I recently took a trip to Indonesia to teach one 8-hour class. It was an adventure, to say the least. This is a story from that trip. 

Gotta teach a class in Indonesia on Thursday, October 22nd, 1998.

Sunday afternoon, 4:30pm Denver time: Head for the airport, 3 hour flight from Denver to LA. 1 hour layover, then 15 hour flight from LA to Sydney sitting next to one of the people from the US Olympic Planning committee. I jumped in a shower in the United Arrivals Lounge during my three hour layover. Get in another plane for the 8 hour flight to Jakarta.

Now magically it’s Tuesday afternoon in Jakarta. All the timezones, plus that stupid date-line…

I was supposed to transfer from the International Terminal to the Domestic Terminal, and take a Merpati Airlines flight from Jakarta (7+ million people) to Bandung (at least 2 million people). Found a taxi driver named Alan <unpronounceable and unspellable> at the airport who took me over to the Domestic terminal (about a mile away). I tried to check in but it turned out that there were no Merpati flights that day. None at all. Nobody could figure out where I got a ticket with October 20th on it.

Checking further, I found out that there would be a flight (only one) on Wednesday afternoon to Bandung (about 80 miles South East of Jakarta), so I decided stay in downtown Jakarta for the night. Alan offered to take me down into Jakarta for only 80,000 Rupiah. The conversion rate: Move the decimal point four places to the left to get dollars. A 40 minute taxi ride right to the Jakarta Grand Hyatt cost roughly $8.00. Can you even get in a cab in the US for $8.00 anymore???

During the drive down to Jakarta in the middle of a business day, I was really surprised by how many people were out fishing, peddling, and generally just “out of work”. The unemployment rate here is staggering.

Alan dropped me off at the Jakarta Grand Hyatt. It’s a WONDERFUL hotel: probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in, and was relatively inexpensive. The room was wonderful, and perhaps a little too “nice” for my state of mind, but I figured that I was too exhausted from the flight down here to care. I staggered around the hotel area for a couple hours, before heading up to the room and sleeping for a good 12 hours straight.

Wednesday morning, I called our training contact in Bandung to make sure everything is OK. Well… Not so OK. None of the student materials shipped from the states arrived. No sign of them at Airborne either. Bummer… I called back to the Santa Barbara to have them send the materials via email, and have the folks here create them manually. Not the cleanest solution, but at least they have something to use during the course. I felt like I had a handle on the situation at this point.

I walked around Jakarta for a couple hours, but it made me somewhat nervous. Heavily armed guards/policemen on the street corners, just about everywhere I looked. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything going on, but they looked like they meant business. It didn’t really give me a safe feeling…

Wednesday afternoon, Alan picked me up and took me back to the airport. On the way, we were talking about the mountains and how nice it would be to see them. Because of the Merpati schedule changes, I would have to fly back from Bandung to Jakarta at 7am on Friday, and not leave the airport in Jakarta until 8:30pm. I couldn’t see sitting in an airport for 12 hours, so I asked him what he would charge me to drive up to Bandung and bring me back down to Jakarta, stopping at a couple parks on the way. We agreed on 700,000R ($70). I was saving the cost of last half of the flight, and getting to do some sight seeing on the way. (I’ll post pictures on the ParkerPress web when I get them done.)

So… we got to the airport, and I bought a one-way ticket to Bandung (25,000) at an outside “counter”. Wait… 25,000 is only about $26!!! I was floored by that. I thought it was a typo at first. Then I checked out my other ticket (the one my travel agent issued) and saw the round trip was only $46.00. Amazing prices, but I was sure I’d have to help them wind the rubber bands. I went through security (a baggage scanner) just to get into the building. Inside it was very quiet: I was literally the only person at the 100 yard long check-in counter with one exception: the guy who checked me in. After I checked in, I was escorted by an armed policeman to the “tax-booth”, where I had to pay an 11,000R tax, and go through another scanning session. From there, I went to the Merpati executive lounge, where I was one of about three people.

By this time I was expecting to board an airplane full of people, chickens and pigs, like you always see in the movies about 3rd world countries. But the actual airplane wasn’t too bad.

I got to Bandung in the middle of mountain thunderstorms. I had the Hyatt taxi driver pick me up and take me to the Bandung Hyatt. Yet another nice hotel, although not in the same ballpark as the Jakarta Hotel. A foreboding sign of things to come, however… I was placed in room “911”. I walked over to the local McDonalds for something other than Rice and Fish, and had a Big Mac. A low-fat Big Mac. Lowfat because the “two all beef patties” were all of 1/8″ thick, if that. And a large coke that was smaller than a shot of whiskey. I wonder what all these people drink to prevent dehydration in the summer…

I walked around the shopping mall looking at all the stuff for sale. Did you know that the Santa Barbara Racquet and Polo club was founded in 1910, and makes watches??? Neither did I, but you can buy ’em in Bandung…

Got to bed a little early, because I wanted to get to the training class a little early to make sure it was set up. When I got up in the morning, I saw that the Yankees had won the World Series. The amusing part was that I was in Indonesia for the World Series, and was in Poland for the Superbowl. I wonder where I’ll be if/when the NBA finals happen… Brazil? Moscow???

The Hotel shuttle took me to the Telkom site (where Lucent works), but was given no instruction where I was to go. I didn’t have that information either (so shoot me… I forgot to get it). I pestered enough people, and made security nervous enough by loitering that they finally helped me figure out where I needed to go to teach my class

I got to the “New Building”, which was aptly named. Tons of floor space. Very little furniture. As in 80% empty. A few chairs and tables. Guess where I was supposed to teach… We set up my class in one corner of a big, walled-off room, and started leafing through the newly copied materials to make sure everything was OK. I noticed two major problems: 1) They were copied single sided. This basically invalidated the first exercise, which relies on students being able to look up specific pages. I also noticed that we had emailed them a new version of the class, which I had not seen before. Not to many drastic changes, but I had no idea what was coming up for some of the classes.

We managed to hold it together enough to teach the course, somewhat successfully after the first unit, and everyone seemed to go finish up understanding what we talked about, even though they were all new to developing software (most were just hired), and wouldn’t start writing code until November. To make matters worse, they have a delivery scheduled for December 24th, 1998. Not a lot of time for a new group. I wish them luck, and hope they can keep it together.

On Thursday night, I had a buffett dinner at the Hyatt, where I finally decided to try all kinds of “ethnic foods”. Some of them were a little too strong for me, some were a little to weird. Some were intensely HOT. I liked most of it, but there were a few that I can do without.

Friday AM: Got up and had breakfast, and then into Alan’s taxi at 10am for the trip back to Jakarta. The drive was beautiful, similar to a drive through Hawaii, with one exception: Constant houses. Everywhere. I can start to understand how this one relatively small country has over 200 million people in it. Almost 2/3 of the population of the US in a hundredth of the space.

Anyway, the drive was beautiful, but I didn’t get to take too many pictures since it was raining most of the way.. Not casual rain, but the infamous tropical deluge. Nice and cool up there too. The most comfortable I’d been since I got there. I’ll post what pictures I took as soon as possible.

I sat around the Jakarta airport for about 6 hours waiting for my flight, and headed for Sydney. I had a 5 hour layover there, so I stuffed all my luggage in a locker, and then headed through customs for a walk around the river by the Sydney airport. Not the cleanest, most natural place, but better than sitting inside planes and lounges. It was a beautiful morning in Sydney, and it was all I could do to force myself to go back into that airport. Next time, maybe I’ll “accidentally miss my flight” and stay for a day or ten.

The flight home was a long one. I slept for about 6 hours, but didn’t make it much longer than that. The upgrade to first class is DEFINITELY worth it. Except when the First Officer spills a diet Coke. With the cockpit right above me, it came through the ceiling and started dripping on my legs. Since it was dark, all I knew was that it was something dripping from the ceiling. If I had seen it was brown, I would have really started wondering if it was hydraulic fluid. In the absolute middle of the Pacific. The flight crew gave me a bottle of Champagne to try and make up for the mess.

I made it to LA a little early, and caught an earlier flight than the one I was scheduled for. I had only about a 35 minute layover there, and then off to Denver. I got home to an absolutely beautiful fall day in Colorado at around noon. I took a 2 hour nap, then forced myself to stay up to 9pm. Sunday wasn’t too bad as far as jet lag goes, and now it’s Monday, and it hardly seems like I left at all.

If there is a next time down there, I plan on staying a few extra days, and perhaps route through Bankok, Singapore, or Kuala Lumpur, just to see a different city.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

SRP