Isn't it a pleasure to have an old friend visit from afar?

I went to the Dunkin' Donuts counter I'd visited the night before and grabbed some generic breakfast pastries, and kicked back with a book until I could check in.

Once I was finally able to check in, I could access the internet, and so I hauled out my laptop and e-mailed the friends I was going to visit. I hadn't had the chance until then to send them a note telling them when I'd be arriving in their city, and I was hoping that one (or both) of them could meet me at the airport, since that way I wouldn't have to navigate yet another crowd of pushy taxi salesmen.

I have a couple of old friends, Don and Lacey (Names have been changed to protect the innocent, and also to amuse me, because I find imaging these those names attached to those people hilarious). They live in a city here, and work on a project that improves the lives of the local population. It's a project with some external funding and volunteer labour which allows them to reduce the cost of the service/equipment they provide.

In that way, it's kindof like Habitat for Humanity. H4H doesn't give away houses, it sells them at a reduced cost on a zero interest loan, so that people can still feel like they own the place and care for it as an investment. Any student of history knows that in a free market society, the sense of ownership is important.

Anyway, for reasons connected to safety, privacy, and logistics, I can't talk much about what they do, or even where they are. But I can tell you this: they're still as Don and Lacey as ever.

Don picked me up at the airport and I got my first taste of the Indonesian Native Driving Experience (TM) on the way to their house. Of course I'd spent the last week in Korea, where they drive on the left, with the exception of Hong Kong, where I spend most of my time on the Subway, so what side of the street they use rarely occurs to me.

So after being shooed away from the driver's door by Don, I scurried to my appropriate seat and we were off into the fray. Driving in Indonesia has three rules.

1) Might makes Right (Of way). The bigger you are, the more power you have. Want to pull across a divided four lane highway in the midst of traffic wizzing by? Are you a cement truck? Ok then! You go right ahead, those guys will stop.

2) You are responsible for what is in front of you. If someone clips you, it's their fault, but your job is to keep moving and always have a plan. If someone slingshots out in front of you from nowhere--no matter how erratically--it's your fault if you hit them. Unfathomably, the extension of this rule seems to stand in direct opposition to Rule (1): any manoeuvre you can perform using your vehicle without causing another vehicle (in front of you) to deviate from its course is allowed, no matter your size.

3) Your car's signals are your voice, speak early, speak often. The horn means "coming up behind you" or "stay back until I perform this suicidal manoeuvre by driving between you and a bus" or "hey, I know you want to squeeze between me and that bus, but you're about to hit me, asshole" or "I'm about to pass you on the inside and you're on a bicycle and therefore do not have mirrors, please don't do anything foolish" maybe just "hi, I'm driving." The indicator lights don't just mean you're turning anymore. Sometimes they mean you're turning. Sometimes they mean that you are about to have to use the invisible third lane that exists between any two given demarkated lanes (two way, one way, doesn't matter) and the oncoming traffic should ease over to accommodate the fact that you have decided to drive into it.

Implicit in these rules are a couple more:

Subrule 1) There is an invisible third lane. Deal with it.

Subrule 2) People on motorscooters are not cars, they are extremely high velocity pedestrians who occasionally pretend to be motor vehicles when it suits them. Thus, whichever set of rules allows them to do what they want are the rules under which they operate. Do they need to squeeze into the third lane between you and oncoming traffic to pass you? Ok, they're a car, scoot over a little. Do they need to travel on a sidwalk, through a market, or the wrong way down a one way street? Well, that's allowed too. They're on a motorscooter.

The trip from the airport to Don and Lacey's house was a blast. It was as if every vehicle on the road drove exactly like all Korean taxi drivers want to drive all the time. The only difference was that there are so many vehicles on the road, and so much constant mayhem, that the velocity rarely gets over 50 km/hr. It's just too chaotic to move faster than that.

On the way there, Don filled me in on the work he's been doing since they arrived in the area a couple of years ago, and I asked questions and occasionally mashed my imaginary brake pedal (quietly) and tried to focus on everything around me at once.

We dropped off the bags at home, then went out for a local lunch (delicious) and wandered around town. We went to a local cloth market and wandered for a while. They told me a little about way traditional cloth is woven in this part of the world and then we went out for coffee. Don's birthday was the day I arrived, so we actually went out for Coffee and Ice cream on me.

One of the reasons we'd come to this particular coffee place was that they served a coffee bean a few of you in the states have probably heard of--Kopi Luwak. That's it in the picture.

For those of you who don't know, I'll now give a little background on Kopi Luwak. There is a special kind of civet cat with an unfortunate scientific name--Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, and no I won't tell you why, look it up yourself--who happens to love to eat coffee cherries. Coffee cherries contain one coffee bean each, and the civet cat is not given to chewing the Cherries overmuch. When the Cherry has passed completely through the Civet Cat's relatively short digestive track, the bean is still whole, and has been mellowed extensively by the journey. The stomach acid and other chemical reactions involved break down the harsh, bitter flavour of the bean. So the harvesters then wash the beans extensively (thank God), roast them and sell them. They're ground before brewing, and the resulting coffee generally has a nice soft finish and very little of the normal bitterness of coffee.


It's ridiculously tasty as long as you don't think hard about the fact that part of your drink was shat out by what looks like an adorable cousin of the Tasmanian devil maybe only days ago. The coffee place we went to had it available for about $6 per cup, so I had a Cafe Machiato with Kopi Luwak beans. I'll probably never have it again, but I think that if it weren't so frightfully expensive (something like $200 per pound in the states) I might actually consider purchasing it from time to time to make espresso for myself and my guests (likely without ever telling them the secret to my espresso was so delectable).

Afterwards, we ran a few errands and then headed out to try to find a little live music with dinner. Unfortunately, the normal place with a live band in the area was hosting a private party (without live music) that night, so we went to a different place instead.

The place was actually very cool, set into the ground a few steps in a sortof half-cellar in the bottom of a hotel. The columns that held up the multiple stories above us had been poured in concrete specifically to look like trees, and the concrete on the walls had also be formed to resemble the edge of a forest. It was all painted in browns and greens, so one had the vague impression that they were lunching in the woods, and long as you didn't touch anything, and ignored the televisions.

They had wonderful pepper chicken, and we sat and talked shop and politics and watched the election advertisements on the televisions inexplicably scattered throughout the restaurant.

The next day, we went on an excursion to a remote village where Don's team had some work to do. I had told him that I wanted to help as much as possible while I was there, partly because I felt I needed to do something real on this trip, and partly because I didn't want to pull his attention away from his job so he could play host, and the best way to do that was to be part of the team and let him playing host mean I took orders and did whatever manual labour I could.

This worked out very well, and we had--from my perspective at least--a ridiculously awesome day. The job in question was in a remote village, practical to access with the tools and materials we were bringing only via boat, or on foot.

As we left the hustle and bustle of the major city, I discovered one of the reasons you don't drink the water in some parts of the world.

See that? That's a washout station for garbage trucks. See that square of light under the one in the middle? Those deep channels cut in the surface drain directly into the river, with no filtering, cleaning, or treatment of any kind. Nice, huh?

Once we'd gotten out of the city we drove between miles and miles of rice fields. Certain parts of Indonesia (the flat ones, or the ones that can be made flat) are basically one giant quilt of rice paddies. The villages are build along narrow strips of raised and reinforced land where the roads have been laid, and behind the one row of houses next to the road, the rice paddies (or the river, depending on which side of the road you look towards) immediately begin. This part of Indonesia is much slower paced, and you're likely to be slowed down by pedestrians, people who wave you down for a chat, or the occasional proud or suicidal duck.

So get to where we were going, we first drove down several miles of these isthmus roads, passing row houses of mainly wood and occasionally concrete, often with nice clean glass windows and vividly coloured curtains.

After perhaps an hour, we stopped at a parking lot in front of a pier into the river, just before a market that had completely shut down the road for all non-foot traffic. It would run for most of the day, which is what had forced us to come the "short, slow way". On the way back we'd go the "long, quick way" and shave almost half an hour off our trip on smoother, more open roads, where we could drive much faster.

There, we boarded a small boat--along with what seemed like the entire population of a small village--and were ferried across to a different village. We walked through it, to another boat, which we boarded via a single plank and which only carried the six of us. It was on this boat that I managed to catch more views of daily fishing life in Indonesia. This net is being used to catch small fish, so they can be fed to larger fish in the fish-farms, the square boxlike cages you see throughout any Indonesian river, where a couple of thousand fish can be kept until they're over a pound a piece, and then sold at a tidy profit.

Professor Blackburn from Mercer once told me that "Good photography isn't about taking great pictures of extraordinary stuff. Anybody can do that. Really good photographers take great pictures of ordinary stuff."

Well, the stuff I saw that day was incredibly ordinary to the people around me, but extraordinary to me. I shot on and off on the way to the site, and almost constantly on the way back.

The work was rewarding. A little of it required real physical exertion, but most of it was just relatively straightforward assembly tasks. That's me getting to climb around like a monkey on the foundation for the project.

For lunch, we had take-out Rendang, which Don and I had picked up before leaving the city. Rendang is Indonesia's hamburger, the day-in-day-out food that keeps the workforce moving. It's a chunk of incredibly tough, brilliantly seasoned beef, packaged along with steamed rice for takeout in a banana leaf wrap. Sent along with your package is a small packet of vegetables and spicy sauce. It is the tastiest damn thing. The beef takes on that almost papery, beef jerky texture but it doesn't matter at all, the spices make it all worth it, and the whole meal can be eaten with your hands.

I tried this, remembering belatedly that there is a "which hand is appropriate" rule in Muslim cultures, and switching sheepishly from my left to my right. Don pointed out that Indonesia is pretty laid back as far as Muslim cultures go, and no-one would have said anything to me had I go on cluelessly eating with my dominant hand, but I still felt better making the switch. It's a challenge to eat Rendang with your hands because you would rather not have to hold the beef and bite off chunks. Don told me how to solve this problem, by separating the beef out into smaller portions using your thumb and pressure against the hard surface on which your banana leaf has been set (plate, table, floor, whatever), you could this way separate it into smaller morsels, and then get a morsel of beef and handful of rice at a time.

Best lunch ever. I might try to learn to make it and start taking it to work when I get home.

If so, I'm totally not using utensils there either.

After lunch, we worked on the job for another couple of ours. We finished 90% of what needed to be done, with the last few % relying on resources we hadn't brought with us. A couple of the team members agreed to come back and finish the final steps on the process tomorrow, and the wind-down work of the day began.

Don pointed out that I'd never had Coconut straight from the tree before, and the local villagers laughed and talked among themselves for a few minutes.

A half an hour later, while the final touches were being put on the job, one of the locals walked up a coconut tree (this looks like a world-class circus trick when you see it done, but it's an everyday activity for some of them) and disappeared into the thick bunch of leaves at the top. Within a couple of seconds we heard the distinctive thud as 7 to 10 pounds of fruit fell the thirty feed to the ground. For the next five minutes, I took pictures while we listened to the thudding sound of coconut being shot earthward. A couple of them cracked on impact, spitting coconut juice (which Don taught me is different from coconut milk, by the way) across the pathway between small wooden houses, but most made it down just fine.

Eventually, our harvester returned to earth as another villager showed up with a couple of short, wicked looking Machetes. The tops of several coconuts were immediately removed, and as guests we were given a coconut and a straw first, with the other villagers who wanted one grabbing one once we'd been given ours.

The juice was delicious, and is apparently excellent at replacing the minerals and electrolytes the body loses during exercise. In fact, until Don pointed it out to me, I hadn't realized that Pocari Sweat actually tastes remarkably like fresh coconut juice.

Once you've drunk all the coconut juice, the next thing to do is cut your coconut in half. Don went the smart way, letting a villager do it for him--in two swift cuts it was done, and he had a pair of thick bowls of husk, each lined with perhaps 1/4 inch of fresh, clean, tasty coconut meat.

I asked permission to be more stubborn, and cheerfully whacked away on my own for the required dozen or so strikes (per side, making a total of perhaps twenty) it took me to get my open. I felt very proud of myself, but there was husk fiber inside my bowls that I had to carefully pick out due to all my sloppy chopping. Practice makes perfect of course, and it was my first attempt after all.

We were given spoons, and we slowly scraped as much coconut meat as we could from each bowl, savouring the flavour. It was the freshest coconut I'll ever have, and it was amazing.

On the way back I took more pictures of the return voyage. The darkening late afternoon sky made it feel like sunset, but it was only around 3pm. The clouds were heavy with the threat of rain though, and added a sobriety to a landscape that was already mystic, making it a haunting, sombre place.

When we reached our switching point from big boat to little boat, the big boat was already full. Now, imagine the boat in this picture. How many motorcycles do you think you could fit on it? Assume occupancy on each, plus 15 or so other passengers on board as well.

If you guessed 9 motorcycles, you'd be right!

Of course, this meant we had to wait around, and there was a storm coming. However, the team had done some work in this village, and the village leader loved them to death, so he came over to talk for a little while, and then personally ferried us back to the other dock in his own boat. So we got a personal water taxi ride from the equivalent of the local mayor to cap our already excellent day.

It wasn't a moment too soon either, As we took the last steps to reach the trucks, it began to rain. By the time we'd loaded everything up and pulled out of the tiny pier parking lot, it was a downpour, and it rained cats and dogs on us most of the way back to the city.

We arrived back in time to clean up, go out to grab takeout (Chicken Satay and Longtong or regular rice) and go have dinner with friends of Don and Lacey's, It was a very pleasant evening over all.

Longtong, before you ask, is steamed rice that is wrapped tightly in a banana leaf and then further cook until it becomes a sort of pudding texture. The banana leaf constricts it in a cylinder, which is then sliced, resulting in gummy little circles of rice that are quite tasty.

Over the next couple of days, I'd get a whirlwind tour of life as a Bule (pronounced Boo-lay, it's the Indonesian slang for whitey,cracker, white tourist, the other other white meat, etc.).

I'd get to eat at a local all vegetarian cafeteria style restaurant, with some of the best food I've ever eaten in my entire life. My entire meal pictured here (including the drink) cost me $1.60. I'm going to miss this restaurant terribly, and I've only been once.

I'd get to sleep beneath a mosquito net, even though I was in an air conditioned room. Old and new technologies come together here in strange ways.

I'd get to do a little work, eat a lot of local food, and hang out in the mall (where children stare at you, and you cause young shop girls to crack into bursts of laughter just by surprising them with a wink when they think you don't know they're staring at you).
Also at the mall, they have this stand, which is basically just a full service chocolate fountain, with two helpful teenage girls who will take a skewer of the fruit of your choice and coat it in chocolate for you. With a name like that, how could I resist?

I'd get to play Badminton with the work team, which is a blast. The Indonesian's take badminton very seriously. The current BMW commercial that is running constantly on television shows one of Indonesia's badminton stars leaping and spiking the shuttle across the net in a surrealist, backgroundless shot, almost as if he's an Anime character hovering in midair, then, in an insane non-sequitur, you're suddenly shown the new 325i model, and told you should buy it. We had a blast playing, and Don and I were badly, miserably beaten by a couple of the local guys, who wound up resetting their own score without telling us because we were playing so badly.

I'd also get to try Durian, that pungently fragrant and untouchably spikey fruit popular throughout south Asia. Imagine an angry, slimey cross between a mango and an avocado, and you're in the vicinity.

I'd even get to go to the movies. The new Transformers was out, and since Don and Lacey had just seen the old one a couple of months ago, we decided to go see it at the local mall. We picked our seats (H7, 8, and 9--I think we took out a frigate!) and smuggled donuts into the theatre in my giant pockets. Here's my review: The new transformers is pretty much like the old transformers, but the final fight now takes place in a dessert, and some of the newer bad guys are wicked sick. If it meant I could own that tiger, I'd give serious thought to going over to the decepticon's side. The end.

When it was over, part of me didn't want to leave. The entire experience had been too real compared to the often hollow experience of traveling as a tourist, especially when you're traveling alone.

But I had places to explore and people to see, and Don and Lacey had a regular (magical, insane, rockstar) life to get back to, and more visitors coming once I was gone.

So I boarded a plane for Bali, Indonesia. They'd been there a couple of times, and gave me plenty of good advice on where I should visit and what I should see. I left with a light heart, glad that I'd gotten to reconnect with old friends in a new place. For all the good they are doing here though, I'm looking forward to having them back in the United States in just a few months. I can hear the homesickness in their voices when they speak about the little things--warm desserts with fudge in them, a back-country Georgia road, friends that have known you for years, and don't think you're special because you're a special colour. I'm glad they'll be coming home soon.