Report 7: Indonesia, bring it on

Well I am a little behind in posting this, but later is better than never. Last weekend a few of my friends and I traveled to Indonesia for the day. We arrived late Friday night, spent all Saturday there, and then left early Sunday afternoon.

I was a little nervous about this trip because the US Government has been sending out warnings to tourists about going there. Many about staying in very western populated areas. Like if you stay in a fancy hotel, it might get blown up. But the place we went was not a tourism hub, but it wasn’t a desserted town either. So everything was ok, especially since we knew of the potential danger and didn’t leave the hostel once it got late.

The name of the place is Tanjung Pinang. It is a pleasant little town about one hour from Singapore to there, but three hours to get back because of a one hour time difference that we were unaware of until Saturday afternoon. At one point I remember waiting to buy our visas and one guy in line asked the security guard what time it was. He said 8:30, but I looked at my watch and it was 9:30, and then I thought to myself, “what a dummy, his watch is one hour slow.”

Upon arrival we met a guy name Bobby, he seemed like a nice guy, eventhough he was just trying to get business for his hotel. But he took us to the hostel that we booked from here and made sure we were satisfied with it before saying goodbye and offering us a boat tour of the island on Saturday. We then went to a place to get some food. It was nice, a little empty, but for 2,000 rupia I sang karaoke. “I would do anything for love,” and “Lean on Me.” It was beautiful. Our waitresses, including one that was at one time a man, enjoyed my singing. Then it was back to the hostel for a relaxing night of tv movies and snacks.

The next morning we awoke to a free breakfast of weird rice, eggs, tea, coffee, and toast with kaya. Kaya is something I discovered on this trip, it is a flavor of jelly that is to die for. I could eat it on my toast for the rest of life. As we were finishing breakfast, Bobby came in to see if we wanted the tour. For 7 sing dollars we took a boat tour of the area. We went down the snake river to snake temple, across the little bay to a neighborhood on stilts, over to a mosque, and stuff like that. It was a about 4 hours and the staff of one tour guide and a boat driver that didn’t speak English was friendly and informative. By friendly I mean that the driver would jump into all our pictures, and ask to get his pictures with the girls, and by informative I mean that our tour guide would usually casually offer information by saying I read in a book once that… but I am not sure if I believe that. But in all seriousness, the tour was great and our two guides were very nice.

Then it was time for a massage. We asked bobby where a good place was and he took us there. Do I have some stories for you. The entire time we were receiving our massage, our girls were giggling and laughing at our western bodies. Often times we would make a word like German as they looked at Sascha, then after some more Chinese, or malay, or whatever they were speaking, they would all laugh at the same time. Sascha asked them if they would care to share with us what they are talking about. To which the my girl replied, “hehehehe, no no no, hehehe” She seemed to be impressed by the size of my nose. While massaging face, she kept flicking my nose and making a dong sound. All the other girls would then laugh. She was also quite impressed with the hair on my belly. When I flipped over, she exclaimed with some excitement to the other girls. This cause a little bit of confusion and I did not know what she was pointing at and making a commotion about. But after she grabbed some of my hair and repeated the word that she had been shouting to he coworkers, I realized what was the commotion was about.

That night we tried lots of local food. It was delicious. Galen and Jen went out and patronized the road side stands and brought back a feast of roasted corn, prata, fish balls, and fruit. We ate a lot and then settled in for the night. The next day we did some more shopping at the mall, I bought two shirts that are too fashionable for me. But I guess the make me look good (like that is hard).