early, so I opted for mostly fruit and chocolate croissant! I tried out a new fruit. It has a soft yellow shell, with pitted translucent flesh inside that scoops out with a spoon, sweet and tart at the same time.

Then we went shopping, with H as our leader. I wanted to look for a piece of luggage with a lock to replace the 25-year-old falling at the seam vinyl bag that I brought. I got completely overwhelmed by the mall. I believe we visited only a small section of a 4-storey-10-building complex that so sold mostly electronics and pirated DVDs and computer software. The pirating industry thrives here, though competition is stiff. How do the locals decide where to make their purchase when in every shop, the products and prices are the same?

I didn't find a suitcase I liked. But I bought a 2-gig memory card and an extra battery for my camera, both for the ridiculous price of $50 tax included. To put things in perspective, my current memory card is 250 mb and I think I paid the discounted price of $79 plus tax at Future Shop two years ago.

We then went to the Jakarta harbour when many sailing ships parked, waiting to transport illegal timber and concrete across the waters. A guide appeared out of nowhere and walked us along the harbour, through some of the streets, and into a marine museum, where we saw a huge canoe.

Then we went to Cafe Batavia. Batavia is the old name for Jakarta. I love the Cafe Batavia. Inside, we went back in time to the 30's. It's all art deco - look, feel, staff, and service. Hotel staff in green uniforms cleaned walls and baseboards, dusted picture frames, swept and mopped the red teak floors. At the Churchill Bar upstairs, uninformed bartenders mixed drinks and poured concoctions beside large basins of arranged cut flowers.

Just for contrast, on the way home, we went to an upscale mall inside the Grand Hyatt hotel. This mall is a secret transporter. I stepped through the doors and I was immediately home. There was The Body Shop, L'Occitane, Zara, Marks and Spencer, and other Yorkdale-type shops in a Yorkdale-kind setting. Very nice and very meh, though I did find a new pair of sunglasses to replace the pair I brought. The arm that I kept gluing back on snapped again and given the glue guck that has accumulated at the joint, I abandoned my old shades in the waste basket of Le Meridien hotel. Very painful.

After some rest, we met H's friend, F, for dinner at the Lara Djonggrang restaurant, a high-end Indonesian eatery. The place is a winding spread of rooms. You choose which room you want to experience your dinner in. F suggested we order three dinner platters to sample food from different regions of Indonesia. It was good food, though when the different regions ended up on the same plate at the same time in front of me, I could not distinguish the unique tastes from each area, despite the banana leaf wraps and coconut flavouring. But that's okay. Here, the dining experience is as much about the atmosphere as the food and my dinner companions more than made up for the saucy and conflicting fare reminiscent of Indian cooking. And you know about my non-relationship with Indian food. I have to try harder not to let this bias interfere with my enjoyment of the food here, despite the obvious Indian influence.

After dinner, we went to the Lan Na Thai for drinks and coffee. The boys had drinks, I had coffee. And what coffee it was! Aromatic with presence and bite, a real coffee. It is what coffee should be. I can never accept brown water from Second Cup from now on.

I confess I think people must have thought I was a prostitute in this bar. I commented to F that Indonesian women are beautiful and hot. He said many of them are prostitutes. How would he know? And yes, the other women could have been just different versions of me for being in Jakarta with white male companions, and yes, I think they are prostitutes because they are young and beautiful and fashionable dressed and the men they are with hug them and kiss them. No wait, maybe no one thinks I am a prostitute after all.

H has spent much time in Indonesia and speaks Bahasa fluently. I noticed that each time we got into a taxi, the driver turned to me first, as if expecting me to talk. I look the part after all. But H issues the directions and I am clued out as to what they say and where we go. F currently lives in Jakarta. He too speaks fluent Bahasa. I marvel again at the remarkable life paths these men have taken that now enable them to speak at least three languages fluently: German, English, and Bahasa.

I like Jakarta. It is lush, green and opulent. Signs of poverty are almost imperceptible. It is a consumer's dream city. But I am not sure what else people do here. I asked F this. He said they eat, shop, eat. I've done that now. Let's move on.