Indonesia 15th-17th May

1^st thing that the driver that fetched me from the airport said to me was, “Are you Indonesian?”. It was a bit expected that he'd ask me that because even in Singapore people mistake me for being Indonesian. Part of it because my Dad's Indonesian. One thing I need to mention, out of all the 7 countries that we visited, I was mistaken for being local in 6 of them. The one being Vietnam, Pete was mistaken for local over there. So I was greeted by a lot of people who spoke in their national languages. And to their disappointment I wasn't local.

My very first impression of Jakarta when we reached was, when will we reach our hotel. I think we took almost close to 1 and a half hours to reach our hotel from the airport. The traffic jams over there , made Singapore jams seem like nothing. You could sleep and wake up and sleep again whilst in the car to reach your destination. Either you have to be a really good driver to travel fast or you just get a motorbike. Because of the frequent occurrence of traffic jams in Jakarta, they made a career out of it. We see adults and even children walking around in between cars to sell things like newspapers, fruits and souvenirs to the people in their cars. And in the effort to reduce the amount of traffic in Indonesia, the government imposed a law where, during peak hours, no less than 3 people are to be in the vehicle at one time, or they'll be fined. So, during peak hours, you see rows of people standing by the side of the road holding up their fingers showing how many of them are there available to fill up your car. You just bring them to wherever that you want to and pay them a small amount of money as payment so you can avoid paying the fine. It's very disheartening to me to see all these children having to all these just to survive and maybe even for the rest of their lives. Really makes me be very thankful of the fact that my Dad's family migrated to Singapore, if not I'd be in a similar situation as them.

The Ascott manager, Michael, brought us out for lunch. To this very authentic Indonesian restaurant. Very nice food and very nice furnishing but then I just didn't understand why they used such huge plates to serve the food to us. They were excessively big for the amount of food being served. Michael then shared with us some of his thoughts about traveling overseas for work. How it all opens your eyes to how you realize that so many Singaporeans become too used to their comfort one when they stay in Singapore their whole life. They take everything for granted and become blind to the difficulties that are being faced now by our neighboring countries. How he met many people from many different countries and realized that people all around the world talk about the same problems in life. Borders and big oceans doesn't make you totally different person and you go through the same emotional phases in life at the same age all around the world. We then made our way to Sunda Kelapa port where there was a lot of people working to load cargo into ships. We even saw young teenagers working there but the thing is, they don't look like they were suffering or anything. They were smiling whenever we approached them and they just looked like they were liking each other's company at the busy port.

Before we left for Malaysia, we visited a local no-profit school opened by an Indonesian TV Presenter, Dik Duang. He was having a special event for street children living near the school. He invited a very popular Indonesian film actress, Luna Maya to become their model and let them draw her. She was there to share her experiences when she was still young and was growing up in a natural environment. And she was telling the children present there to cherish living in a natural environment and growing up in nature because these are the things that you'd want to remember and treasure when you grow up when you won't have time to 'stop and smell the roses' anymore. Something that I can't say I had the chance to experience when I was younger though. Something I can say about being human I guess, that you'll never be satisfied with everything that you have.