Um, hi. I'm blogging from a tropical island.

Can't talk. Too much tropical island adventure. 

We've been spending the past 5 days on, what is perhaps, the most idyllic island in the Indo Pacific. There's not much to do here but explore, swim, build sand castles, and take afternoon naps. Oh, and learn to SCUBA dive, explore some of the most pristine coal reefs in the world, swim with green turtles and spot reef sharks, which, wut??! 

Anyway, just so you don't feel too bad about not being here too, I'll confess that it's been raining for a few days, the internet is molasses, and a certain two-year-old has been being quite two. However! Tropical island! Lifetime dream accomplished!

Now, on to the jungle where we'll hang out with some monkeys for a few days. 

Project Life ::: Week Thirteen

This week was a quiet one. Stella was out of school (unbeknownst to me it was spring break, so I showed up at drop-off Tuesday morning wondering why there were no cars lined up or gleeful shrieks filling the air) so, duh. The quiet of this week has allowed me a little space for stillness, which is so badly needed. I'm trying to gather up all my resources, temporal and mental, and make a push for something great.  

//I've banished Facebook and Instagram first thing in the morning, opting instead for tea, planning, and a corner of stillness // a porcelain xiao long bao, a treasure from China // brewing kefier // Stella and I have been having dinner dates, complete with music and "candies" // she wasn't supposed to swim, nor was her best friend, but, well, oops. // lunch in a garden restaurant with her favourite baby // ordering pizza, because, uh, duh? // crepe for mama // playing in the window.//

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Linking up for Sunday Stills. 

I don't know how to talk about money.

About a month ago, Stella received her very first hong bao, a tiny red envelope stuffed with 40 000 rupiah in celebration of the year of the snake. Forty thousand rupiah sounds like a pretty sum. And actually, it is here. 

Forty thousand could be a day's wages. It could feed a family. It could transport a weary traveler halfway across Java. 

But in the US, it might only buy a medium sized frappuchccino. 

Stella's red envelope sits half forgotten on top of her bookshelf. She doesn't know it's there. She doesn't know she has money waiting for her. I haven't gotten her a piggy bank, I haven't told her about the spend, save, give system, I haven't really mentioned it. And that is mostly because I don't know how to talk to her about money.

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On Sunday morning, we took Stella out for a swim. We kicked and twirled and splashed and dove, fresh in the face of the equatorial sun.  As we swam, young men were toiling at transforming the modernist pool-side event hall into a classical European palace. A new facade was installed, complete with a two-story-high picture frame ready for the professional photographer to snap images of happy guests in too-short dresses and false eyelashes. There were spheres made from roses hanging from every tree. Lights ready for glittering. A walk way created. Everything perfectly sparkly pink ready for an evening celebration.

As we put our girl to bed Sunday night, the booming base was broken occasionally by the MC who presided over the party getting underway one story below us. A birthday party for a 17 year-old girl. 

A birthday part that, no doubt, cost much more than my husband and I could earn in a month.

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On Saturday afternoon I took Stella to the grocery store. Blue skies turned pea-soup dark and opened to tropical downpour. Traffic was terrible, as it always is when it rains. Stopped as the line of cars snaked around a traffic circle, a group of children approached the car, pressing up against the glass with their hands shielding their eyes for a better view inside. They were gesturing, making the universal sign for money money, food, please, eat, money, food, miss, please, eat, miss, food.

I searched for a box of raisins that I usually have stashed at the bottom of my bag, but found nothing. I said, sorry, I don't have anything to give you. My personal rule is to give only food to children, never money. They gestured harder, waved at Stella, smiled, waved, money, money, please, miss, food, money.

Stella turned to me and said, "Dese are mine fwiends."  

I nodded, and told her "That's right," because I still haven't figured out the right words for this type of moment. I still haven't figured out how to tell her that these kids maybe don't have a mummy and a papi, a home, toys, dinner. These kids are just like you, kind and good and worthy, but they want your money. 

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I got a text from my ojek driver today asking for help. On Sunday while we were splashing in the pool, he wrecked his motorcycle. A car made a careless turn and swerved into him, throwing him into the air, before speeding away. His phone and his bike were both broken, both his lifelines to income. His shoulder was injured and he hadn't been to the doctor yet.

People like my ojek driver, people who are good and kind humans, well they can be ruined in an instant. You can tell them, you should have saved money, you should have a safety net. But the truth is they don't have access to fat ofshore bonds, QROPS pensions, or international health care, let alone bank accounts or a simple doctor's visit. People like my ojek driver and his family might eat everything they earn in a day. 

The driver asked me to borrow some money, just a little over twice the amount my daughter was given as a gift for Chinese New Year. I felt uncomfortable and uncertain about this transaction, because I'm not accustomed to people I don't know very well asking to borrow money, because I feel guilty about how much I have, and how little he does, because I didn't want a loan to stomp on our relationship, because I resented him asking, because I knew I should give. 

I felt uncomfortable also because I don't know how to talk about money. I don't know how to explain to my child why a 17 year-old gets a birthday party that could feed an entire village and another and another while the man who drives me to the gym can't afford to pay a doctor to examine his shoulder. I don't know how to tell her what the right thing to do is. I don't know what the right thing to do is. An act like this won't bring someone out of poverty. It won't solve his problems. But maybe it will show him that we're kind?

The only thing I could do was take my girl with me when I went to bring him the money. One crisp red bill changed hands. He tickled my girl's cheek, then looked me in the eyes and said thank you. The next few rides will be free. 

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Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post, but all content, opinions, and allegations are mine, and mine alone. Thank you to the kind people at WhichOffshore.com for sponsoring this post and allowing me to make a small income at home. I'm lucky, and I'm beyond thankful. 

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"You're So Brave" That's Not A Compliment.

This post is brought to you by the good and kind people at Aetna International. Thanks, Aetna, for supporting my blog and allowing me to write honestly about a topic that is so close to my heart.

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You sure are brave! 

I get that a lot. From Indonesians, from foreigners, from strangers and from friends. This utterance usually follows tales of journeys great and small that I’ve embarked upon with my kid. Be it a short jaunt across town on the bus, or a several-days-long journey around Central Java via train, bus, and donkey cart, the response is almost always the same: a raised eyebrow, slight shock and a “Wow. You’re so brave!”

You’d think that I’d take it as a compliment. But that phrase, “you’re so brave”? Well, it gets my goat. 

Implicit in that statement is the suggestion that experiencing this country as the vast majority of its residents do, as well as being in close proximity to its people, is somehow dangerous. You’re so brave! This phrase insinuates that experiencing real life puts me at great personal risk. That the choices I make to see this country, to get to know its people somehow brings my parental judgment into question. To which, I declare, CHICKEN SCRATCH!

 

Hi. We're in Beijing. 

Many expats (and let’s be honest, many middle and upper-class Indonesians) take great pains to avoid contact with all but their own. As I've written before, walking is not a thing in Jakarta. If you have more than two coins to rub together, you drive. Or, better yet, you hire someone to drive you around. Buses, trains and bajaj are all reserved for those who are down at the heel: the other, the lower, the dangerous. What a terrible, menacing risk to have to stand next to a stranger on the bus! In the middle of the day! Or sit in a train car full of other people! Who might jump out at any second to cut your throat! Or something.

 If I never traveled by train, I'd never see a vista this lovely.

To fear that which we don't know is a natural response. Fear of out-groups, of cultures different and indecipherable kept our ancestors alive while we were all hunched on the savannah. This fear is still lodged somewhere deep in our reptile brain. And that’s cool. I get it. But to live an expat life governed by this fear of difference, well, that kind of defeats the entire purpose of moving abroad, don't you think?

It took me a while to get to this realization; I'll admit to plenty of fear and revulsion at otherness, plus an outright refusal to ride buses in Shanghai. And I regret that. But after many years of practice I've gotten better at quelling this fear. And that’s made all the difference.

 

Travel by becak turned out to be my preferred method of short-distance transport. Ever see a city from the front of a bike taxi while the sun set pink and the call to prayer drifted through the evening? Then, my friends, you haven't lived.

When I was new to the expat game, fresh off of a disastrous Indian posting, Mr. Chef and I arrived in China. After a short period of "whoa! This place is big and awesome and look: I'm eating street food!" I started acting like the proverbial expat jerk. I turned my nose up at women washing pork tripe in a plastic basin by the side of the street. I fumed at the sound of nail clippers in the subway, at the parents of rosy bottomed children in traditional split-crotch pants, at the week-long fireworks onslaught that was Chinese New Year. I couldn't see the beauty of it all, because I was so transfixed by the otherness, the potential danger (of nail clippings? I dunno.) 

 

I traveled back to China after my kid was born. I think she gave me bravery muscles, or something. With her, we went from Beijing to Shanghai by train. Solo. And it was NBD. Also, she got manhandled by strangers a lot. And didn't mind a bit.

As a result, I barely got to know my adopted country. I didn’t travel. I made few Chinese friends, sampled only but a handful of dishes in the Chinese culinary cannon, and spent a lot of my time being unnecessarily annoyed. 

I'm not doing that this time around. 

And you know what? This time I'm a much happier expat. 

Some evenings I ride home on the back of an ojek. Real life is all around me; men in flip-flops pulling handcarts laden with rambutan; women by the side of the street carrying babies in slings while offering small spoons of rice porridge to their wee ones; boys barefoot and bold darting in and out of traffic; the sun so low that it makes everything golden. On the back of an ojek I can orientate myself to this city, its and its rhythm. I see things I'd miss from inside a leather-seated taxi. “Wow, you're so brave,” people say when the see me disembarking from a motorcycle. Not really. The vast majority of Indonesians travel this way. I bought a helmet. We don't travel very fast. NBD.

Similarly, getting out of Jakarta lifts me up. I'm reminded that there's real life outside of shopping malls and luxury hotels. People smile at me. We sit on the train and make friends with a grandmother and her little grandson. A woman hears my girl crying and makes her way down the carriage with a handful of mandarins. I can see through these small acts of kindness that people, mostly, are good. A man passes by, stops for a moment, then taps my girl's cheek and ask her name. Hardly the picture of danger. 

 This image of a toddler climbing over ancient and forgotten ruins is brought to you by level-headed adventure, not bravery. 

Certainly we do come across hotel rooms that we must share with geckos or train toilets of dubious sanitation. We’re occasionally over-charged for a taxi ride, and perhaps I look at a plate of nasi goring and wonder if it will send me to a days-long holiday in the WC. But usually, I put on my big girl pants, think about how geckos eat bugs, cross my fingers and dig into my fried rice. 

All of which is to say that while I step out of my comfort zone, I don’t take traveling with my two-year-old lightly. There are risks. I recognize that pick-pocketing can happen, so I carry small amounts of cash, and hide my cards in the deepest reaches of my pack. I always bring a first-aid kit, basic medicine and a thermometer. I use sunscreen and mosquito repellant. We don't go anywhere without expat health insurance. 

You know, there are also risks to living. I might get my heart broken or I might break my leg. Something unspeakable could happen, regardless of whether I'm on an economy class train on the way to Yogyakarta or holed up in a five-star hotel. 

There's just too much wonder out there, too much beauty, too many smiles to deny these experiences to myself or my child. So we travel, I let her eat street food, and we'll ride trains and busses together. We'll talk to strangers. We'll use sound judgement, and we'll see all the good that there is to see.

Family Photography in Jakarta

I have some images for you this morning.

Because I went to Yoga for CrossFit last night. 

And then did a CorssFit conditioning workout.

Because I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus.

Because I have a gigantic stack of work to do.

Because I'd rather take a nap.

Because I've been sitting on these pictures for two months. And I lost the CD which houses them. Twice.

I thought I'd better get around to putting these up on the internet.

That's why.

And because I have no self control and because the images are so good, I'll just go ahead and post a billion. Okay? Okay.

The super-talented (and all 'round quality human being) Becks of Viveash Photography made these images for us. And to say that I was pleased is a total understatement. They came out better than I could have imagined. I'll be so happy to look back on these many years from now and remember when we were young and fun and settling into our great Indonesian adventure. 

If you're in Jakarta and looking for portraits or family photography, may I suggest you get in touch with Becks? Because you should. Totally. 

Tegal and Guci, Central Java

Well, now that I've got my sleepytime rant out of the way, let's talk again about gallivanting around the jungle. (And by jungle, I mean a sort of forested area that is totally jungley if you're a clueless bule like me.) 

first stop: tegal.

Our first stop on our wild and crazy adventure was to Tegal, a smallish, rather unremarkable city on the North coast of Java. 

Our main motivation for visiting here, besides my inclination to visit a city whose merits are discussed in exactly zero travel guides, was to see Stella's nanny's family. And thus, the first thing we did after a night in a windowless room was to hop on a minibus (60 cents for the three of us!) and drive to the outskirts of the city. From there, we went by pony-cart, past farmers tending rice, until we arrived at the road leading to the village. We walked the last few hundred meters. Which was kind of a thing, apparently, as indicated by the number of shocked stares and comments by disapproving neighbours.

Let me tell you, my kid loved it in the village. She's been asking to return ever since. There was nothing super extraordinary, it was just village life, pure and true. Barefoot kids running around; people wandering into the shop next door; chickens scratching in the dirt; neighbours passing by with a wave or a piece of news.

We hung out, chatted, sat in the open doorway, waved at the neighbour kids also sitting in their doorway, and watched the world go by. Presently, a straw mat was unfurled on the living room floor, and we sat around eating noodles and fried rice, which pretty much blew my kid's mind because OMG noodles are the best thing ever. And rice is the second best thing.

next stop: guci hot springs. 

We all piled into a van and off we went, up to the hills, past terraced fields. Newly planted rice gave way to cabbage and strawberries as our ears began to pop with altitude. 

 We then found ourselves amidst the chaos of a hot spring free-for-all / market / public bath.  (Protip: When swimming in Indonesia, it's quite normal to go in fully clothed, something I was not prepared for. I packed up my modest one-piece suit, a concession to more conservative values, but didn't dare don my outlandish swimming getup, as I totally felt too naked. And if you're under 10, you swim in underwear and undershirts. So the moral of this story is: bring a change of clothes. Now you know.)

Here's what Guci looked like:

 

At Guci there's two options for taking the waters (let's just pretend we're Victorian fancypants people, shall we?). You can jump in with the masses and bathe in the natural springs for free, or you can soak in a barely occupied spring-fed pool of questionable cleanliness (both adult and baby sized) for about 50 cents. 

Also, while the buoyant water was lovely and relaxing, and apparently imbued with special restorative powers, my kid, the little penguin that she is, was not impressed with a pool that was hot like a bath. "Me no need baff," she decreed. Alright then!

A little further up the hill past the bedlam of the market, was an amazing jungle waterfall. We hiked up to the top and discovered rubber trees. Like, holy moley, real, live rubber trees. Wut? I thought those only existed in vaguely foggy stories of exploitative colonial days gone by. 

Tegal is full of bright, colourful buildings, bustling markets, aggressive taxi drivers and void of tourists the hustle that is common in Jakarta. While charming, I wouldn't recommend it as a destination in and of itself, but as a stopover between Jakarta and Surabaya, it's lovely. Particularly if you intend to head up to the mountains and visit the hot springs at Guci. The drive up to Guci is breathtaking, the air so clear and refreshing. I declareit a wonderful little hidden gem. 

If you head up Guci way, bring shorts and a tee-shirt to swim in, a change of clothing, and perhaps a sweater. It can get a little chilly up there. And most importantly, make sure you go up to the mountain waterfall. There are two: one that feeds the hot spring bath, but the one that's further up the hill, that's the one you want. You'll have to pay a small entry fee (like a dollar or something.) If you're lucky, no one will be there, and you'll have the most amazing views all to yourself. See? Like this:

Hey, if you've voted for my blog in the past few days, thanks. We've made it to the second page of the directory. Which is totally a big deal in my little world. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And to a special twitter friend who votes twice a day, your gesture of kindness kind of totally made my day after a pretty horrific tantrum-filled 24 hours. So.

I'd love to keep going forward, you can click below to vote if you'd like! 

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"a portrait of my child once a week, every week in 2013"

Late afternoon. Stella trying to keep her eyes open after a day of too much fun.

Oh, if you're new here, and you're interested, I'm running a group giveaway with some seriously awesome prizes. I'd love for you to take a look. Just one more day to enter.