the things we do because we want to be the kind of person who wants to
The rain here gives new meaning to torrential. Imagine the hardest rain you've ever seen, and it's like that for hours. It's so loud you can't hear people talking right next to you unless they shout. It wakes me up in the middle of the night -- and I've always been a champion deep sleeper -- drumming on the tin roofs in the neighborhood. I was wet to the ankles by the time I got to work: it's now two hours after the office opens and there are only two other people here, because I guess even the locals hate to go out in this.
There are three ways to get around the city here: by ojek, angkot or becak. Ojeks are the ubiquitous motorcycles: you hop on the back, and I have not done so yet because I'm fairly terrified of falling off. Traffic here is insane: it runs primarily on the Oh Hell No principle, everyone trying to get their way by being the most forceful. Ojeks and cars alike dart through any hole they can find, swerve aggressively into oncoming traffic to get around a slower vehicle whenever possible, honk constantly to let others know they're there. It's scariest on the twisty, steep roads up and down the mountain, where your van will tear around a sharp turn and have to stop short because of oncoming traffic in the same lane. Plus it's not just cars and motorcycles, it's also the bicycle rickshaws and pedestrians and dogs and little kids, all in the same single lane. Sometimes people carrying huge heaps of vegetables on a shoulder pole, walking half sideways to avoid being clipped. It may even be worse than Marrakech, which had the craziest traffic I'd ever seen (though at least here there are no donkeys to dodge).
Angkots are often called bemos in the rest of Indonesia: neon yellow minivans that function as city buses. Emphasis on the mini: I can't quite sit up straight in one. (Have I mentioned that I'm basically twice as tall as everyone here? I feel for Marshall Eriksen, a monster from the sea who came to destroy bodegas, etc.) Benches run along both walls facing each other. Amazingly, I've never had to wait more than two minutes for one, sometimes not even ten seconds, there are so many that run so constantly; the MBTA could learn a thing or two here, I think. They'll stop anywhere to let people on or off (something that doesn't help the traffic flow, I'm sure), which is wildly convenient. You just flag one down and jump in through the open side door. It costs 2,000Rp, twenty cents, per ride, which you hand to the driver when you get off. I take two to work and two home, checking constantly to make sure I haven't missed my stop. I'm getting so much more familiar with all the city landmarks.
Becaks (bay-chacks) are the three-wheeled bicycle rickshaws. Saturday, after trudging my way to the supermarket, hollered at and dodging trash all the way, I jumped in one for the return trip and it was fantastic and relaxing, a chance to look around at everything heckle-free, for a whopping 50 cents. As always, the world is best seen by bicycle, even if I'm not the one peddling. Time to take more becaks.
The traffic fumes here are incredible. I don't know if it's all the motorcycles, or different emissions standards, or maybe just the fact of sitting in stop and go traffic with all the windows open. It's really unpleasant.
Saturday I managed to find and buy myself a map of the city (Ada peta Kota Ambon?). My vocabulary is doubling every day, but that still leaves me at only about 20 words, mostly bus and food related. Strangely, the way Indonesians roll their Rs reminds me of Icelandic. A little bit of a trill. Then I ran into some actual foreign tourists: Bulgarians who've lived in Bali for five years, on their way through town to go diving in Banda. They said they found the city very strange, hectic and remote: "you feel like if you go any farther you'll fall off the edge of the world." It's strangely comforting to know even people very familiar with Indonesia feel like that. I'm learning how different this region of the country is from the rest: everyday language is different, food is different, half of everything Lonely Planet told me seems to be wrong in Maluku, even the very basics like "hello" and "thank you". I grill the kids a lot over dinner to try to figure out what I should be saying instead. One strange thing about being here is it's definitely got a tourist infrastructure, but it's used almost exclusively by other Indonesians, not foreigners. It's interesting and unexpected. For work I went to a souvenir market by the beach to see the array of oleh-oleh -- souvenirs -- that people swing through to bring home, to figure out how we can market to the same consumers.
The food has gotten even more amazing. Veggies in peanut sauce and saffron. Spiced yellow rice. Last night we had chicken noodle soup with lime and abon ikan (which gets translated as fish floss, but is more like a fish... powder? Think the consistency of coarsely grated parmesan, maybe.). How can I ever eat normal chicken noodle soup again? At work last week I put in a dollar toward ingredients and the woman who cleans the office spent two hours cooking an amazing lunch: fried fresh-made tempeh and sambal, the chili sauce, and fresh young green beans with tomatoes and onions. My favorite so far is kohu-kohu, a regional dish with veggies and tuna and raw coconut and spices and lime. (Here's a recipe you can use Google Translate for, if you want.) I was raving about it at work and they laughed and said I have an Ambonese stomach.
There are three ways to get around the city here: by ojek, angkot or becak. Ojeks are the ubiquitous motorcycles: you hop on the back, and I have not done so yet because I'm fairly terrified of falling off. Traffic here is insane: it runs primarily on the Oh Hell No principle, everyone trying to get their way by being the most forceful. Ojeks and cars alike dart through any hole they can find, swerve aggressively into oncoming traffic to get around a slower vehicle whenever possible, honk constantly to let others know they're there. It's scariest on the twisty, steep roads up and down the mountain, where your van will tear around a sharp turn and have to stop short because of oncoming traffic in the same lane. Plus it's not just cars and motorcycles, it's also the bicycle rickshaws and pedestrians and dogs and little kids, all in the same single lane. Sometimes people carrying huge heaps of vegetables on a shoulder pole, walking half sideways to avoid being clipped. It may even be worse than Marrakech, which had the craziest traffic I'd ever seen (though at least here there are no donkeys to dodge).
Angkots are often called bemos in the rest of Indonesia: neon yellow minivans that function as city buses. Emphasis on the mini: I can't quite sit up straight in one. (Have I mentioned that I'm basically twice as tall as everyone here? I feel for Marshall Eriksen, a monster from the sea who came to destroy bodegas, etc.) Benches run along both walls facing each other. Amazingly, I've never had to wait more than two minutes for one, sometimes not even ten seconds, there are so many that run so constantly; the MBTA could learn a thing or two here, I think. They'll stop anywhere to let people on or off (something that doesn't help the traffic flow, I'm sure), which is wildly convenient. You just flag one down and jump in through the open side door. It costs 2,000Rp, twenty cents, per ride, which you hand to the driver when you get off. I take two to work and two home, checking constantly to make sure I haven't missed my stop. I'm getting so much more familiar with all the city landmarks.
Becaks (bay-chacks) are the three-wheeled bicycle rickshaws. Saturday, after trudging my way to the supermarket, hollered at and dodging trash all the way, I jumped in one for the return trip and it was fantastic and relaxing, a chance to look around at everything heckle-free, for a whopping 50 cents. As always, the world is best seen by bicycle, even if I'm not the one peddling. Time to take more becaks.
The traffic fumes here are incredible. I don't know if it's all the motorcycles, or different emissions standards, or maybe just the fact of sitting in stop and go traffic with all the windows open. It's really unpleasant.
Saturday I managed to find and buy myself a map of the city (Ada peta Kota Ambon?). My vocabulary is doubling every day, but that still leaves me at only about 20 words, mostly bus and food related. Strangely, the way Indonesians roll their Rs reminds me of Icelandic. A little bit of a trill. Then I ran into some actual foreign tourists: Bulgarians who've lived in Bali for five years, on their way through town to go diving in Banda. They said they found the city very strange, hectic and remote: "you feel like if you go any farther you'll fall off the edge of the world." It's strangely comforting to know even people very familiar with Indonesia feel like that. I'm learning how different this region of the country is from the rest: everyday language is different, food is different, half of everything Lonely Planet told me seems to be wrong in Maluku, even the very basics like "hello" and "thank you". I grill the kids a lot over dinner to try to figure out what I should be saying instead. One strange thing about being here is it's definitely got a tourist infrastructure, but it's used almost exclusively by other Indonesians, not foreigners. It's interesting and unexpected. For work I went to a souvenir market by the beach to see the array of oleh-oleh -- souvenirs -- that people swing through to bring home, to figure out how we can market to the same consumers.
The food has gotten even more amazing. Veggies in peanut sauce and saffron. Spiced yellow rice. Last night we had chicken noodle soup with lime and abon ikan (which gets translated as fish floss, but is more like a fish... powder? Think the consistency of coarsely grated parmesan, maybe.). How can I ever eat normal chicken noodle soup again? At work last week I put in a dollar toward ingredients and the woman who cleans the office spent two hours cooking an amazing lunch: fried fresh-made tempeh and sambal, the chili sauce, and fresh young green beans with tomatoes and onions. My favorite so far is kohu-kohu, a regional dish with veggies and tuna and raw coconut and spices and lime. (Here's a recipe you can use Google Translate for, if you want.) I was raving about it at work and they laughed and said I have an Ambonese stomach.