Jakarta: Celebrity Status

After my eventful arrival in Jakarta I needed a day to rest. I had planned on only staying at Hunny Hostel for the interim until the night I actually reserved at Six Degrees, but I met some great people at Hunny and also couldn't be bothered to change hostels.

For my first dinner in Jakarta I went to a vegetarian restaurant with some Kim, Gavin, and Guy- friends I'd made at Hunny. Even though the restaurant boasted "VEGETARIAN" right in its creative name of Vegetarian Restaurant, many of the menu items had meat listed. Because Gavin is a true vegetarian we investigated further and learned that the meats are fake. I'm not sure what they put in the fake meats, but they tasted like the real thing. The meal was delicious.

National Monument Building

At dinner we planned to visit the national monument building, nicknamed Monas, in the morning. Back at the hostel we added Roxanne, Monica, and Ian to our party. By 8:00AM the seven of us set out to Monas. Jakarta is a big city with little to see. There is a large massive mosque (see next blog post) and the monument building and not much else. For this reason, the queue for Monas was very long. It was a good thing we got there early because we still had to wait for nearly two hours. No matter. None of us had anything better to do.

It was interesting, the seven of us, because we were all traveling solo and, with the exception of Monica, all traveling long-term. Ian's journey of two or three months was the shortest. All of us were at very different stages of our travels as well. Kim, from Belgium, had been on the road for about seven or eight months. She was returning home in a couple days. Roxanne, from Switzerland, was on a year-long journey that began with six months volunteering in Sri Lanka. She had about a month in Indonesia and India left before going back home. Gavin, from the UK, was about halfway through his ten month expedition. Guy, also from the UK, was a couple months into a year-long adventure. I was about six weeks in at this point. And Ian, had just arrived the night before, fresh off the plane from the UK. Monica, Australian, was on a short two week holiday.

From left back: Gavin, Ian, Myself, Guy
From left front: Kim, Roxanne
Not pictured: Monica

When we arrived at Monas we were approached by a friendly young woman who asked if we needed a tour guide. For free! The woman-- girl, really- was named Sindy and she had just graduated from high school. She planned to study tourism at the university in the fall. Sindy had spent the summer as an intern at Monas and the day we visited was her last day. As a requirement of the internship, she still needed to guide a few more tourists and we fit the bill. Sindy was a really sweet girl and really knew her stuff. Unfortunately I wasn't taking notes, so I can't tell you much about the place now. Sorry.

A class of teenagers, about fifteen years old, had taken a field trip to Monas the same day and their group was just ahead of us in the queue. The teens were staring at us, giggling, and trying to be sneaky about taking photos with their mobile phones. Kim, Gavin, and Roxanne were used to this behavior. I was used to the staring, but not the photos. Guy had little experience with it, and it was completely new to Ian. Monica was fairly unfamiliar with it as well because although she had been in Indonesia already for a couple weeks and although she is Australian, her parents are Chinese; so she didn't stick out quite as much as her white peers. It was amusing watching the kids watch us. Gavin tried to snap a photo of them while they were taking one of us, but they turned away, camera shy. Soon the youth disappeared into the elevator and we were left in peace. Briefly.

Group of boys who were anything but camera shy

When the doors of our elevator opened it was a free-for-all. The teenagers suddenly weren't shy anymore. No one was. The seven of us were separated and literally pulled in different directions while nearly everyone shouted at us, "Miss! Miss! Photo! Photo!" It was mostly the kids, but some grown adults, when they saw we weren't objecting, got up the nerve to ask for our photo as well. For at least twenty minutes I posed with different people for photos. I felt exactly how celebrities must feel. Yes, we were put on display and had our pictures taken because we were different from them, but it wasn't because they thought of us as freakish or odd. It was adoration. They were genuinely happy to see us. Girls pushed their friends out of the frame so as to be the only one in the photo with us. Boys vied for my attention and turned into absolute hams for the camera. While posing with all the kids, I passed my camera to them and got them to capture the moment just as special to me as it apparently was to them.