First day in Jakarta.  Action packed.  I didn’t start out with the day thinking it was going to be so full of activity.  I kind of thought it was going to be partially filled with moseying around the area where my hostel is and hanging out at an café and getting my wits.  I was wrong.  Flat out.  I came down to breakfast to meet Terry, from New Zealand.  Super nice guy, has been a traveler for most of his life.  Was super encouraging to me.  Made me think that because of this trip I would continue traveling for the rest of my life.  He is 68, in retirement and traveling for up to six months each year.  F*@k ya Terry. F*@k ya.
       I visited two museums first thing.  They were close to my hostel and I wasn’t feeling very adventurous at this point.  Crossing the street was scary enough.  Seriously, it’s terrifying.  I should take a video of it.  At Museum Bank Mandiri I was bombarded by this school group of children, mostly girls that thought I was some kind of celebrity.  The white guy! The white guy!  It was fun for quite a lot of it but then it started to lose it’s appeal.  Same thing happened at Museum Bank Indonesia.  It was much more mellow but still had gawking Indonesians, even adults that wanted my photo.

       “Mr.! Mr.!  Photo?  Photo?”
       Walking around an enormous square bustling with people I ran into a Belgian named Joachim.  We decided to team up and explore a little.  We ended up meeting another Belgian couple, JC and Lo, that lived in Jakarta as ex-pats.  They helped show us an old boat yard that housed some very old, wooden boats that would never be allowed for commercial use back in the states.  There were many men sitting around hoping to lure us into a boat tour.  It seems like every way the locals can think to tour us around on something, they’ll do it.  Alas, we resisted and made it to the end of the boatyard to enjoy some cool sea breezes, a much needed relief from the constant stickiness in town.

       The docks led to Chinatown.  I’ve never walked around a Chinatown.  Considering that I’m closer to China than I’ve ever been I’m hoping that was as authentic as it gets.  It really seemed like authenticity was being fried, chopped and sold all around me.  Considering that I’m at least a foot taller than absolutely every local I’ve seen so far, it’s not an exaggeration that I had to duck down to see what the hell they were doing under all those awnings.  If it hadn’t been for the open sewer that was running a few feet away from all the stalls, this would have been an exotic food paradise.  Fried little bits of meat that I didn’t recognize, rice and noodle dishes that had crazy complex smells wafting over the glass of the stalls, and bugs!  I’ve been waiting for this.  I’m not afraid.  I will try, crunch and munch my way through any insects that are put in front of me.  It would have happened too if it wasn’t for the poop slide sludging away behind me.

       Through the maze of fire cracker shops, various food carts and corny chinese toy booths, we arrived at the oldest buddhist monastery in Jakarta… which burned to the ground last January.  That’s strike 1, Lonely Planet.  We made the most of it, just down the way was the second oldest in Jakarta.  Who knew?  The monks and workers let us wander about as they continued to pray and light inscense.  A while later I found myself sitting down outside the temple next to a 50-something Indonesian named Andy (many of these people have very American names… Aliases for tourists? I may never know).  Andy and his friends continually talked to us in English, Deutsch, Indonesian, Balinesian, and Mandarin.  We were actually able to have decent conversations, mostly small talk but God they were entertaining.  They brought us water, coffee, offered cigarettes and many laughs.  If it wasn’t about to get dark we would have hung out with Andy and crew all day.

       To wrap the day up, Joachim and I had a couple Bintang’s, at his hostel before we parted ways and I walked back to my hostel.  Exhausted, showered, full and happy… to bed with a grin.


*** I know that I am probably switching from past to present to future tense and not catching grammer/typos  but bare with me as I try to polish this rock into a gem.