Salatiga jet lag

View from the porch, with Mount Merbabu in the background and garden construction below

My ambition this morning - Friday morning in Salatiga - was to wake up, eat breakfast, and then go wander aimlessly through the streets of my old home, but I woke up after everyone at the house I stayed in had left, even though I went to bed early. Awake again at about midnight, for about three hours, and then finally, blissfully at that point, sleep again. I've got the fog of jet lag now, this Friday morning, but that's preferable to the restless wide awake jet lag in the middle of the night. Still, it's probably about 30 minutes walk from here to downtown, which doesn't seem that far except it's hot outside, and humid too. If I go walk downtown now, I will be dripping with sweat immediately, and look like that hulking wet bule of my former teaching days. I'll have other chances to wander around, and I've got several things I have to prepare for the next three weeks, so I might use work as an excuse to avoid the heat. I suspect, though, a desire for some delicious street food will pull me out the door, and I'll already procrastinating on my work by writing this blog entry.

Yesterday I flew from Jakarta to Solo - among the other recorded announcements they played before the flight, in two languages - no smoking, seat belts fasten like this, etc. etc. - they played this: "Dear passengers, we would like to remind you that trafficking or carrying drugs is a criminal offense that carries a maximum penalty of death." That really seems the most maximum they could get, and I was glad for my decision to leave the heroin at home.  When we landed in Solo, I was greeted with that traditional Javanese sound of seat belts unbuckling the instant the plane wheels hit the ground, though uncharacteristically no one got up before the plane stopped.

In ways I didn't expect, everything seems so normal here. I had in my head perhaps my first arrival, when as soon as we left the airport in Jakarta the whole swirling craziness seemed overwhelming. Now, though, it really did feel just like old times, right away, almost sedate, even as the taxi driver steered around buses and trucks on the shoulder or on the other side of the road (there were only motorcycles there, after all) - I suddenly wanted to drive myself again. I was quite pleased that it didn't take me aback in any sort of way - I feel no sort of culture shock here, which is a relief, even though I couldn't for the life of me remember what the word for "eight" was when I talked to the taxi driver (delapan, by the way).

The strangest thing I saw driving up from Solo was a highway not strewn with trash - or perhaps the strangest thing I saw that explained that a bit were trashcans on the city streets, at regular intervals, with two receptacles, even, one for organic waste. When I asked my students before, they couldn't come up with an Indonesian word for "litter." Later, when I strolled a bit after arrival, I walked by several unofficial, illegal, and very fragrant trash dumps, so I don't want to overstate the change, but it bordered on remarkable, and encouraging, that there seems to be a different attitude toward trash than when we were here only three years ago.

I am staying at our friends' house on the north edge of Salatiga - Colin and Retno used to be our neighbors, and they've moved into a new and very comfortable house. They are off working today, and I am alone in the house - alone in that Javanese way, since there are, around me working, several people, some as housekeepers and some still building the back garden, which remains unfinished. It's a very nice house, though, sunny and cool and a good place to recover my legs again for a bit.

Sunscreen - I forgot sunscreen. Did I mention that it looks really hot out there? That hazy tropical heat. I can see the extinct volcano, Merbabu, from the window stunning and formidable, as always.

Yesterday evening I walked for about an hour around the neighborhood Colin and Retno live in. We used to live in another neighborhood, and I wasn't so familiar with this one, and found myself after about 20 minutes in the tempat wisata karaoke - literally, the karaoke tourist district - which every sizable town in Java has, and which figuratively translates as "the red light district." I had buzzed through this part of town on my motorcycle before, but never on foot, so I suppose my motives for being there were an object of curiosity. There are, there, several bars with karaoke available in separate rooms, but, just to be clear, that's all the details I have of the inner-workings in the tempat wisata karaoke. It reminded me of the almost casual way Indonesia makes room for what is clearly a sort of social deviance - in a country where internet pornography is censored by law, and that is the most religious place I have ever lived, there are spaces carved out like a kind of moral overflow zone. There is something funny about walking through a red light district while the afternoon call to prayer is echoing throughout the hills from dozens of mosques. I turned around in the middle of a rubber plantation, where the trees were scored and cups were hanging to catch the rubber. So many familiar daily things I had already forgotten.

And so I am here, and it is wonderful even in the jet lag fog. When I left Montana, I was worried that I would be gone too long, that I should have scheduled a shorter trip. Now, here, I am already starkly aware of how brief this visit will be, and I suspect I will be glad for every day of the trip, bathed in sweat or in the wrong neighborhood or listening in wide awake jet lag to the sound of the Javanese nighttime. I'll be honest: it feels a bit like my home here, but the kind of home that still feels like home when you come back to it. So far it's very pleasant.