Volcanoes & Denim

Haviva and I spent the end of the week and all weekend recovering from a little food poisoning. Not 100% sure of the culprit, but we're blaming a yogurt drink. We're on the road to recovery, although it was a long road that led Haviva on a business trip to Yogyakarta on Thursday and me on a day trip to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday to renew my visa. (For some reason Indonesia would rather have me fly out of the country, spend an hour in said other country and then turn around than just let me pay to renew my visa here. I don't get it.)

Anyway, enough about this miserable weekend...

Last weekend we went on a little hiking/shopping adventure with some friends that is well worth a blog entry. It started with a 6AM Saturday departure for Gunung Gede, one of the volcanoes that you can see from our apartment on the rare smog-free day (the one on the far left in the top picture). After a couple hour drive we started our ambitious plan to climb to the summit and back down the other side before nightfall.

Had it not started pouring halfway up, and gotten pretty chilly, we may have made it, but the idea of hiking down a muddy trail in the dark led us to make the (surprisingly mature) decision to head back before the final push to the summit. It was a little disappointing but still a very nice hike highlighted by the part where the trail is actually a hot spring that you have to hike through for a couple hundred feet.

After coming down from the mountain we headed to the city of Bandung, which you might remember as the site of a recent shopping trip. We spent the night there and woke up to do a little site seeing before Haviva and the ladies spent the afternoon in search of the perfect pair of jeans. The volcano below was much easier to summit than the one we saw a day earlier as it has a road to the top.



And yes, my new favorite toy is a computer program that lets you stitch a bunch of photos together to make big panoramic shots. The one on the top of the page is 11 photos taken from our roof stitched together and the one right above is 5 or 6.

The Big E Jakarta Style

A trip to the Learning Farm

We finally made it out to the Learning Farm last week with Matt Zimmerman, the founder of the project here in Indonesia. Besides being the place where we get our veggies delivered from each week (or Norman’s old home), the Learning Farm is a great project combining the introduction of organic farming to more of Indonesia with helping street kids (and some disadvantaged rural children as well) learn some skills and build some confidence to hopefully get them off the streets. The farm itself is quite beautiful. Not as far off the road as we expected, it is a bit of an oasis from the busy street it is off of. You would hardly know there is bumper to bumper traffic, buses, and street vendors in such close proximity. The vegetable beds are neat and orderly and flowers are planted at the end of almost every bed not only to keep things pretty, but to also attract some of the pests away from the tender vegetables. The tour was very informative, especially for us farming novices, and it was really amazing to see what they are doing there. The make their own compost from goat manure, not chicken as is popular on other organic farms and can give you bird flu. (Matt slipped this into his spiel and we seem to be the first to catch this bit of marketing against the competition.) The kids are also encouraged to do experiments and plant a variety of goods in one bed to see what happens. They were working on some liquid compost that we got a peek at - it is sprayed on the veggies to not only help them grow, but keep away the pests. While it does not smell so nice, there was a noticeable difference between the non-sprayed and the sprayed veggies.

The kids who showed us around were extremely knowledgeable and very proud of the farm, which was quite heartwarming. Their housing is simple, dorm style, and although they have someone to cook meals for them, they are responsible for cleaning and basic chores. They are out in the fields in the morning and spend the afternoon studying everything from farming skills to handicrafts and even go out to the local schools and sell their goods. They do presentations to people in the community and are learning a bit about marketing and PR in order to keep the farm going. We suggested letting Norman be their mascot, but I am not sure they were sold on the idea. As much as we love him, he is a pest (in the organic farming sense only!)



For more about the farm you can check out this information on the World Education site: http://www.worlded.org/WEIInternet/features/indonesia_learning_to_grow.cfmorlded.org/WEIInternet/features/indonesia_learning_to_grow.cfm

Fiesta

As Mexican seems to be the one western delight we cannot delight in easily (homemade enchiladas and Boca Grande were regular staples in the Parnes' diet back in Cambridge) we decided we could not miss the "Mexican Fiesta" being hosted at the Hotel Nikko last weekend. It was quite the fiesta with a "live station" where you could make your own burritos, enchiladas, tacos, quesadillas, and nachos , as well as a nice buffet that had everything from mole to some kind of Taco Bell cheesey beany layered looking like thing. It was pretty authentic, about the best I think one can expect in Indonesia and we took good advantage of the all you can eat aspect. Although it was not Mexican by any stretch, there was some good cheesecake and chocolate pudding pie, as well. The elderly member of the 3 Amigos in the picture with me is one of the chefs flown in for the event. If you can believe it, his job is to travel the world and produce Mexican buffets at hotels for expats like us. He brings the sombreros, snazzy outfit and all.
Minus the uniform, quiet a cool job....

Chestnut Hill, Copley Square and now... Tebet, South Jakart

We live in a neighborhood called Tebet that The Jakarta Post recently described as 'trendy' and 'bohemian'. Granted we live on the outskirts of the area, but we had no idea. Last weekend we made an attempt to find the 'cool' part. We did find a few interesting shops and things, but the big discovery was The Cheesecake Factory. Definitely not an authorized branch of the American chain with the same name, but similar to its Western counerpart in some ways. Decent food and good cheesecake by Jakartan standards (and yes, cheesecake is actually quite popular here).

The Latest Taste Sensation

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. It's due mostly to our terrible Internet connection.

Here's a photo of our newest culinary discovery, the avocado and chocolate milk shake. Yup, throw an avocado in the blender, add some sugar and swirl in some Hershey's syrup. Sounds awful, right? I was very hesitant, but it's actually delicious. Tastes much better than it looks.

Made in Indonesia

It was long overdue, but we finally made it to Bandung this past weekend. Bandung is about a 2 hour ride or so from Jakarta and is known for its cooler mountain climate, college town atmosphere, and factory outlet stores. Jakartans flock to Bandung pretty much every weekend filling the hotels and spending like mad on anything that fell off the truck on its way to the US. (In fact, this was such a well traveled route they built a super highway about 3 years ago, just to make it faster and easier for people to get to and from.)

When we tell you there are a lot of outlet stores in Bangung, it really does not do it justice. There is a jeans street, shoes street and two areas of general outlets that have it all. We only made it down one street and saw plenty of Coach, expensive jeans (Rock and Republic, 7s, etc.), Hugo Boss, Pierre Cardin, GAP, Express, Old Navy, Loft, and Prada. Rock bottom prices – the jeans I bought had a $200 USD price tag on them and I bought them for 150,000 Rp. About 15 bucks. I know a few people who really would have been P I Gs in S H I T. There was a lot of repeating goods (every store has the same chance at the same stolen or fallen off the truck goods) but there were some good surprises. The thing that keeps Bandung amusing, even for those who hate shopping, are the random items that pop up among the normally expensive goods. The best was the BushTard shirt, which sadly only came in a size too small for Howie and too big for me. There was also the polar fleece with the Wisconsin W on the front and “Arizona Wildcats” written on the back…I guess that is what happens when the people doing the stitches have no idea what they are actually sewing.

We will definitely make another trip to Bandung to see some of the mountains and more natural wonders….and to see if anything new fell off the truck in our size.

The sea was angry that day my friend.

Another long weekend for us and it was back to Pelabuhan Ratu. This time we did it right. Along with board games, we filled the back of the kijang (SUV) with about 20 bags of food and a cooler. Plenty of goodies to cook a couple massive western style breakfasts, as well as a couple cases of beer and an assortment of snacks. And, not only did we cook two morning feasts - banana coconut pancakes and fruit salad one day, eggs and hash browns the next - but we also made a trip to the fish market for a giant fresh from the sea fish. Actually, make that 2 giant fish. We brought the big guys back, with a little local bumbu (spice paste), and handed it off to the maid. Yes the maid...and a few other helpers. We gave them some cash for veggies and side dishes and told them to have dinner ready at 8. Let me say, it was AMAZING. These women can COOK. And there is nothing like a fresh fish (or two!) cooked on a grill about 5 hours after it was caught. It was a feast beyond feasts. And we did not have to do any dishes.
Unfortunately, while we might have gotten the eating right this trip, the ocean was not as good to us. In fact, the waves reached heights not seen for about 8 years and wiped out much of the coast of Pelabuhan Ratu. We were very lucky that our house was on higher ground, but only steps down the road the scene was very different. Waves pounded the shore only letting up late on Saturday before we left, granting us a 1/2 hour to frolic before heading back to Jakarta. It made the NY times in fact: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/
Pictures simply cannot capture the power of the waves and the thunderous pounding of their crashing on the beach. It was pretty intense.

Now we count the days until the next long weekend. We won't go back to Pelabuhan Ratu, but you can tell why it is tempting....

Checking in from Jogja

4 nights in Bali, 3 nights in Jogja, 1 allergy attack on the beach, one 5 day dose of Cipro, 7 mornings of incredible breakfast buffets and lots and lots of rice fields. That is the short story. Mom and Dad Cohen are here and, despite one of them who shall remain nameless spending a couple days face down on a beach chair in Bali, we are all doing great. Bali is always a nice way to kick off a holiday with lots of fresh grilled fish and walks on sandy beaches (and yes more monkeys.)

Jogja has been a welcome change to the city life of Jakarta. The air is breathable, we have been eating well (fresh veggies are such a treat!!), and the one who shall remain nameless is back with a vengeance, eating again and not running to every available western toilet. We spent a day and a half wandering the city and then today rented a car and wonderful driver for a trip to Borobudur. Mom was "like a pig in the proverbial" today as we wandered through small villages and then the markets searching for the perfect gifts for everyone on their very long list. (Don't worry she did well!)

Pictures and better descriptions soon to come, but we wanted to check in, let you know we are all doing well, having fun and Howie and I will be sad to have our company leave and go back to our regular lives.....

Lots more photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/howieandhaviva/BaliJogjaTrip

Midas' magic touch

We had one of those weird “I thought I was starting to understand this place but I guess not” moments this weekend that I had to share. I am sorry no pictures accompany this post, but use your imagination, it will be fun.

This weekend was pretty low key in the grand scheme of things. We were in Jakarta and spent most of the weekend playing Settlers and Carcasonne (another game like Settlers that has take the Ultimate group by storm.) Before settling into board games and margaritas, at the suggestion of our friends Drew, Melanie and the recommendation of the Jakarta Javakini (source of all things cool in Jakarta) we decided to check out Midas, the “Magic Restaurant”. Supposedly Midas has magicians that come to your table and do tricks while you wait for your meal. Although something a 10 year old might like, since we were about to play board games and we would be coming from the local putt putt, it seemed appropriate. I think we were all expecting a bunch of birthday parties and cheesy pulling quarters out from behind ears and we were all interested in seeing the menu items supposedly named cleverly using magic trick names and famous magicians.

So, first off the bat, the place is clearly not meant for kids. I would describe the atmosphere as swanky. Everything is draped in red and it feels very NYC lounge style bar. Seated inside, it was just our table of 6 and another table of about 10 women clearly celebrating something. We ordered some apps and asked the waitress for the “orang magic” (magic person) who arrived right with the apps. (Hence making apps hard to eat, but we let that go.) He did a couple card tricks and it was cute and all, but that turned out to be the end of the magic. Food was fine, a bit on the pricey side, although that is what you get when you order things with (not so) clever magic trick names. As we were finishing up, we were remarking on the disappointing amount of magic. Suddenly there was a shrill whistle. Excited for more magic we look around…Where is the magician? Will he appear in a puff of smoke? Nope. But something did appear - from a secret spot behind the bar appeared a pretty close to naked woman who proceeded to dance on the bar….somewhat provocatively I might add. And there were 4 of them. Each taking their turn strutting their stuff on the bar, twirling on the pole….how had we missed that stripper pole at the end of the bar? All I can say is it was weird. Don’t get me wrong, the men did not mind, but even they seemed thrown off. It was all just so unexpected and out of place…

Perhaps the definition of magic got lost in translation somewhere? Or maybe after we left on of those women was sawed in half? I am guessing not…but maybe….

Frisbee and Fashion in Bali

Just wanted to report that a good time was had by all last weekend in Bali. My frisbee team finished 3rd our to 6 teams, behind teams from Singapore and Vietnam, but ahead of another team from Singapore, a team from Guam and another team from Jakarta. We played 7 games in two days and followed that up with a night or partying and a day on the beach. Needless to say, it's been a long week at work for both of us.

At the after-party we got to try out our fashions from last months fashion show in the real world, if you can call Bali that. 20 of us dressed in 'native' fashions walking down the street was quite a scene. Good stuff.

For more laughs... click here.

Howie's New Career

Sorry we've been such lazy bloggers lately. When that happens it is usually a sign of either our super-busy exciting lives that don't leave us time to blog or our boring lives that don't involve anything to blog about. This time it is the prior. Haviva's been doing a lot of traveling for work and I've been teaching at a new school that recently opened up here and is run by a friend of mine.

As you'll see from the photo, I've also started a new career as a fashion model. No, not really. One of the guys I play frisbee with is a fashion designer and he puts on an annual fashion show to help raise money for our frisbee tournament in Bali, which is this coming weekend. This year I was lucky enough to be a model. The photos scared my mother, but if you are interested (and I don't see how you couldn't be), more of them can be found here.

A successful second attempt

Sorry we have not updated in a while, I am not sure where this week went, but somehow it is almost over.

We spent last weekend in Pelabuhan Ratu. If the name sound familiar it is because it is the same beach we went to over New Years, where it rained for 3 days straight. Not sure why we tempted fate again, but this time we went with a group of people and came armed with Scrabble and Settlers. (A board game we were introduced to here by friends of ours from Howie’s Ultimate team and are now addicted to.) We also went in a bit more “style” this time, using a car and driver and staying at a private villa right on the beach complete with a maid to clean up the beer bottles after us. Really stunning place.

It was a pretty laid back, up for anything group so there was lots of eating of fresh fish, drinking Bintang and just hanging out. On the way down we stopped about 13 K outside Pelabuhan Ratu and white water rafted the rest of the way. The guides did most of the paddling and worked hard to ram us into as many rocks as possible, just to keep things interesting. Howie, who has been rafting before and claims to always be disappointed in the adventure, reports this to have been a good rafting trip with decent rapids. If nothing else, the view was stunning all the way, complete with giant sun bathing lizards, people fishing, naked kids playing in the water and quaint villages.

The one fault in Pelabuhan Ratu might be the constant waiting for food. At one lunch we asked what the best fish was to get and the reply was, “Well, whatever you order I will have to go out and buy,” which should give you some indication of the speediness of that meal. All tallied, we waited 6 hours for meals one of the days – 2 hours for breakfast (please keep in mind here that we all ordered the oh so complicated American breakfast that includes 2 eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee and juice), 1 ½ for lunch and a whopping 3 for dinner. Dinner we should have just walked out on – the food stank. Luckily everyone was is good spirits and we had cards. Had Howie and I been alone for that we might have killed each other.

The beach itself was perfect. The water was clean, the temperature of bath water and there were just the right waves for frolicking around and not getting sucked into the ocean (although I might have lost my bathing suit a couple times…) It only rained one day (but that was the day we spent waiting to eat) and I got a re-enforcement of my tan without burning, which always makes me happy. It was a great long weekend and we are already planning another trip down – perfect ocean, gorgeous house, good food only 4 hours away. It would just be silly not to.

Organic veggies come with pets in Indonesia!

Last week we signed up to have veggies home delivered from an organic farm an hour or two away (near where I went paragliding, actually). We get an SMS (text message on my phone - everything here is done by text message) each Monday with the available veg and can either order specific stuff or just ask for a grab bag, which is what we'll do unless we start wasting too much stuff. Not only has the veg been really good, but it's for a good cause - the farm takes street kids from Jakarta, houses them, educates them and teaches them how to grow crops.

Last week we received a big bag full of lettuce, fresh peanuts, basil, mint and scallions, plus a special bonus - a big snail which I promptly put into the turtle tank and named Norman. Seemed like a fine idea at the time. Norman, Ernie and Burt lived happily together for a few days but it turns out our little pals are carnivores and they were just feeling out Norman to see if he'd fight back when they tried to eat him. Who knew? Norman had quite a scare and lost a little bit of his hindquarters (and maybe an ear), but I was able to yank him out of there before too much damage was done.

I'm happy to report that after a few days Norman is back to full health. It was touch and go there for a little while, but last night he crawled down from the roof of his new home and ate some broccoli greens, so we're ready to officially declare him a member of the family.

This coming weekend is a long one, so we're heading back to the beach we went to for New Years with some friends. Let's hope we have better weather this time. The rainy season is nearing its end, so we might.

Soundshine '07

Saturday afternoon we attended the Soundshine ’07 festival at the Nikko Hotel downtown. We had only a vague idea of what it was going to be when we signed up – a music festival with 4 bands: 2 Indonesian Indie Rock bands, 1 Swedish band called Club 8 and a Norwegian singer/songwriter named Sondre Lerche (who we discovered has the #1 album on WERS in Boston right now). That much seemed like our thing so, despite the high ticket cost by Indonesian standards (and even US standards, really) we could not pass it up.


Outside of knowing the bands involved, we really had no idea what were getting into. The hotel is quite a swanky one, but the entrance to the venue itself (or standard hotel ballroom as it turned out to be) was through the parking lot. Once on the top level the parking area had been converted into the Dunhill Lounge. For those of you not up on trendy, expensive cigarettes, that is what Dunhill makes. The lounge was swanky with couches and little coffee tables complete with Ikea looking ashtrays and Dunhill brand extra long matches for the taking. There were Dunhill girls walking around selling cigarettes (they confiscated all the cigarettes that were not Dunhill upon entry) and a small array of snack stands including pizza cones (pizza dough shaped into a cone and filled with what seemed to be mostly cheese, but a neat idea) and Cinnabuns. Any other crowd would have been drunk and/or stoned and really enjoyed it, but this crowd was pretty focused on the cigarettes. There was little alcohol around, outside of some terrible vodka drink they could not even give away.

The most shocking thing about this event was the lack of foreigners. It was definitely the hispster neuvo rich with a spattering of expats, but really not more than that. And the locals were certainly into the music. It was fantastic to look around and see everyone singing along in English with Club 8 and Sondre Lerche. They could not have been more excited. It seems that MySpace contributed to the popularity – both foreign bands thanked their MySpace fans for helping them come to Indonesia and both Club 8 and Sondre Lerche seemed a little shocked at the amount of love that was in the room. It was, for lack of a better term, a powerful vibe. (And not one influenced by drugs or alcohol making it feel all that more genuine and fabulous.) We really had a great time and we highly recommend both of the foreign bands, especially Sondre Lerche.

Haviva Feeding the Residents in the Monkey Forest

Ahhhhhh Bali

Sadly I write this entry from our couch in Jakarta. After a weekend in Bali, reality of city and work life, can only be talked about with a hint of sadness. We now know what life could be like and it only took a few minutes to miss it.

When we arrived in Bali Thursday night it was pouring and we really thought the curse of our last beach weekend had followed us. Luckily it had not and although it was a little overcast, I still managed a nice tan, Howie (despite spending all his time under the umbrella) has some bright red legs, there was snorkeling, beach side reading, swimming in the amazingly calm waters outside our hotel, a few hours on a motorbike to see a cliff-side temple and quite a few dunks in the pool. We enjoyed delicious fresh seafood (that had been appropriately bathed in Balinese spices and then perfectly grilled) right on the beach with the water lapping almost at our toes.

We milked the 4 days for all they were worth and even managed to make it to Ubud - the hippy/artsy community in the hills of Bali known for wonderful shopping, great food and the monkey forest. Yes, more monkeys and these were very up close and personal hanging out around temples. Semi- wild these guys were definitely here first, but stay for the tourists bearing bananas and rambutans. Loads of fun.

If we have not made you too jealous, you can take a look at our pics here.

Off to Bali for the weekend, but before we go...

Yesterday was Haviva's birthday. We celebrated with humus, falafel and shisha at the fancy Lebanese restaurant near our apartment. On top of a birthday trip to Bali she also got a purple Buddha painting that had caught her eye at the local 'pop art' shop.

This hasn't been a terribly eventful week. Mostly we've been counting the days until our 4 night weekend in Bali which starts tonight. In one of Haviva's favorite moments of the week she convinced me to eat a deep fried item that ended up being brain. I took one big bite and was pretty sure that was what it was. Looked just like you'd expect a deep fried hunk of brain to look. Tasted a bit like a hard boiled egg. No idea what variety of brain it was - the bill just said 'otak', which means brain.

Have you seen the story in the news about the baby orangutans and baby tigers that are friends (here)? That's not the zoo we visited, but the 'safari park' that is about an hour from here. We're hoping to get there some time. Nice to see some happy news coming out of Indonesia once in a while.

A little Schmutzer on the weekend

This weekend Howie and I went to visit the Schmutzer Primate Center inside the Jakarta zoo. The zoo itself costs about 50 cents and the animals in it seem to be treated that valuably. There are chained elephants available for riding just to give you an example. We did not spend any time in the zoo itself, except to walk to the Schmutzer center. The Schmutzer Center is the complete opposite of the zoo in care and only costs an extra 50 cents to enter. Only housing monkeys (and maybe a loris but we only saw pictures of that) it is pristine. The habitats are large and clearly well made with the animal's best interest involved. They even check you bags for food before you go in and there are no snacks for sale once inside. They took away our water, marking it neatly with Howie's name and returning it to us on our way out.

And the monkeys, wow. we spent most of our time in the orangutan habitat watching the mother and new baby you see below. Although the video is short, I think we spent about 30 minutes there. The other monkeys were pretty amazing too - swinging around and showing off for us clearly used to being on show, but not bothered enough to stop grooming each other. While we are not fans of most zoos and we actually made a point of saying we were not going to go to the one here, the Schmutzer Primate Center is well worth the visit and pictures of swinging monkeys will make us smile for some time to come.

More photos here.

A breath of fresh air

The beginning of this week was pleasantly spent in from Jakarta (less than that if youSukabumi - a small town about 3 hours have a crazy driver who weaves in and out of lanes at about 100 miles an hour.) I had a training for local teachers and Howie decided to come along for the ride. I was trying to convince him to go to the cheese factory I read about, but Howie was more in for the cool mountain and air and a break from city life. And a break from city life it was! A small town nestled in the mountains, the air is a bit cleaner, the sidewalks are actually walkable, and it is cool. (There were several moments when we regretted not bringing any warm clothing and for the first time in a long time, we slept without AC.)

Although I did not see too much of Sukabumi (I really worked those trainees to the bone!) what I did see, I have to say, gave me the warm fuzzies about Indonesia. While it might seem like a gross generalization the people are incredibly sweet. They do not see foreigners often and yet I did not feel harassed when I walked down the street. I went to real local holes in the wall for lunch with the trainees (I mean real local joints where I thought to myself "Well, what is ruder - telling these people I do not want to eat with them or vomiting during training??" I chose the risk of vomit) where I ate delicious food, for less than 50 cents (you heard me, a whole meal for less than 50 cents!!) and was not looked at like that freaky foreigner. Did I mention it was delicious?? It was an absolute pleasure. We were even able to walk around town a bit in the evening - something you just cannot do comfortably in Jakarta. (Jakarta is notorious for not being a walking city.)

Howie did get to see the sights a bit traveling like the locals, there are no taxis in Sukabumi so it is either little minibuses or motorcycles, to a lake, a tea plantation and some small hill town he is not sure the name of. The most fun part for Howie was the multicolored minibuses ranking Sukabumi highest in city organization.

Charming little place that Sukabumi.