Sunday Morning I Took a Two-Hour Walk around Town in the Area Around the Hotel…..

…..and enjoyed myself except that my clothing was literally saturated when I got back. This is humidity that makes Houston look like Arizona.

Kind of strange, but I didn’t see any other Westerners the whole time. The Australian trainer and I basically walked the main streets in a large square route and saw nobody else who looked American or Australian. Everybody was friendly, however. I’ve found that the Indonesians will look directly at you (in Africa they often won’t on the streets) but will say nothing. If you smile or say hello, however, they break into a big smile and respond. In that sense I think Indonesians are more outgoing than in many other developing countries.

We walked down to the Grand Mosque which is a huge complex and a magnificently beautiful blue and white building. The largest mosque in Indonesia is in Jakarta and I think it may be the largest in the world. This one, however, is considered to the most beautiful in the country. We didn’t try to go inside—I had a good introduction to mosques while I was in Egypt—but walked around the perimeter.

Indonesia is the most-populated country in Southeast Asia with over 230 million people and nearly 90% of them are Muslim (which means no pork chops on the hotel menu) but there seems to be a high degree of religious tolerance here—there is a large Christian church directly across one of the streets from the Grand Mosque. There are some extremist problems to the south and near the coasts of Thailand and Philippines but here in Pekanbaru it seems to be an outgoing, friendly form of religious belief. We do break each day for prayers at the Chevron compound and Friday has an extended prayer break at mid-day but it doesn’t cause any disruptions—everything is planned around it.

I have only seen two burkas (the full face-covering head cloth) here but the hajibs (head scarves with open faces) are very common—in fact they are basically the standard. I find it amusing that the young girls over here will wear the conservative hajibs with skinny jeans. There doesn’t seem to be any negative extreme connotation to them—there was a rock music program here at the hotel over the weekend and most of the people were teen-aged girls wearing the hajibs and having a good time laughing and clapping. It was strange, however, to see a woman in a body suit and head scarf in the swimming pool.

The mosques here are of a design I’ve never seen anywhere else. When I was in Cairo they told me there are four main architectural styles for mosques but these are really different—I would call them “onion dome” kind of like the architecture of the Kremlin in Russia. There are minaret towers on some of them (like the Grand Mosque), but most here are of the dome design. Because of the weather, they are mostly open-air and it seems there is a small mosque on nearly every corner of the city. The calls to prayer over the loud speakers seem to occur on the quarter-hour and last about fifteen minutes—I can hear one right now from my hotel room.

Not far from the hotel is a large, Chinese-style building that is a hospital—at least I think it looks Chinese.

We came across a traffic circle (they call them round-a-bouts and they are very common over here) that had an old 1950s early jet plane displayed. If you look at the photo carefully, however, you will also see two palm trees. Only they aren’t really palm trees—they’re cell phone towers disguised as trees. The coconuts are actually electronic gear. I can’t imagine the range being too great on them but it’s not the first time I’ve seen these—they are quite common in Africa as well.

The Sumatra regional library is a massive, modernistic building—the photo only shows half of it. Literacy seems to be very high over here and children are selling newspapers at every street corner and there seems to be a wide selection of papers. The building with a hole in the top over a dome is a government building. Indonesia is not a wealthy nation but you find buildings like the library and government buildings in various places so the government does provide basic services pretty well it seems.

Like I wrote earlier, the walk was only about two hours but it was an energy-sapping exercise…..

Did a Four-Hour Drive Outside Pekanbaru on Saturday.....

.....and visited an elephant conservation area.

By our standards it wasn't much of a preserve, but in Indonesia it is at least an attempt by someone to save these animals. Unfortunately we arrived in the heat of afternoon and the adults were off in the trees but we did get to see up close three young--two females and a bull--all around two years or younger.

The preserve itself is very basic but provides what the elephants need--a small river running through it, foliage to eat, and protection from poachers. Asian elephants are much smaller than the African species and these three were very tame and gentle. I think they were a little disappointed we didn't bring anything for them to eat because they got bored pretty quickly and took off but I got to hand feed one some grass.

The preserve itself is a pretty sad place--located right in the middle of an oilfield and really isolated from the main road but like I said, at least they're trying.

Another sad problem here is that in this area 65% of the forest has been cut down and replanted with palm trees in the past 25 years and palm oil is a major export in Indonesia. The problem is that elephants don't eat palm fruit and are quickly losing their habitat. It is really devastating the elephant population on Sumatra. The famed Sumatra tiger is also quickly disappearing.

On the way back, we came across a motorcycle doing probably 40-45 mph. The driver had a passenger behind him holding onto a wheelbarrow. If it had slipped out of his hands, the car behind them would never have been able to avoid it. Whatever it takes to get the job done, I guess......

Here’s What One Million, One Hundred Twenty Six Thousand Rupiahs (that's Ru 1,126,000.00) Look Like……

…..I can finally say I’ve carried a million around in my billfold. Makes me feel kind of like a drug dealer.

We finished up our first week of work today—actually two 2-Day training programs and all went very well. We have three excellent translators but frankly, most of the students speak more than passable English. The training facility is typical of corporate settings—I’ve seen them all over the world now—but more than adequate for what we’re doing.

The training vehicles are a really small model of Toyota that I’ve never seen before and although they are cramped inside, they get the job done. They drive on the left side of the road in Indonesia so the steering wheel is on what we would call the “passenger side.” By now I don’t have a lot of problems with left-side driving except that I keep reaching to the wrong side to put my seat belt on and use my windshield wipers instead of my turn indicators. I rarely try to get into a taxi behind the steering wheel anymore.

The hotel is more than adequate and we eat breakfast and dinner there but lunches are catered in and are definitely “local fare.” The attached photo shows a typical meal—everything revolves around rice here (as in most of Asia). The pouches contain sauteed sauces and usually an entrée—chicken or fish most of the time. Most of the sauces are pepper-based and so hot Westerners can’t eat them. I still believe Thai peppers are the hottest but many of these will literally jerk your head back if you bite into them. They are “hot” to the point they make jalapenos seem mild. You have to throw out all personal diets and cautions here and the three of us, Australian and Texans, have been pretty cautious about eating these meals. I generally don’t eat raw vegetables or salads outside the hotel but I have been eating these with no problems yet. The salad has a pouch of dark, thick brown sauce that does taste somewhat like peanuts and I’ve been using it on the salad as well as the rice. When they have chicken and it looks well-cooked I will eat that too but not the fish. The other Texan ate the fish the first day and was throwing up for two days. You just never know when you’re eating the local fare…….I’ve been sick twice on these overseas trips and it ain’t fun….. Maybe I’ve finally developed some level of tolerance by now—the sun-dried Tilapia in Kenya was a major test for me.

The local transportation here is typically Asian—thousands of small motorcycles, small mini-bus taxis, tuk-tuks (small three-wheel motorcycles used as taxis), and typical taxis. I’ve ridden all of them so I probably won’t try the local transit on this trip.

We have the weekend off and start a new five-day program Monday. If we can arrange it, we’re going to try to rent a taxi Saturday and see some of the city……..

Watched the US Soccer Team Beat Algeria in South Africa at a Sports Bar in Indonesia Wearing a Houston Dynamo Jersey.....

.....talk about a World Cup experience!!!!!

I was the only Yank in the place so I got the small-screen TV. The two projection screens had the England/Slovenia game which was important to the US team also so I watched both games at the same time. Fantastic finish in the final two minutes--the reason I enjoy soccer so much.....excellent result (as the Brits say).

The first 2-day class went ok and we finished up yesterday. This may not be a particularly interesting four weeks of blog materials--Pekanbaru is pretty remote and without much in the form of tourism. Walking around, I took a few shots of some of the local buildings. They are definitely Asian but not in the Thai style, more Chinese I think--and the Islamic tradition here also seems to affect their architecture.






































JUST HOW FAR IS IT TO THE KAYU MANTIS RESTAURANT ANYWAY?????

The sign says "plus or minus one kilometer"--just how far is that?

Made It To Indonesia But It Has To Have Been the Longest, Hardest Trip I've Done So Far.....

.....and surprisingly, the 17 1/2 hours from Los Angeles to Bangkok nonstop wasn't the hardest part--the layovers at three airports were the killers. We did our first day at work yesterday and I'm not sure right now what to expect for the next four weeks.

My initial reaction has been mixed--Pekanbaru is a city of about 750,000 people on the island of Sumatra which is the largest of approximately 1,000 islands that make up Indonesia. Flying in from Jakarta at low level, I could see the speckled dots in the water everywhere and I'm told many of the really small islands are uninhabited while other islands still haven't really been surveyed. The city is nice and clean but is very isolated and there is no tourism here that I've seen yet. I don't really think we'll be getting out from the hotel much even on weekends.

The hotel is nice but calling it a 4-star is a bit of a stretch. As was the case in Rwanda, the hotel grounds are really pleasant and even include a good sized jogging trail. My room overlooks the swimming pool and you can see the landscaping is really attractive. Almost nobody at the hotel speaks English which makes it a bit difficult at times. The restaurant is good although limited to Indonesian food which I'm still experimenting with but like what I've had so far. It does seem to be spicy in everything they prepare.

I only slept about three hours on the trip over so I got a good night of sleep the first night and my appetite seems normal so hopefully the effects of jet lag will be minimal.

The first day, we went out to the Chevron compound for a couple of hours to meet the interpreters and set the training up for the next four weeks and the compound is really a city in itself--very large with a commissary and even a golf course which doesn't help me but it does give you an idea how large the facility is. In lots of ways it reminded me of a military base.

Back in Pekanbaru, the Australian trainer and I walked around a little but frankly didn't see a lot of interest. There is a large building down the street from the hotel and we walked down and took some photos of it and a large statue in front of it. The statue was a bit unusual because as you see in the close-up, the soldier on the right has a Heineken beer bottle in his pocket.

The first day of work went pretty well but there were some major mixups--mostly language-related I think. For one thing, they didn't have training vehicles for us and that has to be straightened out today. Chevron hasn't been difficult to work with but they haven't actually greeted us or given us an orientation as to what to expect, what to avoid, etc. Kind of unusual for these jobs.

I had three students today, but like I said, we spent the whole day in the classroom. They speak pretty good English and my interpreter is really good so that part of the day went well. Back at the hotel, I had Thai green curry chicken for supper. So far, so good.....should know more tomorrow.

I’m Headed to Pekanbaru, Indonesia for Four Weeks in June/July…..

.....I’ll be doing multiple jobs for Chevron over there. It’s my first time working in Indonesia and Pekanbaru is located on the largest island—Sumatra—and is very near Malaysia and Singapore. I don’t know much about the area but I do know it’s a 33 ½ hour flight over there—Houston to Los Angeles to Bangkok to Jakarta to Pekanbaru. There will be three of us this time—one of those rare occasions when I’m working with other trainers. One of them is from Australia and I know him from my trip over there four years ago. We’re booked into what looks to be a really nice hotel and I think this is going to be a good job and another interesting adventure…..