There is a great coffee shop, Anomali Coffee about a 4 minute walk from our apartment here in Jakarta... amazing, locally (well, local as in Indonesia- Sumatra, Java, Bali, Sulawesi) grown coffee (or kopi, as they say here), comfy seats, quiet atmosphere, no smoking. Plus, if you buy beans to bring home, they give you a free cup of brewed coffee that comes in its own personal French press. My new favorite neighborhood joint.
Tim decided to take scuba diving lessons here in Jakarta since we find ourselves in the midst of some of the bestdive sites in the world. He took classes three nights per week for the past two weeks at Bubbles Dive Center (which has a seven-meter deep mini-pool in the middle of Jakarta). To cap off his training and complete the four open water dives required for certification, he was scheduled for a weekend in Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands), a group of not-quite-thousands-but-still-a-lot of islands not too far from Jakarta. Ben, Erin and I decided to join him (me after a quick scuba refresher course, also at Bubbles).
Ben and Erin making their way onto Palau Sepa.
Tim and Bubbles Dive Master Yewan walking the pier.
Front desk at the resort.
After a jarring one and a half hour boat ride north from Jakarta's port, we arrived at Pulau Sepa,
a sunny little island with some cabins, a dive center and a main eating
area/bandstand. Kinda like the setting for Dirty Dancing, but in the
middle of Indonesia and with more giant lizards and bad (laughably terrible) cover songs sung by a live band during meals.
Our cabin.
Island views.
Ben, Erin and I almost immediately took off on our first of four dives, right off the pier, while Tim practiced some skills with his "buddy" on a separate dive. We saw a blue spotted stingray, a flounder, a variety of cool corals, some nudibranches (which are apparently all the rage in this area), a zillion sea urchins, some clownfish (aka the Nemo fish) and anenome, along with lots and lots of little fishies that I can't immediately identify.
Our second dive was off the boat, at a reef just off nearby Pulau Matahari (Sun Island), which housed a bankrupt/abandoned resort not dissimilar from the one where we stayed. Or as Ben called it, a Scooby Doo island. Lots of cool purple anenome and coral on this dive.
Sittin' on the dock of the bay.
After our dives, we grabbed some beers and sat on a pier to watch the
sunset. This quickly devolved into a front flip/back flip contest for
Mr. Ben and Mr. Tim, as evidenced below:
Cool clouds. Thousands of tiny islands.
Storm in the distance.
After the sun set, we did some night snorkeling off the dock, searching for seahorses and crabs, but mostly finding fluorescent coral and a couple crabs. Night snorkeling is very trippy... dark and mysterious.
Eh? What's that there?
I wish we hadn't had that 4th beer before snorkeling... Snorkel? More like horkel!
The next day was much sunnier. We headed out early for dives three and four while Tim completed his skills testing. During dive three, at Tongkeng, we saw about 6 starfish right off the bat... electric blue, blue spotted, and near the end of the dive, a giant crown of thorns starfish (spikey, blue, a zillion legs). Dive four was a relaxing jaunt off the pier back at Sepa, but we also got to tool around under the pier a little bit, which was cool, as the reef was basically taking over the pier's pillars under water- they were covered in coral and clams.
Sunny day for a dive!
Cool clouds.
Our pier and dive jump-off point.
Please excuse the post-dive mask marks and the giant mosquito bite on my forehead (although forehead bugbites seem to be my M.O. on tropical trips [see Costa Rica, October 2010]).
Tim and I did some shopping this weekend... a big grocery run to Grand Lucky, a trip to Ace Hardware for stuff like voltage regulators and a grill, and finally some furniture shopping in the Kemang neighborhood in Jakarta. We needed to buy a couch, but we ended up with a sweet leather and wood lounge chair and a bar. Oops!
We bought a bar! Please send booze!
The bar, all closed up.
Can you see my ass groove on this chair yet? It's forming quickly because we got our cable installed and I have access to the Asian Food Channel now... I am soaking up the various shows to know what to eat and what to cook when I get my equipment! Very educational. None of that semi-homemade shit.
Last Saturday night, we went to dinner with Ben and Erin, followed by a drink or two at Cafe Batavia, a relic of the Dutch colonial era here in Jakarta.
Loungin'...
We had plans to hit up a particular restaurant for padang food, but our plans were foiled, as they were closed when we arrived. We walked around a bit and randomly chose to try this satay restaurant that ended up being pretty great... cool middle eastern decor, cold beers, and giant dragon boat full of various types of satay from all over Indonesia (chicken, fish, beef, squid, tofu, other tasty things shall remain unknown because I don't know what they are and probably don't want to know), with eight different dipping sauces. Mmmm...
Giant dragon boat full of satay!! So good.
Not-so-tiny dips.
After dinner we ventured to Cafe Batavia, which is in Old Jakarta, right on Fatahillah Square, which is a bumpin' local hangout on Saturday night. I know the photo below is terrible (taken through the window (that wouldn't open) on the second story of the cafe), but you can kinda see all of the stalls set up, selling everything from t-shirts to handmade Barbie clothes to jewelry to "magic beans" (we could only deduce that they had some aphrodisiac-like powers), and offering such services as cupping, tattooing, and palm reading.
Terrible photo of Saturday night chaos at Fatahillah Square.
Cafe Batavia itself was pretty interesting... definitely had a weird colonial vibe to it. Not someplace I'd like to hang out every day, but definitely worth a visit.
Up until last week Tim and I hadn't experienced too many cultural misunderstandings or major frustrations over here, mainly because we'd been generally following the advice of seasoned locals and long term expat experts. However, for some reason, once we moved and started trying to arrange and/or buy things for our new apartment, we started having more First World Problems in Jakarta... in other words, we had trouble finding, or at least procuring, Stuff White People Like.
Par example:
Sheets: Apparently it is impossible to buy bed sheets in Jakarta. At least no one will sell them to us. [Also, as an aside, sheet sets here do not include top sheets, and yet include 2 bolster pillow cases. Who even owns a bolster pillow, let alone multiple bolster pillows?? I don't even own a gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack!] We went to several different stores and encountered several issues when attempting to purchase sheets for the bed in our guest bedroom (which we're sleeping on until our shipment arrives). Here is a non-exhaustive list of the ways in which our interactions with sheet salespeople have gone sour:
Example 1
Salesperson: Those sheets are on sale! 50% off!
Me: Excellent!
Salesperson: Would you like to buy them? I will hold them (ed. note: reason they have to take the sheets I want to buy is unclear).
Me: Ok.
Salesperson leaves and returns several minutes later with different sheets. Salesperson: Would you like these instead?
Me: No, thank you. I would like the ones I picked out.
Salesperson: Ok. But you must pay cash to me for the ones you picked out. Here. Not at the register.
Me: Um... really?
Salesperson: Yes.
Me: Sigh.
Example 2
Salesperson: Those sheets are on sale! 50% off!
Me: Excellent!
Salesperson:
Would you like to buy them? I will hold them.
Me: Ok.
Minutes later, at the register, sheets ring up at full price. Salesperson: There is no sale today. Maybe tomorrow?
Me: Sigh.
Example 3:
Salesperson: Those sheets are on sale! 50% off!
Me: Excellent!
Salesperson:
Would you like to buy them? I will hold them.
Me: Ok.
Salesperson leaves with sheets and then returns several minutes later. Salesperson: These sheets are not for sale.
Me: I thought you said they were on sale.
Salesperson: They are not for sale. You cannot buy them.
Me: Sigh.
Pre-move in apartment maintenance: We worked with the manager of our apartment to try to get several things fixed before we moved in since the apartment was already vacant. Their interpretation of what needed to be done differed from ours in several key ways:
Us (well, mainly Mr. Tim, as the apartment manager guy wouldn't address me directly, and if he did refer to me, called me Mrs. Tim or Mr. Tim's wife [Tim thinks I should embroider "Mr. Tim" and "Mr. Tim's Wife" on ourChristmas stockings]): We'd like a thorough cleaning of the whole apartment, new blinds installed, and a paint touch-up in the common room, please.
The day before we moved in.... Apartment manager guy: We painted the maid's quarters! And put up new wallpaper on one wall in the bedroom! That's it!
Mr. Tim: Sigh.
Restaurant ordering: Always choose a back-up order at the restaurant. And maybe a second back-up order.
Waiter: Have you had time to peruse our 27 page menu?
Mr. Tim: Yes, thank you. I would like to order the roast duck.
Waiter: I'm sorry, sir. We are out of that. Habis.
Mr. Tim: Ok, then I'll take the black pepper chicken.
Waiter: I'm sorry, sir. We are out of that. Habis.
As I said over at my other blog, Tim and I just moved into our new, more permanent digs here in Jakarta. It's a nice apartment near some good restaurants, and Tim's company stores one of their cars in the garage, so Tim is able to grab a ride to work and back each day, which is highly convenient.
We still don't have most of our stuff yet, but there is a little bit of furniture in the apartment already. None of our cooking gear has arrived yet, but we did purchase a grill for our back balcony this weekend, so we plan to do a lot of grilling over the next few weeks. We're busy dealing with all of the little things... getting internet set up, buying all the essentials, finding some cool local-style furniture (daybed made out of an old Javanese carving, perhaps?).
Tim, building our grill in our new, empty living room.
Hazy view of some skyscrapers from our back balcony.
Durian tree in the yard next to us! Hard to see in the photo, but if you look closely you can see the big old spiky things hanging down.
