Welcome to Indonesia!

On the second day of my visit I went to the square in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta. There is a large national monument there along with a few other statues and sculptures. The population of Indonesia is largely muslim and most of the people I saw in Jakarta were muslim including the school girls in the picture above. As I walked into the park a few girls approached me and asked for group pictures. As they took turns taking pictures with their camera phones they asked me all kinds of questions in English. I guess English is a part of their formal education. Once a few pictures were taken they all needed one. They were very happy to meet me!

I started in Jakarta and made my way east on the train and by plain to Lombok Island. I stayed mostly on Java and spent a full week in the city of Yogyakarta in the hills. During my one month stay there I learned a lot about the semi-industrialized nation where Barack Obama went to school for three years. Most of the people there are poor and many make less than $2 a day. Chicken and rice are the staples of many foods. There are many creative dishes utilizing these two ingredients such as chicken soup, fried rice and shredded chicken, and fried chicken with white rice. Seafood and sometimes beef are available. Meals are cheap costing less than $5 for breakfast lunch or dinner. The servings are smaller however.

There are all kinds of people that want your money like cab drivers, bechan drivers (bicycle driven cart that you sit in), and souvenir vendors. On the first day after leaving the airport I was immediately approached by several men that wanted money. Initially I ignored them. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. It turned out that the man who followed me to the information booth and the phone booths was actually a nice guy and knew where to take me. After admitting to myself that this guy knew better than me, I got in the taxi and rode for over an hour to the hotel in central Jakarta. On the way he gave me a lot of valuable information about where I was staying and what to expect. This was a good start to my trip.

Indonesia is a tropical country sitting just below the equator in Southeast Asia. Monsoon season starts in October and runs through February. The rest of the year it's dry and sunny. The temperature is in the eighties all year round.