Surabaya (Day 18, Thursday, 081309)

Final morning. We wake at five and arrive at the airport at six. I haven't printed out my boarding pass (you're supposed to do that?), and Eric says I'm lucky.

I'm an American, which means the same thing. (With all its magnificent and tawdry connotations.)

The security folks accept my American passport as proof that I'm not a criminal or a freedom fighter or a combination of the two.

After dropping off our checked bags, Eric and I head back out to a small airport cafe: Frestea pour moi and hot chocolate for Eric.

When Eric's left, I settle myself against a pillar and though I'm not looking forward to another five hour layover in Singapore, and yet another one in Hong Kong, I'm not unexcited to go home.

Here's a phalanx of Avon convention attendees all shouldering powder blue faux leather handbags. They look very self-important and satisfied.

But maybe I'm just projecting. [grin]

A trio of burka'd ladies sails by, three sets of eyes turning toward me as I sit cross-legged on the ground, ponytailed, black tank top carelessly layered over a black bikini-top, a pair of black scrubs.

We match, a study in monochrome, but the polar opposite on either side of some kind of spectrum.

I imagine we're both judging and pitying each other in equal parts, wondering how the other could dress that way, how she doesn't seem to understand the oppression inherent to the way the other (the Other!) displayed or didn't display the female body.

Or something.

On the flight home, I get progressively more sick, and when we reach Hong Kong, I'm beset by a bevy of yellow signage urging anyone who has felt the following symptoms: runny nose, stuffed nose, headache, body aches (check, check, check, and check) to report to an on-site medical worker.

I can't stomach the thought of being sick in a foreign country or the thought of some kind of fascist quarantine resulting from swine flu fear-mongering.

So I keep my head down and try not to let my conscience (hypochondria?) trick me into doing something that'll make my life more miserable than need be.

Like my trip to Baja, Mexico in the midst of an eruption of drug cartel-related violence, my trip to Indonesia was perfectly timed: shortly after the Jakarta hotel bombings, and in the heart of swine flu Season.

Next stop, a road trip to the Pacific N.W.

Maybe Mount Rainier will become active and spew flaming lava while I'm in the vicinity.

Surabaya (Day 17 Cont'd, Wednesday, 081209)

Tunjungan Plaza's McDonald's is the lunch destination after the Surabaya Zoo.

(I'm perfectly conscious of the irony of bemoaning the conditions at the zoo and immediately thereafter dining at Micky D's.)

There are few instances in which I champion the platitude that "ignorance is bliss," but this is motherfuckin' one of them:

Eric tells me that he's seen a tiny baby roach crawling out of my box of fries.

After I've already horked down every last piece of julienned root vegetable lovingly sheathed in the familiar red and yellow cardboard.

Bleehh.

I decide that I need to ingest a frozen yogurt with a topping of long yen to cleanse my palate of scavenger insect. But all I can think about is how a portion of my life's total meals probably underwent similarly unhygienic circumstances, and am hair-raisingly appalled.



And by that I mean the hair on my nipples.

We also check out the movie theater, but not interested in anything playing, we return to the hotel to gape at the TV, and such quality television programming as "The Biggest Loser" and "Oprah" (okay, so you can't really knock the Oprah, A-Force-To-Be-Reckoned-With).

Dinner's at the hotel restaurant: a basket of fried chicken, which I assumed would be Indonesian style fried chicken but instead turns out to be chicken tenders.

And so my last hurrah of culinary exploration turns into a swan song.

Surabaya (Day 17, Wednesday, 081209)

Breakfast: tator tots ([shrug]), fruit, rice porridge (minus the chicken = sadness), raisin pancakes, and fruit punch.

We return to the room 'til our anticipated check-out time at noon--at which point the Ek-kwa-tore'll be able to tell us if we can keep the bungalow for another evening. We pass the time by watching Al Jazeera, "Fault Lines" report on U.S. health care reform.

Eric and I have quickly succumbed to a case of lassitude, mostly brought on by illness and the heat and the sprawling, Los Angelen...ian quality of Surabaya--hard to get anywhere, and a feeling that you're still nowhere even when you finally get there.

There's a fractured sense impression I get when I think about my last few days in Surabaya. But maybe that has less to do with the city itself than a bout of Traveler's Ennui, a jadedness born of having seen and done too much, in too little time. Whatever it is, Eric's got more of an excuse than I do, having spent the month prior to Indonesia gallivanting across India.

A stroke of luck grants us another night at the Ek-kwa-tore, and in relief at not having to pack our things yet again and cab across town, as well as partial guilt for having "accomplished" so little in Surabaya thus far, we decide to visit the Surabaya Zoo.

Here, they reject my rupiah equivalent to five bucks (admission is two), and here, we're assaulted with a vision of what looks like...herpetic baboon ass, and a largely miserably existence for the majority of the captive animals. Small concrete cages holding the sole and desolate representative of a species, hippos stewing in dirty water, small herds of antelope/deer-like animals languishing in the dust of their enclosures. Even a tiger compulsively pacing a narrow oval, a wet trail marking his sad little circumambulation.

One is the loneliest number...

The Komodo dragons are the only animals that look marginally more content, likely because they're the Tony Montanas of the animal kingdom, stalking greasily across the grass, their snake-tongues tasting the air, you and your molecules; they just don't give a fuck.



(This place'd give PETA a heart-attack. They'd come here, all night-vision goggles and balaclavas, release the animals, get bitten by a rabid monkey, and then turn into frenzied, mindless zomb...wait a second...)

Well, nice to know my two bucks will be used to perpetuate such a quality institution of wildlife conservation.

Surabaya (Day 16, Tuesday, 081109)

We wake to a bombass...wait for it...hotel breakfast buffet. But this ain't no "hot breakfast" from the Holiday Inn; it ain't all lukewarm, dense pancakes and overcooked eggs.

There are the hotel buffet cliches, chafing dishes filled with the usual suspects, nasi goreng and mie goreng, but it's also supplemented by a blast of chicken porridge (here they call it bubur ayam. It's a very Chinese dish--what we call xi fan), and chili oils, and a medley of strange fruits (not the Billie Holiday kind): Syzygium samarangense, a.k.a. water apple, etc.

Leaning over my chicken porridge in a feverish ecstasy, I breathlessly share with Eric the fact that I'd been daydreaming of rice porridge only the day before, on the train ride to Surabaya.

His response?

"You are the only person I'd believe was telling the truth if they said that."

I wonder out loud, "Huh?"

"Because I know how much you think about food."

[a beat]

"Why would anyone lie about that?"

Classy styrofoam decor

We spend the rest of the morning lying in bed and trying to identify a hotel that'll take us for the night, since the Weta is fully booked for the evening. Finally, we land on the Equator Hotel, the name which, on the way there, we find is a previously unknown homograph with the American word that denotes the imaginary line designating the northern and southern hemispheres. Instead of pronounced "ee-kway-ter," it's pronounced "ek-kwa-tore".

Whenever we tell the cabbie to take us back to the Equator Hotel, we're immediately set right with, "oh, you mean Ek-kwa-tore!"

But, of course!

Our arrival is greeted with umbrella'd and flower'd orange drinks in cocktail glasses: it's the classic Indonesian welcome refreshment, orange...Tang.

Like the complimentary cocktails of Tang, our bungalow seems a good idea in its conception if not in its execution. It's adorable, a cozy and cool contrast to the overbearing heat and humidity of the outdoors. There's a darling little sitting room, and a marble niche-y bathroom (where I'll later have quite the adventure--no, not what you're thinking. I wish.), and a king-sized bed.

But it's all fetid with a stench of must and mold, and even though Eric's all panty-twistingly excited, I'm not convinced.

Eric and I head out to the unoccupied hotel pool, momentarily sitting at the empty pool bar, sweeping aside the leaves scattered across the surface of the water, then popping back out for a broil in the sun. When we finally decide we're hungry, I brilliantly decide to have a hamburger. It's a too-salty smear of a patty, more of a pate really, than a patty.

I hop into the bathroom shower upon returning to the room. I've donned the paper room slippers, and when I reach in and turn the shower on, it blasts me in the face and torso, and as I back away from the torrent, I slip and land on my back, crashing into the door with a thump.

Dinner is at Duck King, a shopping mall attempt at classy Chinese (think P.F. Chang's, but better, or Cheesecake Factory).

Maybe it's 'cause I ain't been in China since I was a preteen, but my sense of Chinese food is that there are really only two varieties: Americanized, orange chicken, mu-shu, General Tso Chinese and authentic, rustic Chinese, which can range from hole-in-the-wall joints to places with tablecloths and a 40-gallon tank of fish.

I order: Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, corn soup with crab, Peking duck skin, black pepper duck, and braised beef.

It's aiite.

We cab it back to the "Ek-kwa-tore," and I pass out next to Eric, who's getting sicker by the day, Mission Impossible (the Tom Cruise version) playing in the background.

Surabaya (Day 15 Cont'd, Monday, 081009)

We manage to get a room at Weta Hotel (looks nice on the outside, but the carpeted hallways are a little...mildewy, and the bathroom a little...dank), then head out immediately in search of a seafood place we read about in LP.

We've left the guidebook in the room, though, and despite a bit of trekking (and back-trekking), passing the same outdoor Muslim Bible Study twice (I know it's called the Koran), an outdoor restaurant proprietress beckoning us to stop by her place (in retrospect, that probably would have been interesting), and an incident with a giant roach (mostly my leaping into the air in a spasmodic attempt to flee), we can't find it.

Instead, we land on a brightly lit hole in the wall serving mie kocok.



I know mie is noodles (similar to the Mandarin Chinese word, actually), but I funno what kocok is. Maybe means "better than most other food in Indonesia." That's likely it. (Best guess is really "chicken.")



It's an adorable place. Rickety tables, plastic stools, a dude boiling the noodles in a little metal strainer. Eric and I both have a serving and a half, doing the touristy thing and pointing to a photograph on the laminated menu. The folks there look pleased that we are into the food. I imagine there's not a lot of tourist foot-traffic here. I order yet another soda gembira...

What the fuck is in these things? Perhaps the pink syrup is some extract of crack?

and Eric goes wild with cendol, a rather miserable cocktail of green noodley things, some kind of syrup, and I think, coconut milk.



I am all about weird drinks--see "bubble tea"--it's a part of my motherfuckin' DNA. But this is like eating the shit of a diarrheal Easter bunny: green, chunky, and too sweet.

Yogyakarta to Surabaya (Day 15, Monday, 081009)

David's left earlier this morning--back to Singapore for him. No doubt he's relieved to return to culinary civilization.

And Eric's hacking his lungs out. The air pollution here is off the hook.

Breakfast: toast and scramble (I know, I know). Pack. Pedicab to the train station to find that the first train to Surabaya left at 7:30, and the next is at 14:22. We toss our bags in lockers, then head back to town center.

Kill time at an internet cafe. Back to the mall where Eric and I take a load off at a coffee shop called "Exotica." Eric insists on a Black Forest cake, and I have a lychee tea. Yerm. Rummy.

Pharmacy for what Eric thinks is allergies. A gander at whitening products in person--I've seen a number of commercials for whitening body washes on Indo TV.

White is right!

I'm mistaken for Vietnamese, and told, adamantly, that I. am. not. Japanese.

Thanks, dawg. I'll try not to forget that.

Eric's on a mission for a Buddha head, lunch at a place thematically decorated with geckos (gah!), have another soda gembira (I lerv these thangs), a disappointing coconut banana pancake, and a chicken and shrimp mie goreng.

ESEKUTIF class. Funny how this seems so much more "interesting" than taking the train back home--the Amtrak from New York to New Hampshire doesn't have quite the same charm, even balanced against the buzzing of mosquito herds inside our car.



I head out to the gangway and douse myself in bug spray, then return to my seat. Whereupon a pack of mosquitoes promptly descends on me ("She's back!"). I amuse myself with watching the scenery ("There's a man taking a shit in the open!") and clapping mosquitoes out of the air.

There's something immensely satisfying about the tiny carcass splayed against your palm, the pinched legs askew, and a smear of someone's (your own?) blood. I'm sure my hands are being colonized by a host of tiny, mosquito-borne parasites.

(Researchers, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies nationwide, have linked animal cruelty to domestic violence, child abuse, serial killings, and to the recent rash of killings by school-age children, according to Dr. Randall Lockwood, vice president of Training Initiatives for The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).)--I'm just sayin'.

Eric feasts on train food: beefsteak that looks like lukewarm dog food, and a 30 cent rice/tofu/tempe/bean sprout/peanut butter sauce concoction wrapped in banana leaf.



Outside: corrugated roofs and innumerable scooters.

Yogyakarta, Java (Day 14 Cont'd, Sunday, 080909)

The boys have dragged my ass out of my afternoon nap (interrupted by call the prayer--assholes!) for a performance of the Ramayana at Prambanan, the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia. Here's the view from the raised platform of the bus stop:



After waiting futilely for a bus, we realize that we're (comparatively) rich Americans, and that a taxi would be infinitely more comfortable. Unfortunately for us, despite the taxi, the show's closed or over by the time we arrive.

Here's what we would have seen had we gotten there in time:



I'm not so secretly relieved. In spite of the allure of ancient ruins, I'm not really in the mood to sit quietly through a performance that would no doubt be too long for my ADHD; plus, it woulda been too dark to walk around the temple structures, and that's really what gets my travel-panties wet.

The boys blame me and accuse me of rigging our tardy--and, I mean, I do have a magic vagina, so...

Instead, it's dinner at Bladok again. Sirloin with black pepper sauce, fries, coke, and iced black tea.

And street performers...(pengamen, I think the groups are called):

Yogyakarta, Java (Day 14, Sunday, 080909)

8:30 wake-up, and David suggests I eat immediately so that I can be hungry in time for when Eric becomes famished for lunch. Somehow, this makes sense.

We head over to J.CO again for donuts, this time: with rice krispies, with a chocolate-hazelnut sauce, and one called Copa Banana.

Then, we're off again to the stupid Sultan Palace (why?), and the stupid Water Palace (also very stupid).

This is the only photo I take at the Water Palace--which lacking any H2O that might have suggested the name, betrayed my anticipatory dream of some paradisical, Kubla Khanian, pleasure-domed, water park. Complete with wave pool.

Instead, this:

(NO WATER HERE. Where's the wave pool?)

Maybe they was closed for the season?

***

The highlight of the day's arduous tramp is the following:



Wee, luridly-colored chicks in a crate!

I cave to a becak ride, because all we've been doing is schlepping, though I manage to get in some good self-hate and contrition for the fact that we'll be paying the dude 'bout a dollar or two for peddling around in the blazing heat for 10 minutes or so. Why walk, when you can take a pedi-cab and sit with your pangs of conscience? Eric calls this my White Man's Guilt, but I prefer to think of it as First World Guilt, as I am neither white nor a man.



Wee, back-breaking labor for the masses!

The two becak peddlers (?) take us to Via Via (again), whereupon I have a mango lassi, pork chops with broccoli cream (minus the cream?), fries, and...



Wee, non-Indonesian food!

Soda gembira, a drink I "discover" (like Columbus did America) at the cafe:



(Ingredients: rose syrup (?), condensed milk, soda water or other effervescent beverage)

A convenience store on our hotel street has baskets filled with dodol, an Indonesian candy featured on No Reservations, but not to any...uh...fanfare. I figure I'll give it a chew, so I shuffle into the store and attempt to buy a single piece of candy.

The ladies, they don't let me pay for the one piece of dodol, a sticky, caramel-y sweet that tastes pretty innocuous:



Wee, innocuous!

Yogyakarta, Java (Day 13 Super-cont'd, Saturday, 080809)

Despite all my principled stands about participating in local food culture, I've had enough. And lunch, when I wake, is the following American institution:



There goes my gastronomic integrity, feeble as it already is.

It is a'ight. Crust is same, but the sauce and toppings are not quite as flavorful. The drink, a mixture of lychee, orange juice, and soda water, however, is a delight.

Not what I ordered. Fish and chips (literal chips!) on pizza.

And dessert?



My excuse for this monstrosity is that Eric's been jizzing all over the place about how delectable the cheeseburger is--he had it while I was napping.

I'm notified that "no photos" are allowed in Mickey D's, but manage to take this blurry shot of a heinous "Salsa Gourmet Wrap," which goes to show, there's no accounting for taste:



The day, at this point, is oppressively hot, so I go seeking internet while the boys change some money. Then, nap time in our room until we're interrupted by a mid-day snack: fried dumplings with indeterminate meat and vegetable filling.

We decide to make the most of our time in this far-flung land by going to see G.I. Joe at the local cineplex. This is my first movie in a foreign country, and thus, is actually relatively exciting. There is assigned seating and massive, feels-like-first-class seats, and I wonder why we don't do thangs this way in the States. There are no previews, and, per usual, I laugh at inopportune moments.

Fun times.

Dinner's at the Via Via Cafe, where I consume something dubiously identified as "Indonesian fish," and a Diet Coke.

Noordin Top, the terrorist who masterminded the Marriot and Ritz-Carlton bombings this past July, has allegedly been killed in a raid somewhere in central Java, where we are, today. This is later proved false.

Yogyakarta, Java (Day 13 Cont'd, Saturday, 080809)

Next up's the Mendut Temple--not quite the same scale as Borobudur...

(I have this weird obsession with taking photographs at an angle. As if that'll make the photo more interesting. It doesn't really work.)

--and there's a guy standing at the entrance with a reflecting panel the better to help tourists take their shoddy digital photos.



The interior of the temple is not so interesting to me. I'm more fascinating by the sheer size of the mangrove-y lookin' tree across the way, and spend some time underneath it trying to take a photo'll that'll do it justice.



Despite several attempts, and a couple of near tumbles, this is the best I can do from below:



It's actually a banyan tree--aka Bodhi Tree--under which Buddha attained enlightenment. No such luck for me.

I pass out on the ride back, then scurry to the hotel room and curl up under the covers to ride out the intestinal storm while Eric and David breakfast.

Yogyakarta, Java (Day 13, Saturday, 080809)

The cabbie who's taking us to Borobudur (eighth? ninth century? sources conflict), and later Mendut Temple, is extremely friendly, making fabulous attempts at conversation, especially with me, since I'm sitting in the front (left-hand) passenger seat with him.

Unfortunately for me, very little of what's pouring forth from his mouth approximates anything I've ever heard in the English language, so I get by with a series of grimaces, smiles, and affirmative squeaks.

We're trying to arrive before sunrise, and reach the ticket office before it even opens. Already, I'm slapping at hovering mosquitoes, and drench myself in repellent just before the forward thrust of the tourist hordes propels me into the building.

It's a bit of a hike to the monument--here it is from a distance--and while I'd thought it'd be lonely and deserted (stupid, stupid--it's a fuckin' World Heritage Site, fuckwit!), we're making the trek with others who've had the same brilliant idea of tryna see the temple at dawn.



It's immense, this massive shrine, punctuated with stupa after stupa, each enclosing its own Buddha.



I'm quickly separated from Eric and David, who are headed straight to the top, I think, and I give circumambulating the structure a shot. The stone is covered in reliefs, and I take my sweet time past them.



(There's a pair of dumb American boys, grunting, predictably enough, "this was a great society, man, look at all these tits!" I feel the urge to castigate them, but my mouth's presently occupied with chewing yet another Pepto Bismol tablet--mm, minty!)

When I finally reach the summit, I take a seat, try to drown out the chatter with my iPod shuffle (I know, I know) and ignore all the folks brandishing their SLRs.

The tippy-top:



The sun breaking through the clouds compensates for the culinary disaster that is Indonesian cuisine:

Yogyakarta, Java (Day 12 Cont'd, Friday, 080709)

We crash after our excursion, then wake again for dinner. The destination is Bladok, a losmen and a restaurant, where I finally order the ubiquitous Indonesian dish of nasi goreng, fried rice, and watermelon juice. Eric has an awesome lamb—spicy, tender chunks—and David a tuna salad and vegetable curry (he’s one of those doesn’t-eat-meat-wheat-gluten-cheese-milk-citrus-everything-delicious folks).



The nasi goreng is meh, and I pick at it through the omelette-wrapping, and yearn for Eric's lamb. [grin] But instead of simply ordering the lamb, I order a...side of fries.

Because I'm self-defeating and a masochist. I think also because Eric says I might have some sort of stomach virus--presumably, an Indonesian-food-hating stomach virus.

After dinner, we return to the mall, so the boys can cruise. I'm not interested in local tail and am more fascinated by the difference between American malls and Asian ones. Here, everything's cluttered together, a cacophony of eye-straining colors, in contrast with the comparatively subdued gleam of U.S. shopping centers. I think it has something to do with the intersection of Third World economies and aesthetics, but am too bowled over by the sights to give it further rumination.

I insist that the boys sample the frozen yogurt--see "Pinkberry," "Red Mango," "Yogurtland"--because they've never had the tart "yogurt" flavor--before we return to the Peti Mas. Then, on the way back, David purchases some halal snacks, bakpia pathok, a flaky pastry stuffed with a variety of fillings, most traditionally with green bean (mung bean), and here, with chocolate and some cheesy...substance.



We decide to make an early night of it; tomorrow, we're headed to Borobudur, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and we gotta be up at 4:30.

This is what America looks like to other people: