Our last day in Jakarta loomed before we faced our 30 hour flight drudgery to get home and although we had really been active and accomplished most of our goals, a few things still unfinished meant that it would not be a throw-away day….
We always try to include a local fiber experience on our trips. Being a fiber person, Carol already had a lot of information about Indonesian Batik but had never dabbled in it. We had thought that she would be able to do so in Ubud, Bali, but our time there was too limited and didn’t line up with their scheduled classes. In Yogyakarta we visited a batik production with a huge inventory of unsold items from small hand held silk to full dining room table beautifully designed spreads with matching napkins and place mats. Again, no classes, just welcome to look, now come see our gift shop. But I was able to find online the Textile Museum of Indonesia located in Jakarta and they offered classes. Our options didn’t look good when they were closed on our second day and we were down to the nubbins on time. However, off we climbed into our blue bird taxi and sped, read, “crawled” our way, once more across Jakarta. Again, there is no rush hour direction…it’s just the same no matter where you go. The museum opened at 9:00 and we got there right at opening time. We paid our $0.33 entry fee and entered a dark dance-hall-sized room with various little alcoves all along the sides…lots of weavings, but no batiks. We were the only ones there for 30 minutes or so while we looked at the weavings when we heard a noise and went to see if it was somebody who knew something. Instead it was Motoko, a lady from Yokohama, who was wanting to do the batik as well…she ventured outside and found someone who directed us all to a building at the back….we walked in and were greeted with the question; “Batik?” and we were in.
We paid the $6 fee and an instructor pointed us to a stack of drawings which Carol and Motoko could choose from for their batik. Carol chose a horse and Motoko a flower. The room was about the size of two suburban houses stuck together and there were little pots with burners underneath scattered around the room with very low chairs placed around the pot. An opium pipe-looking device hung from the side. The man lit the burner and Carol and Motoko proceeded to trace the design in pencil onto a blank piece of cloth and then the drawing and blank cloth were attached to each other in an embroidery hoop to take out all wrinkles and provide a flat surface on which to work. The pipe device was actually a metal stem with a little bowl attached to it and a small reed-like half inch long piece of tubing leading from the bowl. The pipe bowl was dipped into the hot wax which was liquid by now, and slowly and ever so carefully the design was then traced a second time using the hot wax. Care had to be taken since lingering over a spot would mean a drip from the stem and continual dippings to keep the wax hot provided the lines which soon became the horses head and the flower. After this was done on both sides, they were taken to the various stages for completing the work.
The man painted paraffin along the sides to prevent any dye from entering the border and he crinkled the edge for effect and began to dip into the colors that they had chosen. And a finished product emerged. Both ladies really did great jobs, and Carol was pleased to have somebody else with her to see how they approached the projects in their various ways. Mission accomplished.
Browsing the gallery while the batiks dried, a woman curator/director talked to us about the various types of batik we were seeing and I told her that I had wanted to get my hair cut did she have any ideas where? She said that she’d ask the workers and we could check with her on the way out. I had been really disappointed in not having my hair cut, always something I look forward to when traveling. I was stymied at all points of the trip in finding a suitable place and just figured that it was another trip where it wouldn’t work out. However, the lady told us that up the street and down the alley there was a barber shop. It turned out to be a women’s salon, but hey, they cut hair and it wasn’t exactly upscale. We poked our heads in and two women in barber chairs with very wet hair, the barber and a lady in a union jack tank top all looked up like we had made a wrong turn somewhere. I put my fingers up to my hair and made a cutting gesture and all looked blank until one of the women said in a loud voice: “Hair cut!!” and everybody laughed and we sat down to wait our turn in the very hot room where the barber was now blowing hot air all across the girl’s head and across the room to us. After we sat there for a while and as Carol fanned herself with a program from the museum, the Union Jack lady grabbed a long-handled spoon, climbed up on the chairs and flipped two breaker switches and on whirred the room air conditioners. I’m quite sure this was just for our benefit but who cares? After a few minutes she climbed back up on the chairs and turned off the fan which was blowing the hot air from the outside into the room…that helped….The chair, spoon, flip the switches was repeated several times as the breakers kept popping and the room heated up again.
Now, not having spent a lot of time in women’s hair “salons” I was in for a real education as he snipped, shaped, blow dried, curled these two heads one at a time. He was actually quite skilled and the frou-frou girl who had to have the long curls just right primped, preened, fluffed the curls, took lots of selfies and pronounced everything okay. Now my turn came. I tried to get him to understand that I just wanted a little taken off and actually got through to him as he put on a trimmer which limited the depth of the cut. He worked carefully but quickly and knew what he was doing. It turned out to be the best haircut I’ve ever had away from home. Asking the price I was told 30,000 rupiah, about $2.50 US. I gave him an extra 10,000 since nobody in this country has any change at all. You just round things off, and he had done a great job. The Union Jack lady’s daughter came in and looked as shocked to see me in the chair as the others did when we first poked our heads in. She spoke fairly decent English and so I told the stories of my liking to get my hair cut in “real” people’s shops, not fancy shops and showed them some photos from past trips and about my Botswana “English Cut,” that was a US Marine basic training haircut….they got big laughs out of all the pics and stories translated into Indonesian. Mission accomplished.
A quick trip back to Sarinah to get the bell Carol likes to collect and we had been able in three frenetic days to finish all our appointed tasks and were highly pleased with ourselves…back to the hotel we collected our luggage from storage at the HIE and were off to the airport hotel for our last night. One last chance to see the coordinated insanity of Jakarta traffic and we were in the quiet of the airport vicinity for our 3:00 a.m. wake-up call and off to the airport.
It had been a wonderful trip and it was even better than I could have hoped. I try hard not to have expectations, but the truth is that we flew a lot of low-cost Asian airlines, all of whom are forbidden to fly over EU air space and delays and cancellations, and, yes, changed schedules are rampant. Throw in a jumbo jet shot out of the sky and another one whose fate is still unclear and you have a little uncertainty as to the reality of what we’d find. Logistics were a question mark at the start, but drivers and cars can be hired to take you anywhere you want. A five hour one way trip to a destination and where the driver still has to get his way back will run about $60. There are local buses, but I’m too old and have too good a pension to put up with 5 hours in an open air bus which will take about 7 hours with all the stops. No, I’m just some fat cat American and I’m buying my way out of those situations.
The country is incredibly diverse…17,000 islands, over 700 indigenous languages, of which Indonesian, the official language, is only spoken as a mother tongue by 7% of the population and is the 12th most common language, a flourishing religious culture featuring Islam, the most common, Hindu, Christianity and Buddhism and Confusianism all have sizeable followers, and a mixture of traditional and modern. The wildlife is amazing….jungles/rain forests are incredibly rich in wildlife and flora.
Asked whether we’d return, it was met with a firm: “I don’t know.” The heat was difficult to deal with for long periods of time but it is a fascinating place and one that cannot possibly be explored or understood in a one month trip…it was just a teaser…now we have to decide if, in the future, we want to take the bait and return. For now, it was a memorable trip and a very positive one. I come home with memories of wonderful people who showed us the spirit of the place, the warmth and generosity of spirit of the people on the street continually uplifted our moods and it was a “happy” trip…with the Indonesian patience and low key attitudes, there was really no stress or tension. It just flowed, unlike the traffic.
Next year, it looks like a two trip year. Back to Europe to complete our river cruise, and a favorite granddaughter is getting married in Uzbekistan, and we promised to attend so that will be our third trip there.
