We arrived at our hotel last night, which could do with a woman’s touch, shall we say. I’m not sure the last time anything was cleaned. There’s a cigarette butt in the sink by the shared bathroom. There’s no towels, toilet paper (‘you buy at shop, it’s very cheap’, says the hotel owner) and no air conditioning either, so with the high humidity I have a very sweaty night. By the shower outside my room, there’s an open part of the roof with a ladder up to a sort of roof top terrace, but there’s no space to sit and it looks as if there were some repairs left undone up there.
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| Hotel comforts at Jakarta |
There is nothing in Jakarta that I am particularly keen to see. I spend the early part of the day wondering around with Just John, little Dan and Martin, diving into various shopping malls merely to experience their air conditioning.
We had a look at what films were on at a cinema and I later go back with Jen and Lu to see Valentine’s Day. It’s a chick flick, but I have had a few beers already in my boredom, so I find it tolerably funny. Coming out of the theatre, that ‘Everybody Dance Now!’ song is playing loudly so I start doing a gyrating dance with Jen but then suddenly remember I am in a Muslim country so I quickly stop.
In the evening, I reflect that my experience of Jakarta has been quite dull, but then something quite interesting happens. Earlier in the day, Lu had been finding out what the best transport would be to get to Yogyakarta. She had talked non-committedly to a street-side travel agent about booking a bus, but found instead that it would be quicker and cheaper to go by train. However, when she bumps into the travel agent in the street and tells him that she has booked the train instead, he says that he wants the money because he has booked a bus. When she refuses, he says ‘I kill you’, accusing her of a breach of trust. He actually phones the police, who come to the hotel with the mad travel agent. Here the man repeats his threat to kill Lu. The police don’t speak English and are receiving a translation from the hotel owner. Our friendly translator suggests that Lu just give the mad travel agent some money and the police suggest the same, instead of arresting the man for threatening Lu’s life. Lu is taking no bullshit, so the police decide she needs to go to the police station to resolve the matter. Just John, Jen and I go with her in a taxi.
At the police station, I borrow a mobile phone to call the British Foreign Office emergency number, the British Embassy being closed as it is now late in the evening. However, they decide that having a man threaten to kill someone followed by the police asking the target of the threat to give this man some money is just a petty dispute that they do not get involved in, despite the fact that Lu has effectively now been arrested. I should add that Lu is actually a Kiwi, but they don’t have an embassy in Indonesia so the British Embassy acts for NZ nationals here. All they do is offer me a list of lawyers.
However, at the police station, there are some devoted ‘tourist police’, who do speak English, and are a lot more conscious of the impression this experience gives of Indonesia, and Lu is told she can go after an hour. The travel agent, who has repeated his threats to kill Lu in front of the English speaking police, is held longer, perhaps overnight so that we will have left town by the time he gets out. But we don’t know for sure.
We are happy that we are leaving on the train early the next morning.
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