Jakarta

Arriving in Jakarta was intense. Waiting in the hold for the gates of the boat to open I realised that most of the passengers had been in communal sleeping areas with bunk beds in rows, what had that been like? It was hot and noisy now – but kind of friendly too…Theo was eyeing it up for the way back (no bloody way…if it’s rough I’m not puking all over my fellow passengers…!)

I was grateful again at the smoothness of the crossing, for everyone on board.

The gates opened after 45 minutes and we all surged out, so many people, so much noise and all at 11.30 at night. Haggling for a taxi was not easy because ‘we knew that they knew that we weren’t going to walk’, and my usual tactic of walking away when a taxi driver offers an outrageous  price led to shrugs and laughter from the drivers this time, ‘take it or leave it knackered foreigners with too much luggage’.

We walked to the edge of the port and met a woman I’d made friends with the day before on the boat, …it was lovely to see her and we hugged briefly before her brother drove her away…back to the haggling. It turns out that there is another way to get around in Jakarta; private car rather than taxi. A few of these were parked at the entrance and one of the drivers spoke excellent English and after five minutes we had agreed on a slightly less outrageous price and we were on our way.

Whilst we were still in Batam we had cancelled our first hotel booking in Jakarta, it had a similar name to the hotel that didn’t exist and we weren’t going through that again. We booked one that was actually listed on our map…learning from our mistakes, quickly. It had the added benefit of being slightly cheaper than our original booking as well!

Our hotel room was comfortable and we had no need to be up early, other than breakfast which came with the room amazingly (…we hadn’t noticed when we booked it) – we chatted before going to bed about what we were doing next and almost agreed that on balance it was better to move on straight away. To get to Bali quickly because the next part of our journey was so unknown…and then we fell asleep.

At around 8.00 I got a text from the lovely woman I’d met on the boat, Rahma, inviting us to her nephews wedding the next day…wow! That was an ‘unexpected item in the bagging area…’

We talked about it over breakfast (fried rice/toast/bean porridge with coconut milk) and decided that we needed to know more.

When was the wedding? Where was the wedding? Was it worth staying in Jakarta one or two more days to go to a wedding? We thought my cousin would know that having lived in Indonesia for five years so we sent her a text…and did we have the right clothes? …and what gift do we bring?!

After a lot of text traffic we decided to go to the wedding. Cousin Natascha said a big ‘YES’ in her text reply which tied in what we were feeling. It’s so lovely to get invited to a wedding and we’d missed one already in England – all the rest was logistics and that was soon arranged.

Rahma asked a friend to take us from their house if we got a taxi there – the friend would order the taxi and we could pay when it picked us up. Rahma also said she had heard me singing on the boat so could we sing a song as a wedding gift?!

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy we said 🙂

That afternoon we ventured out into Jakarta – keen to book our train tickets for after the wedding and see a little of the city. We encountered a six lane main tree lined road closed off with just blacked out SUV’s driving down it (sinister) – a private party being set up with a rock group in the park (funky), lots of very thin sweet little cats – (we had to stop and stroke every one obviously!) – and we noticed the smog, we never saw the sunlight in Jakarta and when we left Theo had a chesty cold and Rosa was looking like getting it to…not an easy place to live.

We arrived at the train station customer services after a few wrong moves and met the lovely Nadia – she was so patient with us! The train we wanted to catch was full, our plan had been to go to the wedding, which was over at 14.00, and catch the overnight train which left at 20.00, but it wasn’t  possible! We went through every possible train to try and find a way but it boiled down to the choice of missing the wedding or staying another day.

We felt committed to the wedding by this point so we decided to stay another day, and then we found out the prices of the trains! An overnight sleeper was £80 each for the three of us – £240!! Just to lie flat in a seat for 12 hours… and we had two trains to book, the second train being slightly cheaper at £42 each, we were looking at £366 for the two …we started moving down the classes until we hit bottom, Economy, £12.50 a ticket sitting upright overnight, it had been long enough since we’d done that that we’d forgotten how hard that was, but even if we’d remembered £75 verses £366 was a no brainier and we booked our tickets.

We went back to our hotel and tried to book an extra night there but all the triple rooms were taken. I found somewhere cheap to stay and we bought a takeaway and spent the night in, watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. :-).

We got up early for breakfast and to make sure we’d packed. We ironed our best clothes and were ready for 9.00 when the taxi arrived.

We arrived at Finta’s house to be greeted by a woman in a stunning pale sparkly dress and head scarf (I had thought Finta was a man which will teach me to be sexist!) Finta’s frail husband was sat on the sofa and as we waited on a call from her sister to say she was at the train station I had a good look around her home which was full of shiny things, sumptuous and regal but still comfy!

The journey to the wedding was long and smelly because the traffic was so awful, thirty-five kilometres took two hours – but Finta and her sister Emi were great fun and they could speak enough English that we got to know them a little. Turns out the 52 year old Emi was a bit of a tik-tok dance sensation!

We arrived late but it didn’t seem to matter…the hall was packed and the reception was in full swing. There were flowers everywhere and a wonderful corridor of colour leading to the wide main stage where the bride and groom and their two sets of parents stood greeting the people who were queuing up in a long line to see them. They were smiling and touching hands with everyone filing past, sharing a moment with each guest. The newly weds looked stunning and happy (…although by the time we left, over two hours later, all three of us were just desperate to give them a seat, a cuppa, something to eat and a chance for a pee break!)

We wandered around a bit and found Rahma who was wearing the same stunning pale outfit as Finta and she took us to get ice cream, we ate and chatted and watched the occasional big cheers from the main stage when huge group photos were taking place and the celebrations continued – food was mostly meat but who doesn’t love ice cream?! We joined the queue of people giving their blessings to the wedding party and noticed that everything was being coordinated by a stunning creature who would not have been out of place on Eurovision or in The Capital (Hunger Games for those of you who haven’t read or watched it) – she was superb – lifting the tempo and intensity and softening it effortlessly…keeping us all moving and announcing the karaoke when it started like it was the highlight of all of our lives.

The karaoke wasn’t karaoke as such, it was songs family and friends had prepared to sing at the wedding with an incredible singer, who was booked for the event, singing harmonies – we did our song quite early on in the merriment and then we started to dance. A wonderful older woman in blue making a beeline for Rosa, and Theo being surrounded by what looked like the Javanese version of Groomsmen – it was fun and when the bouquet was thrown the music was thunderous.

There was such eager anticipation for that bouquet …there must have been fifty women waiting for it. It took ages to be thrown as the bride and groom rehearsed throwing it together, and somehow our MC kept us all right on the edge, building the music and eventually the throw came, a bit of a limp affair (turns out it’s quite hard to coordinate throwing something together – a lesson for married life 🙂 It was caught by a slightly plump middle aged man lurking at the front of the throng of women. He was definitely not in his wedding finery, he wore shirts and a scruffy T-shirt …he did an unselfconscious little victory dance with part of his belly hanging out and then ran up on stage to have his photo taken with our slightly shocked wedding party, and to swap the flowers for a present apparently (who knew they was s thing?). He obviously didn’t care in the least that he had ruined the day of fifty or so women …and for his size he had been surprisingly nimble leaping for the bouquet 🙂

After a bit more dancing and singing it was time to go…an event full of colour and beauty, a readiness to have fun and celebrate! We were all given a glass on the way out two of which may very well end up being your wedding present Ellie if we can figure out how to change the date and the names 🙂

After a tedious two hour return journey we bundled all our stuff into the taxi and set off for our new hotel.

It was grim, one lightbulb in the ceiling grim, no furniture besides the beds and no sink in the toilet grim. The Wi-Fi didn’t work in the room and Theo was beginning to come down with that cold so Rosa and I set off in search of food.

We weren’t expecting much but that little trip out was the closest I have come to India, the India I miss and love – the smells of those dingy little back alleys, the vibrancy and excited-ness of the kids out playing on the street, the rough and ready little street food place on the corner, all reminded me of something I miss. I felt a bit like Mole did in ‘Wind in the Willows’ when he sensed his home in the woods after such a long time absent – it was lovely to reconnect with that, however briefly…

We ate a very weird meal that night, made by the lovely women in the street corner place. I’d asked if anyone spoke English and a man sitting on the one wooden bench had volunteered, he spoke great English and I told him we were vegetarian and would love rice with vegetables and an egg if they had it? I could see some cabbage and greens…he started talking to the cooks and Rosa and I went back to get plates and bowls from our hotel so we could take the meal back and eat with Theo. When we got back our meal of noodles with egg was waiting, not a vegetable in sight…maybe vegetables were for another dish, or customer, and I’d seen they bought the noodles especially for us…it was delicious even if it was weird and after we finished we went to sleep.

It was an early start for our two back to back trains across Java – and our ‘getting there early’ policy was justly rewarded… the taxi our hotel ordered for us hadn’t arrived after twenty minutes so I went in search of something and found a tuk-tuk – it was brilliant fun driving the wrong way up a one way street sandwiched in with all our luggage – a very ‘Jason Bourne’ moment according to Theo who is finding regular ways to liken himself to Jason, which is always greeted by gales of laughter from Rosa, who hasn’t actually seen the movies so it’s a little unfair 🙂

The tuk-tuk driver dropped us at the station…only it wasn’t – the entrance was the other side of a level crossing and we needed to get a move on…our stressy behaviour all kicked in with Theo asking questions nobody could possibly know the answer to, Rosa freaking out about how we were crossing the busy road and both me and Theo shouting ‘come on, it’s fine!’ …still not got that one pegged – personally I think the more dangerous the crossing is the more likely we (I) are to shout – it’s ironic that when you are a bit scared yourself you have less available kindness for anyone else’s fear…we did all talk about it later and it was an interesting and useful conversation (…and I did say sorry!)

We made it to the train with fifteen minutes to spare, our closest shave yet…the carriage and our seats were reasonably comfortable – Economy was just fine, and we settled in for our eleven hour journey.

Sitting on that train from Jakarta to Surabaya, passing by the everyday existence of most Javanese people I notice a small Palestinian flag fluttering on a pole attached to someone’s home.

I thought about what life must actually be like in Palestine right now.

It was heart breaking to think about the grief and the fear, the daily trauma the people living there are experiencing.

Then I thought about all the families in Israel and Palestine grieving loved ones who have died in these last few weeks, and I feel ashamed that we have not done more to solve the divisions we created in the first place by displacing a people to give a displaced people a home.

What have we done and what are we going to do about it?

Since arriving in Indonesia we have had two warnings about the strength of feeling in the country both about Palestine and the up coming elections. The first came in our taxi on the way to our non-existent hotel. It was a news report, which our taxi driver turned up, about the current increased terrorist threat. Sixty people had been arrested and I remembered my cousin having to leave Indonesia just before the elections because westerners become a target.

Our second warning came from our taxi driver who took us from the port to our first hotel in Jakarta. He warned us not to speak about Palestine at all because feelings were running so high.

I understood the strength of feeling, the situation needs compassion and brave leadership not rhetoric and more bloodshed.

The death toll of innocence continues to rise and as I sit here now I silently thank the 125 of our MP’s who were courageous  enough to vote for a ceasefire. We have to take responsibility and hold those to account where we can, in whatever ways we can, to stand united with Israelis and Palestinians in their grief and their calls for peace.

When I got off the train that evening and went in search of food, my headscarf firmly in place, two separate woman asked me if I was Palestinian, kindness in their faces.