No Patricks were harmed in the making of this Entry.

According to the Jakarta Post, a crime occurs in Indonesia's capital city every 8 minutes and 6 seconds.

To clarify the issue a bit though: Jakarta had a rate of roughly 1 homicide per 100,000 people last year. New York, on the other hand, had 6.3. Macon, Georgia, where I live and work in relative safety, had a rate of 23.2 in 2007. Comparatively 'safer' Warner Robins? 5.0. Jakarta, one of East Asia's most chaotic, roughest, and poorest cities has a murder rate of 1/5th that of an American town constantly touted by its citizens for how 'safe' it is.

So if you worry about me during the following story, know that your worry is misplaced. Worry about me when I get home instead.

That having been said, rest assured, nothing bad happens in the story I'm about to tell.

Now then, where was I?

Oh yeah. Jakarta. I was to arrive in Jakarta by 9PM on Monday night, and unfortunately, there was not a flight onward to my final destination until the next morning.

I decided not to make plans. I'm not really sure why. Sometimes my brain, which is constantly making plans and contingency plans and fallback plans and strategies just decides to revolt, and not plan anything or make any decisions at all.

Usually this happens when my friends are being particularly weak-willed, and have started expecting that I'll make all of their decisions for them, food, entertainment, etc, which makes me crazy, and occasionally causes me to shut down.

But sometimes it happens for no reason at all. This was one of those times. I decided to play Jakarta entirely by ear.

I had been warned that 1) the Taxi drivers were incredibly pushy, 2) The traffic in the heart of the city was horrific.

But I figured I could find a hotel at a halfway decent rate near the airport using the hotel desks inside the airport, right? All I needed to do was buy my ticket for the next morning (still unpurchased, since buying certain types of one way tickets over the internet is remarkably tricky), find a hotel, and a taxi to take me there, then get another taxi back in the morning.

The thing was, because of the horrible traffic I didn't want to use one of the nice, respectable hotels (JW Marriott, Four Seasons, etc.) because they were all downtown.

I didn't count on getting stuck in a ridiculously long waiting line for Visa and Immigration, and not getting out into the baggage claim area until around 11pm.

By then, of course, most of the hotel registration desks were closed, and the remaining ones were offering high rates for hotels--you guessed it--downtown.

There is a hotel IN the Jakarta airport. A transit hotel that offers rooms by the hour or by the night.

Of course, this hotel is inaccessible from inside the airport proper, so to talk to the people at that desk, I'd have to go out into the 'public' space in front of the airport. This might not sound like a big deal, but it turns out to be one. There are two reasons for this.

1) The free internet available throughout the Jakarta airport is only visible from inside security, due to the airport's layout, something I didn't figure out until I was already outside, thus making it impossible for me to research any of the hotels I was likely to be recommended. 2) The airport's public space is teeming with taxi drivers and touts, there to make (or skim) a commission by convincing any easy mark (especially a foreigner) that he shouldn't pay the extortionist rates at the big hotels, but should instead use one of the ones they know, where they know the owner.

The way the system works is, the tout convinces you that the hotel nearby is a great deal, because compared to the ridiculous rates downtown (100+ per night, in a city where 7 dollars buys a nice shirt and 10 buys lunch for a half a dozen people), they are a great deal. The deal he's selling you isn't related to the actual hotel rate at all though, it's the amount of money (in US) he wants you to pay him, personally.

In exchange, he'll ferry you to the hotel, make all the arrangements with the hotel staff, pay for your room, make sure you like your room, and leave you there to sleep. He might offer to throw in payment to the hotel for a driver to take you back to the airport in the morning, but unless you get this confirmed with all parties up-front, the driver will probably milk you for another couple of bucks when you reach the terminal.

The trick here is that the rates they're offering you are in US dollars, and much higher than the actual hotel room rate. The small local hotels with only five or six cheap little rooms near the airport appreciate it of course, because they'd never get the scratch together to advertise, so there is no way for anyone to know they are there except to rely on a tout to bring them business.

Once I came to understand this system, it seemed a lot less dangerous. The tout is making good money--there's no reason for him to put his business at risk by attempting to abduct or rob anybody, especially an American citizen, and that, of course, goes double for one twice his own size. Until I understood where the money was going though, and why the Tout *did* the job, it seemed like a horrifically dangerous scam.

So I ignored the first tout who adopted me, despite his attempts to be helpful by showing me the ATM (directly around the first corner and impossible to miss) and walking me to the Geruda ticket counter so I could buy my ticket for the next morning. At this point, I had decided I would just use the transit hotel in the airport, and that way I didn't have to worry about any of the dangers of disappearing into the Jakarta night, never to be seen again.

(remember, nothing at all bad happens in this story).

So I brushed off my leech with a ridiculously large tip for the very small amount of help he'd been in guiding me about the airport. I was immediately glad I'd brushed him off when he begged for more, which was remarkably pathetic. I went inside the Transit hotel, and asked about their rooms. Their standard room rate still ran above $90. Yikes! Unable to research other local hotels due to the wireless problem though, I had little choice, so I asked the night clerk about the room, and he told me that the only rooms they had left were suites, $180 per night.

By this point, I had about 8 hours until I needed to come back and check in. There was no way I was spending almost $23 PER HOUR to catch some sleep. If that was my only option, I'd pick a dark corner and curl up on my bag, as a few other early morning flyers seemed to be doing.

But I decided I didn't want to do this either. Dammit, there was probably a perfectly decent, cheap hotel within two kilometers of my location, and I wanted to sleep there, not on some wooden bench in an airport. I wandered through the shops in the quieter upstairs portion, mostly closed down except, oddly, for a Dunkin' Donuts. I couldn't find signs for wireless internet anywhere though, and I didn't feel like painting a giant target on myself by wandering through the airport with my laptop in my hand.

I stopped at the Dunkin Donuts to grab a bottle of water, and it was here I realized I was going to have some trouble with the currency.

Korean Won trade around 1250 to 1 against the dollar. The IDR trades at about 10,000 to 1. IDR currency in most ATMs is typically 50,000, or if you're lucky, 100,000 rupiah notes.

So the 1.5 MILLION rupiah I'd withdrawn when I arrived were worth about $150 US, and the only notes I had were $50,000.

I had a helluva time making the jump from Korean Won to IDR. A lot of the time I'd been carrying 5,000 Won notes in Korea. So for some reason my brain backfired when the young Indonesia girl working the Dunkin Donuts counter asked for 12,000 rupiah. I tried to give her three 50,000 rupiah bills, for some reason thinking they were 5s, not 50s.

She laughed awkwardly and pressed two of the bills back into my hands, followed by my change and drink. "No. Here. . ." she struggled with the words for a moment "here, very small money" she finally said, putting her hands close together.

I laughed and thanked her, and pocketed my change.

After failing to find any internet access, I finally gave up, stomped back out of the airport doors, and sized up the first tout that approached me with "you need a taxi, and maybe a hotel, yes?"

I would later find out that his name was Effendi. He was a compactly built Indonesian man that reminded me vaguely of the lamp seller from Alladin. He had a tiny goatee and moustache that made him look like every Arabian rug salesman ever to walk the earth and a soft face that spoke of both cunning and kindness in a single frame. I'd place him in his early 40s. He also had a helper, I'd guess a son or nephew, of perhaps 18 or 20.

Effendi sympathized with me about how expensive the rooms were, and told me he knew some hotels near here (and he rattled off names that of course I couldn't catch) that were clean and safe, with good air conditioning, and within two kilometers of the airport. Just ten minutes!

I nodded, and ran through every question I could think of to try to find the giant hole in the plan. What was the hotel's name again? He repeated the same list of three, so at least that was either rote rehearsal or a real list. How far away? Ten minutes. No more than two kilometers. Could we take a taxi? Yes, he had a car waiting. How would traffic be in the morning? The same, the hotels were still well outside the throbbing heart of Jakarta. US dollars or Indonesian Rupiah? US is preferred.

I reviewed my options, and tried to employ to the fullest extent my meager skills in judging the characters of strangers.

Effendi did not seem nervous, or concerned. He also didn't seem to be trying to obscure any details. Wherever the money was being made, it was either so well hidden I'd never see it, or it was right on the face of the transaction, and he figured I could see it as plain as day already, or didn't care whether or not I figured it out. In addition, the rate he was offering was not so low as to seem too-good-to-be-true, and he could have picked a much stouter helper if they planned to overpower me, the slight kid helping him can't have weighed more than 55 Kilos, and neither of them where wearing clothes that would have made concealed carry easy or practical, especially not in a well lit airport.

I agreed, and he waved me towards his waiting automobile.

His automobile was a beautifully clean late model SUV, all black, with no markings of any kind, his helper was already lifting the hatchback.

I halted and mentally dug in my heels. This was the tipping point. "Ahh, no. A marked taxi. If we can't take a real taxi, there's no deal."

Effendi looked up at me, mildly surprised, but without apparent disappointment or frustration he nodded and shrugged his shoulders. "Sure, we can take a taxi. No problem."

He waved to his helper to wait at the truck, and off we went.

I had a couple of reasons for demanding a marked taxi. Part of it are the issues I've discussed before. If a taxi is unmarked, it's absolutely unmetered, and that means you have to agree on a rate before you get in, otherwise you're going to get fleeced. That was less of an issue here, since Effendi was arranging transport as part of the total cost but, instead it presented me an opportunity to test if this was all a scam.

If it was a scam, I reasoned, the demand I'd just made was likely to present a serious monkey wrench in the works, and my guide was probably going to be making phone calls on the way to the taxi stand and then hemming and hawing to me about why we couldn't take a readily available cab right in front of us while some buddy he'd called in to play pretend 'real taxi' driver booked it to the airport.

Instead, as we walked, my new friend (as they all call themselves once a connection of any kind is established) chatted amiably with me about the unreasonableness of the big hotels, and told me that there were shops nearby the hotel we were going to where I could buy beer, or water, if I wanted it. When we got upstairs, there was a taxi disgorging a family of three and their luggage onto the Jakarta airport curb, and Effendi made a B line for the cab driver. A soon as the family had settled their fare, Effendi explained in a quick burst of Indonesian where we wanted to go, and the cab driver shrugged, said sure, and climbed back in. I climbed in the back.

Now I was either in the hands of a pair of very skilled con men, or everything was, thus far, on the up and up. If they were so good that they could make that whole transition (including, I suppose,the family?) look seamless, I was outclassed and doomed anyway. Besides that, why pick me? I don't look like I'm carrying much cash, with wrinkled clothes, muddy combat boots and a typical internal frame pack, I look like any backpacker that bounces from place to place with little money and less gear. Surely there are more valuable marks available.

So off we went, swallowed up by the muggy Jakarta night. In just a moment we were barreling througgh through side streets of slums I'd never be able to navigate in reverse if things went wrong. I quietly pulled the bills I would need from the passport pouch against my skin during the cab ride and moved them to a front pocket, hoping that this way it would be unclear that I was carrying that pouch, and the assumption made that if I had any cash at all it was all in my wallet.

I also made sure my knife was available in my front pocket. I had no illusion that I'd actually win the day if a handful of Indonesians with knives and sticks were waiting for me at the end of this ride, but at least I could make enough of a racket that maybe the cops would be called, or I could hopefully make a couple of them regret it.

(Remember--nothing bad happens in this story.)

After about 5 minutes of driving, we pulled up in front of an open foyer. It looked like the reception to any cheap hotel, except there was no front wall or door, just a big opening into the building. It was as if a typical hotel had been built specifically so it could be photographed for one of those 'what's inside?' cutaway diagrams.

Effendi gestured at the place. "This place is clean, and good air conditioning!"

I shrugged and climbed out. I've slept on concrete and benches and couches and pool tables, in both excruciating heat and cold that wakes you up every half hour shivering. I wasn't too worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep here. Effendi gestured down the hall that led to alternating doorways next to the foyer. "First you see room, if you like it, you stay here."

I grabbed my backpack and climbed out. Effendi spoke to the hotel staff (a random sampling of perhaps five Indonesians lounging in the open reception area, all between the ages of 20 and 30) and one of them broke off and opened a door in the hall into one of the rooms.

It was a typical cheap hotel room, with distinctly east Asian touches--small, with high, thin windows on all sides and a bigger window opening onto the hallway. There was a television and a working air conditioner already keeping the room from heating to sweltering in the warm Jakarta night.

I checked the bathroom, the CFL bulb in the tiny cell-style bathroom flickered for a long time before it finally came on. Indonesian bathrooms are usually totally tiled, with a drain in the floor and the shower mounted any old place on the wall. This makes cleaning convenient, but also means your bathroom floor is very wet, which can make using the bathroom awkward later. I decided against trying to fight with the shower.

I turned back, and checked the lock on the door. In addition to the key lock, there was a sliding lock on the inside. Minimal protection, I knew--I'm confident any of my female friends could probably have kicked it in if she were determined enough--but it served a helpful purpose. It told me the hotel probably wasn't in the business of having people kick in its doors in the middle of the night--if they were, they'd offer a nicer deadbolt lock and just keep an extra key around, to keep from constantly having to replace doorways and cheap locks that had been destroyed.

Effendi asked me if I liked the room. "It's good, yeah? Or you want another?"

"It's ok." I said. "I'll take it."

Effendi nodded. "This is a good place. Actually, I know the owner."

I walked back out into the hall with Effendi, and he turned to me "You bring your passport?"

He gestured as if I was to hand it to him. I would be told later by a friend that an American passport's street value in Indonesia is currently up to $50,000 US.

(Remember, nothing bad happens in this story).

I nodded (I'd already moved it to a pocket so I could access it without having to dig around in the pouch and said "Oh, no, I'll register myself" and walked to the desk. My "never hand your passport to a stranger unless it's a train conductor checking passes or an immigration/ticketing official in an airport" rule is pretty firm.

Effendi nodded "Sure, sure. But I pay for the room, yeah? you just pay me directly."

It was while I was registering that I had the presence of mind to ask the girl the rate. She looked over my shoulder, quizzically, at Effendi, who was talking to one of the other hotel staff, probably reminding them I needed to be at the airport early the next morning. Apparently she saw no harm in telling me the rate though, since she nodded and said "150,000 rupiahs"

IDR currently trade at about 10,000 to 1 against the US dollar. So the room cost just $15, and Effendi was pocketing the difference--probably more than $20, even after paying the taxi driver. Not bad for an hour's work in a city like Jakarta. Suddenly the whole system of pickup-negotiate-deliver made sense, and I could be a lot less worried that this was all a plan to separate me from everything I'd brought along on the trip.

When I was done at the desk I handed Effendi my $40, and he confirmed that I needed to be back at the airport by 7AM so I could catch my 8:30 flight.

I thanked him, and it was at this point that we finally did introductions and he gave me his card. "If you have any trouble tomorrow you call me, I'll arrange for the hotel to take you to the airport on the morning though, so you won't see me then."

"Ok" I said, "Thanks Effendi."

He waved goodbye and I returned to my room. Despite my general comfort with the explanation of where all the money was being made, I still propped the room's only chair (a modern molded plastic lawn chair) against the door, locked all the locks, and wore my passport and wallet to bed.

I slept, but fitfully, but it was still better rest than I'd have gotten in the airport, and for a helluva lot cheaper price.

Just after 5AM the next morning, I was awakened by knocking on my door. I really wanted to sleep for another hour, but the knocking was pretty insistent. Once I'd dragged myself together and secured all my belongings, I went outside. My car was already waiting, with one other passenger also going to the airport already on board. This was probably why I'd been woken so early. He likely had a 7AM flight, and the hotel's runner didn't want to make two trips.

After the other native was dropped at terminal 1, I was dropped near terminal 2, where all the Garuda flights leave from. The driver asked for 20,000 rupiah and I didn't mind paying it, he'd helped me with my bags, and I was actually planning to tip him that amount if he said Effendi had paid for the ride, so I nodded and gave him the bill.

So it was that I found myself at the Geruda gate two and a half hours before my flight.

See? I told you nothing bad happened. Sometimes, I find that traveling puts me in a position where I have to try something I expect to go horribly wrong, and having it turn out pretty much ok is almost a let-down. It'll help restore your faith in people though, so I guess there is an upside.