Some Southeast Asian Junk

Someone Needs to Write a Book

A book about food in Jakarta for the interested traveller.  The problem isn't that such a book doesn't exist at all, it's that the books that do exist are geared towards the wrong type of consumer.  I was checking out books yesterday at a Periplus bookstore, and they were all geared towards rich Western expats.  I.e., about 90 percent of these books were things like "The Best Bars in Jakarta" and which of about a billion upscale Chinese restaurants in big frosty airconditioned malls are the best.  What I want is a book about regular restaurants and street food that tourists never get to.  There is a book called Makansutra which is supposed to do this, but I can't find it anywhere.

Part of the reason for this demand of mine is that I'm coming to realize that my normal advice ("eat where all the locals eat") is not really very good sometimes.  I followed a crowd yesterday to a big sprawling restaurant called Bakmi Gajah Mada which specializes in meatballs and noodles.  It was fine, but certainly not great.  I think that this was a post-church crowd, given that it was Sunday at noon and there were whole families everywhere.  At any rate, eating where the locals eat isn't always the best advice.  It's like if you came to the US and wanted to eat where the locals ate, you would rarely end up at a place like Louie's Lunch in New Haven or Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City; you'd be much more likely to end up at a Wendy's or an Appleby's.  So I want a resource that clues me in to the best local cuisine.  If I could find the Makansutra Indonesia version, maybe this would work, but no one seems to be able to find it.

This isn't the hugest deal, as I am familiar with enough local restaurants to sate myself and am happy to try random street food from time to time.  But I don't want to miss out on undiscovered secrets.  One of the places that JM and I really liked, a place called Waroeng Menteng that used to serve traditional West Javanese (Sundanese) food, has disappeared.  Bummer.  So for now I'm occupying myself by searching the internet for good places.  Sometimes you get good results: although these are from Malaysia, the chain is the same, and I've always wanted try polygamy juice.

What Am I Here?

This post's title isn't supposed to be plaintive navel-gazing, but rather informative of the content of the post.

I am here because there is a fortunate overlap between my research interests and current events.  For about 13 days or so, I will be here with some coauthors to oversee the beginning of a large nationally-representative survey of Indonesians.  Now, I don't want to give away too much about what I'm doing, but the survey is designed to probe the relationships between Islam, democacy, and the economy in Indonesia.  This is an opportunity for us to get some really interesting data about the country that we can then use to answer some fascinating research questions that are relevant to current events.  For example, given that Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country (and one of the world's only Muslim democracies), when do people vote for Islamic parties in free and competitive elections?  It would be very interesting for current events in, say, Iraq and Pakistan to know how real democracies work.

The reason why I'm only here for a very short time is that I have to be back in Colorado to teach by January 15.  So to do that, I need to back in the US by the 14th, and to do that, I need to leave here on the 12th.  Thus the very abbreviated trip.  It's also most inconvenient that New Year's is on a Tuesday, because today is no good for work (weekend), whereas neither tomorrow nor the next day will work either.  So I'm trying to use this as a time to get acclimated to the weather and the time zone, and to do some prep work on the survey by myself. 

And to eat as much yummy food as possible.  I was fed on the airplane approximately 15,000 times, so I just had some quick street food last night at 7:30 for dinner.  Tonight I'm going for the real deal, a big spread of masakan Padang, pretty much the national cuisine here.  I may also do some more exploring.  I decided upon arriving that I'd like an updated copy of the Lonely Planet Indonesia, as our is from 2003 and I forgot it anyway.  But my favorite English language bookstore has disappeared, or at least, I couldn't find it when I was looking.  So I may head to one of the gigantor malls here in search of a Kikokuniya.

In Jakarta Officially

It's now 7:00 PM Jakarta time.  I can now speak authoritatively on the subject of Qatar Airways economy class, and would argue that it's fine, but not stellar.  The food is notably worse than Thai or Singapore or even United, which is peculiar given how cheap it should be to whip up some hummus or something.

It is a bit surreal to be back in Jakarta.  Partially because I haven't slept in 40 hours, but also partially because it's always surreal to go back to a place where you have very strong memories.  It's also weird to come back and now have a different perspective on things here that you can only get with distance.  I noticed, for example, that the Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan (Financial Oversight Organization, which is something like government bank regulator) inhabits a shabby building, while the Kementerian Pertahanan (Ministry of Defense) inhabits a gleaming white and very tasteful building.  I wonder if this communicates something.

On tap for tomorrow: what exactly I am doing here, and why such a short trip?

Signing on from the Oryx Lounge at Doha International Airport

What's up, internet?  I'm currently heading back to Indonesia for a quick 2 1/2 week research trip, so Indolaysia will be back up and running again until the middle of January.  Unfortunately, it's just me (TP), as JM is back at home.

I'm writing from the Doha International Airport in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar.  Qatar Airways turns out to have been the cheapest flight from Denver (via Dulles), so for the first time I'm experimenting with the IAD-DOH-SIN-CGK route.  I don't expect that a lot of people fly QR from DC to Indonesia, but it certainly can be done. 

So far Qatar Airways has my business.  The first thing that happened when I took a seat at the gate was that a ticket agent walked up to me and gave me a free upgrade to Business Class.  I've never flown anything other than steerage before, so the sheer awesomeness of business class is new to me.  This is how the other .5% of the world lives.  I used to think that I can't sleep on planes.  It turns out, I can sleep just fine when the seat turns almost into a bed, and after two glasses of Bordeaux and a big hunk of foie gras and smoked salmon (the appetizer) followed by chicken tangine and vanilla ice cream with fresh berries.  This is how to travel.  Too bad this is not going to be how my next three legs will be.  I'll be better suited to evaluate steerage in about 20 hours.  But so far, I can confirm that as I have found throughout the world, oil soaked dictatorships enlightened developmentalist monarchies have the best airlines.

The most peculiar aspect of Qatar Airways is that the background music for the personal entertainment system is the Red Hot Chili Peppers' album Californication.  The airline also has a pretty choice list of CDs to listen to during your flight, ranging from Appetite to the Stone Roses, the Smiths, Live at Folsom Prison, Ten, OK Computer, London Calling, the Chronic, and a range of others that I forgot.

The route we flew was interesting.  Way up north, over Manchester in the UK then down over Hungary and Turkey.  They planned us to fly over Iraq (I really wanted to blog from 39,000 ft over the Green Zone--"Tom's over Baghdad") but they ended up putting us over Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.  I can confirm that Saudi Arabia is unbelievably empty.  Looking out the window, it was indistinguishable from being over the ocean--just no lights whatsoever, anywhere that you can see from horizon to horizon.  Then we started our descent and then all of the sudden, lights.

I'm blogging currently from the Oryx Lounge at the airport, where for 25 bucks you can get unlimited free food and drink, free internet, comfy chairs, and (it's rumored) even a shower.  Nice. I think that I'll probably do this again on the return trip.