The Ritz Carlton, Jakarta and scary “taksis”

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Well, here I am in Jakarta. I wish I could say I was roughing it (Kari’s probably glad I’m not), but someone just rang my doorbell and brought me some fresh fruit for my room. Doorbell? Fresh fruit? Yes, I’m staying at the Ritz Carlton. This is a NICE hotel, the nicest in Indonesia, or so my cab driver tells me. Roughing it? More like working it.

I got to Indonesia last night as accidentally walked past the first immigration station. I could have walked all the way out and gotten into a cab too, but I stopped to ask an immigration agent and he helped me start the process in the right place. All this, while soldiers stand by with guns. We have a good system in America, that we can enforce rules and security so well without the visible presence of the military.

After getting m luggage, for the life of me I couldn’t find my chauffeur. I took a cab from a company heard was reputable, and was startled to hear that it would cost 350,000 Rupiahs, and that they only took cash. Not knowing what a Rupiah was worth, I fearfully approached the ATM, and used my debit card to withdraw 500,000 Rupiahs. It worked, so I guessed a Rupiah wasn’t too much. (When I got back to the hotel, I discovered that a Rupiah is about equivalent to $0.0001 USD. That’s 1/100th of a penny, making a 350,000 Rupiah about the same as $38. Not bad for a one-hour cab ride.) The cabbie was nice, an Indonesian immigrant who was making way to immigrte once again, this time to Canada. He had a job lined up to work on a farm in Manitoba for $2000 CAD a month. The CAD govt. will take over 40% of that, leaving him with about $15,000 a year. But, he explains, a good salary in Indonesia, for a resident, is about $1200 USD per year. On top of the poor pay, they work 6 days a week, sometimes for 80 or more hours a week. He seemed upbeat about it, not bitter at all, but as I pressed, he said that foreign workers come in and make at least 10 times what nationals earn, most of the time more. They live in the south part of the city, while the north side remains tin shacks and children begging in the street. According to Wikitravel, the Indonesian government is trying to stop that, by barring foreign workers from getting jobs here, but there’s only so much they can do. It was a very enlightening ride. Cabbie, good luck moving to Canada.

That pales though, in comparison to the cabbie in Sydney on Saturday. Talk about friendly. I had snuck out the enter-only doors of the international terminal and stopped a cabbie who was dropping people off. He looked terrified as I climbed into his car, and once I was inside he sped off, looking in his mirror. He was scared, because apparently a police officer was coming to ticket him for picking me up, while I was taking my precious time loading my bags and haggling on price. He ended up taking me into the city, and on a guided tour. He took me across the harbor bridge, to a park on the other side where he explained he could take an amazing picture of me with the harbor bridge and the opera house in the background. He delivered as promised, then dropped me off a the opera house to fend for myself. Not bad for $35, and the whole while he was not only pointing out landmarks and talking about Sydney, but also playing his son, Chad Peralta’s CD. Now, I’m not into “Pop Rock” in the least, and some of these songs were tweaked and cliche’d to death, but a couple of them were really good, the kid has a decent voice and is a great guitarist. He played an older CD, one that was released locally before his fame struck, and played a song on there he wrote himself. It was funny listening to a kid sing about his childhood, while riding in the back seat of his dad’s taxi. Very fun experience.

• Anyways, the photos from Sydney are here: http://flickr.com/photos/lach/tags/sydney/
• The photos from the Ritz Carlton in Jakarta are here: http://flickr.com/photos/lach/tags/ritzcarltonjakarta/

Keep your eyes on Flickr for more photos of my trip!

I can’t wait to be home in America, with my wife, tap water I can brush my teeth with, low American prices, dry cappuccinos, dry heat, and the damn TSA (God bless ‘em).