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Samarinda Kota and Kabupatin Kutai Resource Cities Program February 7-21, 2002 City of Tigard and Washington County Samarinda Kota and Kabupatin Kutai 1 Resource Cities Program February 7 - 21, 2002 Craig Prosser Bill Monahan Charlie Cameron Chal Landgren § i 5-a IEy f w ,. , ,) A ,^ 511 :, ela ""' ` v ;1 ' February, 7th and 8th, 2002 The big day finally arrived. It is exciting to finally be off. After September, I had given up hope that we would actually make this trip. I have been worthless the last several days. Trying to catch up after New York plus trying to get ready to leave have shot my productivity. I got up at my usual time and did my usual preparations. I took some special time to say good-bye to Maxie. I will miss her, and I worry about her now when I am gone. She is old and alone, so I know it is hard on her. I drove to City Hall and stopped in the office for a bit and then took my stuff over to City Hall. Bill was just arriving and Chal Landgren showed up shortly. I am unhappy that I am carrying so much. This is not my standard travel-light-mode, but this is not a standard, travel-light trip. I even bought a larger, pull-along suitcase, and it is packed to the gunwales. Part of the problem is all the gifts we have to take, and I was determined to fit in the Library frisbees Margaret gave me. I sincerely hope we will have a lighter load on the way back. Margaret Barnes met us with a bag of breakfast goodies to send us on our way. That was really nice of her. She is a good friend. Charlie Cameron arrived with the county van to drive us to the airport. His wife, Michelle, was with him (as she is flying out to California) and so was his assistant, Jean who will take the van back. Traffic was bad but we made it to the airport in good time. We stopped for breakfast at the airport to kill some time. Michelle warned us that Charlie gets pulled out for special attention at every security checkpoint, so we'll see how that goes. We headed out to the gate. Bill, Chal and I made it through security with no problem, but Charlie got pulled out. It seemed like it took forever for him to get through as there were several people ahead of him in the "special" line, and they were moving slowly. We boarded our commuter flight to Seattle -- a little prop job. It was kind of cramped, but okay. We got to Seattle and quickly found our gate. A lot of people were waiting for the flight to Tokyo, but not as many Japanese as I expected, though there were a lot of them. There were also several mixed-marriage families with small children. I assumed they were visiting family in Japan, as the kids were quite young. It is cool that the kids will be exposed to both cultures so early on. There were also a large number of American military. I later found out they were flying stand-by to Korea. They started boarding our flight, so we got in line. Charlie got pulled out for special screening. I guess Michelle was right. 1 3 Good old United Airlines struck again — we were packed in like sardines. Fly the Cattle Car Skies of United! And to make matters worse, as soon as he could, the guy in front of me put his seat back as far as possible and left it there the entire time. Not good when you are stuck in a center seat. It was a 10 hour flight to Tokyo, so I had brought along a lot of amusement—a book on CD, 2 regular books, my journal, music CD's, and some work. Because of the cramped conditions, I discovered that my attention span was only about 20 minutes max. On top of that, we were so cramped that I couldn't get to my carry on under the seat. It was awful. I decided that the space planner for United Airlines must have designed slave ships in an earlier life. After an eternity of misery, we finally arrived at Narita airport in Tokyo. Strangely, it was a moving, emotional experience for me. Pop had been stationed in Japan for a year in 1956. We were supposed to go over and live with him, but at the last minute the Marine Commandant said no more dependents could go, so we stayed in California while Pop was in Japan. We of course kept close contact with Pop, and he sent frequent letters and presents so we had a least some exposure to the Japanese culture. Arriving in Tokyo brought all of that back to me. I expected Narita to be overwhelming and confusing, but it is wonderfully organized and easy to navigate. It is very clean and modern. We found our gate and deposited our carry-on bags. One of us would stand guard as the others went exploring. I was struck by the number of westerners around, so I did not feel conspicuous or out of place. There were several interesting stores to look through, though they were extremely crowded. I didn't have any yen, and (more importantly) I didn't feel like adding any extra weight to my bags this early, so I didn't buy anything. The restroom was interesting in that it had both regular and squat toilets, and the toilets were located in completely enclosed cubicles like you find in Europe. My overall impression was that I would definitely like to come back to Japan. They started boarding our flight. Charlie was not pulled out for checking, but Chal was. The flight to Singapore was not as cramped (747 vs. 777), and I got an aisle seat, though it was still unacceptably tight. The cabin crew was all Japanese and totally fluent in English. Strangely enough, all announcements were made in English and then translated to Japanese. That seems so strange and wrong to me. This flight originated in Japan, had a Japanese flight crew, and had a mostly Japanese clientele. All of that should mean that Japanese would be the primary language. Again, the flight was long and uneventful. I slept better on this flight, in part, because of the slightly greater comfort but also because I was just so darn tired. We have crossed so many time zones and changed days, so I don't know up from down at this point. Changi airport in Singapore is beautiful — spotlessly clean, well organized, and easy to negotiate (even at midnight). I was the last of our group to go through immigration. 2 After seeing "Final Destination — Balikpapan" for the fourth time, the immigration official asked what we were doing. She was quite friendly, just bemused at seeing four traveler's heading to an out of the way spot. We claimed our luggage, changed some money, and then tried to figure the best way to get to the hotel. It looked like the shuttle would be cheapest (S$7 per head) but an airport official we asked thought a limousine might be better— a little higher total cost (S$35) but quicker. We headed out into the main part of the airport and were immediately besieged by cabbies offering rides. We said "No. Limousine" whereupon they all became limousines. (As I look back on this, I realize that we were acting as if the drivers did not speak English, while in fact, everyone in Singapore speaks beautiful British English.) Charlie and the group seemed inclined to go with the cabbies, but the drivers said that we would need two vehicles. The limousine desk was right there so I headed over to ask about a limousine. The lady at the desk motioned back to the cabbies and said "London Cab". One of the cabbies said he could take us all, so we agreed to go with him. He took my bags and took off, which made me very nervous, so I quickly followed after him and the others tagged along. The cabby left my bags in the middle of the street and went off to fetch his cab. It was a new version of the traditional London Cab painted red. It was great! With some doing, he managed to get all our bags in, and we took off. The others were pleased that I had saved us S$35. The ride to the hotel was uneventful, though long. Singapore (at midnight) appears to be spotlessly clean and very park—like. There were a lot of high rise apartments, but I noticed that they all had bars on the windows. We finally got to the hotel, and it was beautiful — quite elegant and very comfortable. It is not, however, the kind of hotel in which you want to spend only four hours —which was our allotted time before having to return to the airport. The room was quite comfortable, but I didn't sleep much. I didn't really expect to, however, so I didn't stress about it. Saturday, February 9th, 2002 We were up way too early so we could catch the ride to the airport. I slept very fitfully so I figure I got 2-3 hours of sleep, max. We had made arrangements last night (early this morning?) for the London Cab to pick us up at 5:30. The cab showed up a bit early with a different driver. We settled our accounts and piled in. We took a different route back to the airport, and we saw that our hotel was actually well located and close to the Botanical Garden Margaret Barnes had recommended and a main shopping street. Of course, it was so early that it was still dark and nothing was open, but it looked like there were a lot of expensive, name brand (Gucci, Armani, etc...) shops. 3 We got to the airport with plenty of time to get through security, which was a breeze. We flew Silk Air. I wonder if security is different for the American airlines. Changi airport is amazing. It is much more like an ° upscale shopping mall. It even put Narita airport to shame. We wandered around a bit and then headed `: . down to our gate a bit later than I would have ; t‘ preferred. They were boarding when we got there, , I but we were given Indonesian customs forms, which ` ,off r- , ` we thought had to be filled out before we boarded. We worked away on them, and I soon noticed that we were the last people in the boarding area so we --- beat feet onto the plane. There are no two ways about it— Silk Air is wonderful. It is clean. It is bright. YOU HAVE LEGROOM! If there were any American airlines like Silk Air, I actually might start to enjoy flying again! The flight to Balikpapan was very pleasant, but uneventful. Unfortunately, because of my horrible experience with United Airlines, I had packed away all of my work and most of my reading material. Had I known, I could have used the time much more productively. Upon arriving in Balikpapan, we deplaned and boarded a shuttle bus for the short ride to the � � ` , ..' Fzz 4 terminal. When we arrived at the terminal, we °' , F , � found Kemal Taruc, one of ICMA's Indonesian representatives, waiting for us outside the - F, terminal. It was nice to see a familiar face. It ilet aik‘ also struck me as strange to see a non-traveler W on the "wrong" side of immigration. This was f my first hint that this really is not your standard �' �" foreign trip. ' i,f While waiting in line for immigration, Kemal rounded up the Agricultural quarantine official and someone else who collected our customs declarations and our baggage claim checks and then went off for our luggage — definitely not a standard trip. Once we cleared immigration, we made a U-turn and exited the building the way we came in so we never really saw the Balikpapan airport. It looked very nice, however, fairly new with a Dayak long house motif (including carved decorations on the peak of the roof). Unfortunately this is where I discovered that the battery in my camera was dead. STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! How could I (supposedly an experienced traveler) have done something so stupid? 4 By this time they had brought our • luggage to us and a bus was pulled up �y at the door. They loaded our luggage and then us on the bus and then drove to the VIP meeting hall, right next to the international terminal. There we were greeted by a whole bunch of people, and I had no idea who they were 1.''� • -� ' � 1134 7; "AIM.F47,41 except that they were from Samarinda and Kutai and (I later found out) East Kalimantan province. 4 We were ushered into a large, open- beam ceiling room, decorated with Indonesian woodwork. Large portraits of President Megawati and some gentleman (I later found out was the vice president) were prominently displayed. The chairs were arranged in squares around two large, low, square coffee tables. We were served hot, sweet tea, and fried bananas, spring rolls, and small sandwiches. The setting was very formal (and awkward) so it was difficult to talk. It reminded me of every photo opportunity you have ever seen of world leaders and mucky-mucks meeting. This really drove home the fact that on this trip, we are mucky-mucks! The head of the greeting party sat with us in our square (as thankfully, so did Kemal). The head of the party didn't speak English, however, which added to the awkwardness. When the food was explained to us and they mentioned fried bananas, I asked if that was "pisang" (Indonesian for bananas). The head of the delegation brightened and asked if I spoke Indonesian. I had to explain that "No, I just had a few words from a language tape". After we finished our refreshments, we loaded back on the bus for the ride back to Samarinda. The four of us made points of sitting in separate seats so we were each joined by an Indonesian. Fortunately these people spoke English very well. As an American, I am continually shamed by our lack of language ability. Not that we could be expected to know Indonesian, but, whereas in most of the rest of the world, people will know their native tongue, plus some English, and frequently a third language, in America, we are lucky if we know English! Masrullah, a really nice, pleasant young man from the Samarinda public relations office sat with me. We were also joined by Tri, a laughing, fun lady from the East Kalimantan province, Sopie a fun lady from ICMA Indonesia, Kemal, the head of the Samarinda delegation, and two or three other people. Getting (and remembering) names is going to be difficult. Fortunately, that appears to be a two way street, so everyone will understand. The first question Masrullah asked was about Washington DC, Washington County, and Washington State. Indonesians find having the same name for different places 5 confusing, and they kind of suspect that they are all the same place. I explained that George Washington was our first president and that we have named many different places Washington to honor him. That seemed to help. I've come to find that this question comes up a lot. (I have to write this journal as I find time. Our days are quite busy and so full of new experiences and interesting people and things that it is hard to keep up. I'll just have to do my best. Already, I am three days behind!) °' We drove from Balikpapan to Samarinda on the only road — a former logging road, which was narrow, twisting, turning and very hilly. Driving in Indonesia is an eye opener to say the least. As Kemal told us, it is a total expression of M=� freedom. Cars, trucks and scooters pass 777 • \ anywhere and everywhere. People pull into the oncoming lane to pass regardless of what is coming and everyone just adjusts. Swarms of F . ` / .1 jj scooters are everywhere. The most people we have seen on one scooter were an entire family of five. Indonesian law requires everyone on a scooter to wear a helmet, but people can't afford good helmets, so they wear plastic ones that resemble World War II helmets. It is interesting to see women on the back of a scooter (sometimes astride, sometimes sidesaddle) wearing a chador and a helmet. It is also not unusual to see people carrying huge loads on the scooter. I saw one load of bananas three times as wide as the scooter and piled as high as the head of the man driving. I also saw a scooter carrying two cabinets (the size of double door kitchen cabinets) strapped on either side of the scooter. I have seen only two women wearing burkhas (all black). It is not unusual to see women wearing the chador, though most women do not. It is not uncommon to see a mother in a chador and an older daughter not, though you do see small girls in the chador also. Most commonly, however, women just wear western clothes. We saw a lot of school children on their way home. They were all wearing orangey- brown uniforms. Masrullah explained that children have uniforms for different days of the week. School is mandatory through the ninth grade but high school is optional. One of the first questions Masrullah asked me (after the Washington confusion) was "Why are Americans all so big?' I explained that it was because we eat too much. I also explained that as our nutrition improved, each generation has tended to get bigger (using my own parents (5' 8" and 5' 2") and me (6') as an example). Communicating with Indonesians is very interesting. Many (such as Masrullah, Kemal, Sopie, and Tri) speak excellent English, but even so, sometimes the communication just 6 isn't there. You just have to relax and go with the flow. That has quickly become our motto for the trip. 1 The countryside is very pretty (though I absolutely prefer Oregon!). At first impression, most of the buildings look shabby and run-down, but you quickly realize that you can't look at these things through American eyes. Once you get past that, you quickly are able to see that there are many nice places in addition to the truly shabby. ,,a.ii_ _ As we were driving along I noticed many {r ..-�• _ —1 roadside stands selling what appeared to be - \: clusters of a spiky red fruit, each fruit about iii a-, t r- ,o, ' •. ' �E the size of a golf ball. Masrullah explained ` '�` ° • �l that this was rambutan. Rambut means hair }tk. '.7 , }; y l ' so this is the hairy fruit. I later found out that q + J this is lychee. Shortly after this, we stopped , ,- along (on) the road and our hosts bought '-':1 .. fig.. several bunches of rambutan for us. We ' , , ``, Y Xr peeled them open from the stem. The skin (underneath the fleshy spines) was about as thick as orange peel and about the same texture. The fruit was white and surrounded a nut the size of a small almond. It was sweet and not particularly juicy. I liked it. I was initially nervous about eating them until I realized that we would be peeling them. Our hosts also bought an Indonesian durian (different from the Thai durian). It was about the size of two fists and covered with short pointy knobs. The fruit was the color of papaya but dry and rather tasteless. I'll stick with the rambutan. After we got underway Chal started getting car sick, so we stopped and transferred him to one of the cars following us. We passed into Samarinda and still had to drive several miles before we got to the city proper. Every bit of land in Indonesia is in a city (Kota) or a county (Kabupatin), and, for the life of me, I have yet to figure out the difference between the two. Along the way we passed a large settlement and one of the staff, Edy, eagerly pointed out that this is an area for prostitution. We arrived in Samarinda proper and made our way to the Mesra Hotel. Samarinda is a confusing jumble of relatively new buildings– mostly concrete and some wooden. The wooden buildings are unpainted and appear the most run down, though it is common to see newly built wooden buildings in the same design and style. Traffic was really wild. The right-of-way appears to belong to whoever takes it. We passed through a large area of sawmills and woodcraft shops– cabinets, bird cages, and some furniture. On the drive from Balikpapan, and continuing on through Samarinda we saw a lot of mosques (and I do mean a lot). At first I thought they were larger houses, but they all had domes of some sort – usually clad with a shiny silver metal (I assume stainless steel). Masrullah explained to me that they are mosques. 7 We got settled in the hotel. It was nice to t� have finally reached our destination. They lobby of the hotel and the grounds are very nice and comfortable. The rooms are very R� r; much like any American hotel rooms, but it kik., € is clear that maintenance has not been up to American standards. In the closet I • �� t , , = g •$ lc "+ discovered that the room comes complete A; `t -=-' - with a prayer rug, and an arrow on the ceiling points the way to Mecca. '° - We had a late lunch at the hotel. ' ig {triZrg Fortunately, they put us in an air-conditioned room. It was hot and humid and with all the new experiences today, I couldn't handle the heat. I also needed to use the restroom, so Kemal showed me the way. Since two walls of the bathroom (including the one next to urinals) were floor to ceiling windows, this also made for a new experience. Lunch was very good though I don't know what everything was. I tried to order a Diet Coke, but all they had was regular Coke. I guess I'm on the wagon for the duration. I ordered melon juice — mistake. They brought out this milky, gelatinous green stuff in a glass. Basically it was the consistency of snot. It tasted like they threw a whole melon of some sort (rind and all) into a blender and pureed it until it was smooth. I did not like it. After getting settled and rested up, Sopie and Kemal suggested we go to the local mall for dinner and to use the ATM. We piled into two cars and headed out for the short drive down the street. By this time it was about 7:00 p.m. and traffic was really wild. Everybody in town appeared to be on a motor scooter or in a car and "expressing their freedom". The mall consisted of three large, two-story buildings (with a fourth under construction). It was packed cheek to jowl. The public walkways were much smaller than in American malls, but otherwise the concept is much the same. Sopie led us to the ATM room — a separate room with machines from five different banks. Sopie recommended using the BCA machine. I withdrew Rp 300,000 from my account and nothing could have been easier. I loved seeing my account balance expressed in rupiahs — at Rp 10,000 to the $1, it was very impressive! We went up to the food court for dinner. Like the rest of the mall it was much smaller and more cramped than American malls. I ordered a plate of shrimp fried rice (Nasi Garong Udang) and a glass of juice for dinner and paid Rp 10,250 — slightly over $1. It was good. After dinner we headed back to the cars to drive to the batik shop to get shirts for us. Tri, from East Kalimantan province, was buying shirts for us. Apparently we have some 8 function to attend at which this will be the appropriate attire. I was expecting batik in the traditional sense —wax resist and multiple dye jobs. Instead, these were polyester shirts with batik-inspired designs. As I feared, they could not find a shirt big enough for me. (It is so much fun being fat). I figured I was just out of luck. After some consultation Tri, Sopie and Kemal decided that we should buy material for two shirts, and they would have a tailor come by the hotel tomorrow to measure us and make shirts. We each picked out two different materials and paid for those. East Kalimantan will apparently pay for the tailor. Two meters of material cost about $10. I made my first selection fairly easily, but Kemal informed me that I needed something with black in it because it is more formal (like a tux). I picked something out, but I was not thrilled with the second choice. By this time, it was too late to go to the store for my camera batteries. Sopie offered to pick them up for me tomorrow. It was so very frustrating not to have a camera today. Thank goodness the rest of our delegation have plenty of cameras. As you can tell this has been a most incredible day. I have had experiences and seen things today that I never would have dreamed possible. This is a fascinating experience, and I feel honored to be apart of all of this. Sunday, February 10th, 2002 I slept very well last night, but I was up and wide-awake at 5. This was good because it gave me some good time to work on this journal (though yesterday's entry actually took 2 to 3 days to write!) We had breakfast in the hotel's open-air dining room. It is hot and humid but not as uncomfortable as I expected. Breakfast was served buffet-style with made-to-order omelets (not great, but certainly better than anything we had in New York), three different kinds of rice, grilled chicken sausages, a spinach dish, several other hot dishes, sweet rolls, sticky rolls, toast, etc. Today we were met by the bus and a group from Kutai for a tour of Kutai. Bachruddin Noor, Director of the Kutai Regional Planning Board, hosted us. He was a nice, friendly individual who spoke good English. He was also very proud of all that Kutai has accomplished, and rightly so. Today I sat with Totok, a nice, pleasant young man, who, unfortunately, spoke little English. Since I spoke no Indonesian, it made communication difficult, though we certainly tried. Sopie was also with us, and happily, she brought my camera battery. We took the new road to Tenggarong, the seat of Kutai government. This road was still under construction and Bachruddin and Totok proudly told us that this road cut 21 kilometers off the trip from Samarinda to Tenggarong. This was made possible by a new bridge across the Mahakam River at Tenggarong. The bridge was modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge. Before this bridge was built, the only way across the river at Tenggarong was by canoe. Although the road isn't quite finished, it already has 9 potholes and large boils where heavy trucks have pushed the pavement and dirt up, sometimes more than 8 inches. =vs' � '` Along the way to Tenggarong, we saw �,,-,,,,,,... ;,,t,. 4,e ` + � rice fields and a strip coal mine. The _ x ;' �� mine is owned and operated by a , _7.47- - `4.,"' 1- 3 ! R . Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian -M vim` � , -, ��"� company. By law, they are required to y • �`.; -"` 't «5 ,Sry reclaim the land, but that law is rarely \14s ' 3 1:'* enforced. F ,'` .` When we arrived in Tenggarong, it was ,a.-i.'7 clearly evident that Kutai is quite wealthy (due to all of its natural resources). in ,5, M ' ti r l4.° addition to the new bridge and road, '.;-*•'*''' ''-'''7','` = ice'° ' .1 ;r, a there was a large new convention center, new government offices, and a new large mosque. The Bupati (head of Kutai government) also had a very large house. We were driven up into the hills behind Tenggarong to a recreation area and a wood IRA museum. The museum had displays of " -` r" sa � ' r '. furniture made from Kutai woods, samples ;k rad Ql 111 ! ni -.- of � of the various woods, and models of . _ • , ,, , . �-A -!IIT traditional Dayak long houses. It also had ,�..`;+, - ,. , - the stuffed remains of the largest crocodile I ' .._,. • . E '. ever killed in the area. It was about 10 to 12 •• •� �`? feel long. When it was killed in 1996, they • , retrieved the arm of a woman and leg of a man from its stomach. They also had this )"` x i really cool musical instrument made of bamboo rods in a series of cradles suspended from a frame. When you shake the cradle, three rods produce a note. It was neat. Kemal told me that it is called an angklung. i , There were some vendors outside the museum so we examined their wares. I bought several necklaces and tit bracelets as gifts for the office. 1. 'wvi .', „.,/ From the museum, we headed back into Tenggarong to 4 �- ` < another museum. This was in the former sultan's palace, ! built by the Dutch in early 20th century. We were greeted l` at the front steps byofficials of the museum and a troupe t P P 4. of Indonesian dancers performing a traditional Indonesian w; welcoming dance, which was concluded by our group walking between the two rows of dancers while they threw flower petals at our feet. Toto, we are definitely not in Oregon anymore! 10 We were treated to a very nice tour of the museum, which r-7„ was interesting but not spectacular. As part of the tour we - were taken into a large central room which was blocked off from the public, where we were treated to another dance. I really enjoyed the dancers. (f r = While on the tour, we gradually accumulated an � increasingly large number of local people. The museum officials explained that they were only open on Sunday, • but we figured that the people were really there to see the Americans. That was fine. They were very nice and courteous, so I had no problem with that. One little girl was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Charlie pointed that out to me and suggested I show her my Mickey Mouse watch, which I did. She giggled and quickly turned away, but she also stuck pretty close after that. I was really sorry that I did not have Margaret's frisbees with me. Before coming to Indonesia I recognized that we would clearly be an oddity as the only Americans (and perhaps the only westerners) around. We are clearly unique, but I have never felt uncomfortable or out of place. People are curious, but respectful. I have not ventured out on my own, and I don't really plan to, because I don't understand the language and I would quickly become hopelessly lost, but the people here are delightful. Even people, who at first glance look dangerous and unfriendly, break into huge smiles and greet you when you acknowledge them and smile. This place is great. We reboarded the bus to head back to Samarinda. Along the way, we turned into a Dayak village to visit it. I was tired by this time and I would have preferred to return to the hotel, but this turned out to be an interesting stop. To reach the village, we turned off the main road. We ended up crossing a small, temporary bridge where the main bridge was being rebuilt. The temporary bridge looked very rickety, and no one was sure we could get across. Finally one of the drivers got off the bus and walked over the bridge, guiding us across. That was interesting. We proceeded down a small road until we got to a Dayak long house. Dayaks are one of the ethnic groups indigenous to the area. They seem to be more primitive, living in small, rural villages. They are also noted for their handicrafts especially bead work. Traditionally, they lived in long houses (similar to NW coastal Indians) though now they live in individual houses. We were in time to see some traditional Dayak dancing. This seemed to be a weekly occurrence, set up primarily for tourists. There were a lot of people in attendance, though we seemed to be the only tourists there. The dancing was enjoyable and the native costumes were outstanding with their beadwork and feathers. We got to see 11 three dances. After the final dance all the little girls ran over and lined up in front of Charlie Cameron and Amanda Lonsdale (the ICMA representative in Indonesia) to have their picture taken. The young boys also ran up, but hung back. I was able to take their picture. -- l ` ' Dayak noble women traditionally pierced their ears and A ,. `.-, n,I inserted increasing numbers of heavy brass rings to stretch the / '-,.,I r. ' P' ear lobes. Masrullah asked if I wanted a picture of the long- kr ;w.g ,d eared woman. I was kind of taken aback, but I said sure. We e)C ' it 4 ( !� walked over to the lady and she stood up, adjusted her L1 ,� �r: , .� costume and stepped out to have her picture taken. Sopie n w ,�' `� ) then said I should stand with the lady to have my picture taken khi� • �= also. I thanked the lady, and she rubbed her fingers together ) , 12.,, \ \ to indicate that she wanted to be paid. At first Sopie said not yet, but then indicated that yes, we should pay her. The going t �y )0 x ._ rate was Rp 45,000 for three pictures. I am sure that I will rk ^)' enjoy the pictures, but this whole episode felt slightly dirty. 0 There is nothing wrong with charging to have your picture W taken, but I am just uncomfortable with the concept. 'ti . We looked around at the wares for sale. Masrullah was right , by my side to help me bargain. I looked at several items. I was tempted by a Dayak knife in a beautifully carved wooden scabbard, but figured it was too long for my suitcase. (Actually, it probably wasn't but what would I do with it?) I finally negotiated on a beaded basket and talked it down to Rp 220,000 from Rp 300,000 with Amanda's help. I don't know what I will do with this either, but I liked the design. We loaded up, went back across the rickety bridge, and returned to our hotel in Samarinda. Our first shirts had arrived so we were ready for the evening's welcoming dinner hosted by the Walikota (Mayor) of Samarinda. Kemal had given the tailor our names and each shirt was labeled. Mine was tagged for "Cariki". We cleaned up and met in the lobby. We all had our .. x � k' shirts on, and frankly we looked ridiculous. Bill ' , , Esq fry. commented that it was like wearing pajamas, and he :.1 `A V ` was right. The shirts were also hot as they were all :w; ` 44 srt R 1 long-sleeved and the polyester material did not Als. 117, breathe at all. 1 ; ; .. P We went into the hotel's open-air restaurant and the A-k' A.1 ' }T + 4 Walikota and his staff met us. At that point, I was glad �R,' 'Y`sar�+ : :-- 1 for my shirt because that was what everyone was wearing. I think their shirts looked far better than ours a did, but at least we blended a bit. We were shown to the head table. After welcoming 12 speeches by the Walikota (written out in English) and Bill and Charlie, we had a buffet dinner. While we ate, we were entertained by two female singers and four musicians singing traditional Dayak songs. It was very enjoyable. Following dinner, the music continued, and several of the city staff got up and sang — apparently Indonesians love karaoke. They were really very good (with a couple of exceptions), but I was in a total sweat fearing that we would have to go up and sing. Fortunately that did not happen. It has been a very long, but a very good day. Monday, February 11th, 2002 It is impossible to keep this journal current. There is just too much to see and do and too many wonderful experiences. As I write this, it is the afternoon of the 14tH Today started the formal part of our Resource Cities program. We started with formal presentations by the Walikota, Bill and Charlie. This is where our motto "go with the flow' really came in handy as the program evolved rather than followed the plan. Today we also saw that city employees all wear uniforms. The uniform of the day was green. The uniforms are military in flavor, and everyone wears nametags, pins with the symbol of the city and shoulder patches. We were in a large room with a raised platform with the head table. Our delegation sat up there with the Walikota and a couple of other people. The department heads all sat at a U-shaped table in front of us. The other staff sat in a second U behind the first. During the Walikota's remarks he made a joke that we shouldn't worry because there are no Al Quaida in Samarinda. The staff thought it was funny, but I certainly did not. In fact, that remark I. kind of cast a chill over the day. Amanda later ' 4; ; zII told us that Indonesians often make what ',, 1 Americans feel to be inappropriate jokes , . t because they are uncomfortable dealing with ;> really serious issues. yi3Y ` ' � Following the presentations we went outside for the trip to Tenggarong for the opening 1" i '. ` : +. £ ,, presentation in Kutai. Chal was not feeling at all well (and looked it) so we convinced him to stay at the hotel and take care of himself. Rather than take the bus, they loaded us into several cars. After the Walikota's Al Quaida crack, I had visions of terrorists hijacking the car and gunning us all down. It was not pleasant. 13 Y 'may &. I .. I We made it to Tenggarong in good time (and no hijackings) and drove directly to the Bupati's house. Kabupatin Kutai provides a house for the Bupati (as East Kalimantan does for the provincial governor and Samarinda does for the Walikota). These places are all very new and look like palaces. We pulled up under the portico of the Bupati's house, went up a short flight of stairs, 7 ; --- , and entered a very large reception hall. It a ,< : _ was set up for a presentation with four or five ` rows of chairs stretchingalmost the entire k ; 1 _ ,i 1 width of the hall. Both ends of the hall were isi -, _ '. blocked off with decorative screens, behind ` ='"vzt. which were buffets and tables for dining. ,ii. ailei dr' : *- y V 10.014- '-'- ''' There were short introductory remarks and ! - a 1, I - then we were invited to lunch. During this ��. ,- time I couldn't help but notice that the Bupati '7=3 " ' : had a ring on one hand in which was set a �" very large green stone surrounded by small diamonds. The sides of the ring were also covered with diamonds. The ring on the other hand also had a large central stone surrounded by two circles of diamonds. The face of his watch was encircled with two rows of diamonds and the sides of the watchband were covered in diamonds. Apparently this guy was a member of the former sultan's family, and he is obviously doing okay for himself. We went through the buffet line with the Bupati and sat with him and Bachruddin. The dinner service was very elegant—white with gold trim, the seal of Indonesia and "Bupati Kutai" in gold. Charlie and Bill started admiring the china and mentioned that both of their wives collected cups and saucers and wouldn't it be nice if they could each take a cup and saucer to their wives. Whereupon Bill turned to the Bupati, explained the situation and asked whether it would be possible to get cups and saucers. I almost choked! I couldn't believe it. I hope I never get invited to a White House dinner with these two! The Bupati graciously implied that this would not be a problem and we proceeded with a delightful lunch. There were only about three tables of people eating despite the fact that there were 10 or 12 tables set up. I noticed that everyone else there for the presentations had to sit and wait while we ate. This is such a different world. The presentation part of the program was definitely "go with the flow". The young lady moderating the meeting introduced Kemal to explain the ICMA program, whereupon Charlie promptly got up, walked to the podium, and began his presentation. Kemal . scrambled to the second mike to translate while I scrambled to the PowerPoint to click on the slides. When Bill's turn came, we couldn't get the slide show to load until about halfway through his talk. 14 Following all the presentations, the Bupati invited us all to the front for pictures, then he presented each of us with a bag containing five of the seven books he had written (only one of which is in English) and a beautiful Dayak beaded bag. I was kind of stunned because the bag makes the one I bought yesterday look kind of tawdry. We each made the Bupati autograph all of our books and then took our leave. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bupati was glad to see the end of us! When we got back to the hotel in Samarinda, the driver handed Bill a box supposedly containing five cups and saucers. It was suspiciously large and heavy, however, so we suspected that it contained much more than that. We decided to open the box later, after we all cleaned up and rested. I felt badly that Chal had missed the afternoon as, all-in-all, it was quite an afternoon and the story of the china will definitely become a classic. I also felt badly that Chal did not get a beaded basket. We got cleaned up and rested and then met in the lobby to decide what to do for dinner. Kemal had checked with Chal and found that he was not doing at all well. Apparently he had a very bad reaction to his anti-malaria medication and is suffering from severe anxiety, restlessness, heart palpitations, stomach upset, and diarrhea, and he has not slept in two nights. Poor guy, I feel for him. It is terrible to be sick in a foreign land. Chal stopped by to see us and he looked terrible. He will stay in tonight, and if he does not feel better tomorrow, Kemal will take him to the doctor. Bill, Charlie and Kemal took off to find a Cyber Café. Charlie had tried to get on the Internet today at the hotel's business center, but had no luck. Amanda, her fiancé Leon, and I took off for a restaurant, Istana Iguana (Iguana Palace) that Leon had heard about. Samarinda has assigned us drivers so getting around is no problem. Istana Iguana was a nice little restaurant frequented by locals. It is open air. I had the best shrimp of the trip this evening. Meals are interesting. There is always rice -- either steamed, fried, or curried. : Frequently you do not get a plate, but a large, shallow bowl. You rarely get a knife. Indonesians use a large tablespoon and a fork to cut and eat their food, or just use their fingers. Whenever you see anything that looks like beef, it is usually venison. F. While we ate dinner, the driver sat at another table and ate. We paid for his meal. When we got back to the car, Leon noticed that ;w, the driver had a T-shirt of Osama Bin Laden draped over his seat. Very strange. When we got back to the hotel, I noticed that Chal had his door open. I stopped in to see how he was doing. He was experiencing palpitations and pains on his left side. We talked about my experience with palpitations and irregular heart beat and how anxiety 15 can make everything worse. Talking seemed to help, so we talked for about half an hour. He seemed better than he had earlier in the evening. Tuesday, February 12th, 2002 I was up at my regular time. I sleep well, and then I am wide-awake at 5. It is one of the few times I can work on this journal so I take advantage of it. I can't believe how much I am writing, and it is clear that I will soon run out of room in this book. This is such a fantastic experience, however, and I don't want to risk forgetting any of it. This morning Chal (who is doing better) and Charlie are heading up to Tenggarong while Bill and I visit the city council and the planning and finance offices. The Samarinda city council consists of 45 people representing 6 political parties. The council chambers are arranged more like a legislative assembly than a city council, as we know it. We sat at the head table (below the dais) facing about 20 to 25 council members at their seats. One of the council leaders, seated next to me, made a PowerPoint presentation in Indonesian (translated by Kemal). Following the presentation, the councilors started asking questions. Like all elected officials everywhere, many of the questions were actually speeches in disguise, but they were all good. I am astounded and amazed at what these people hope to accomplish. While the presentations were going on, we were all served a cup of sweet tea and a little plate of goodies. I sampled the goodies (which were all excellent), but it is difficult to eat and talk at the same time. One of the goodies was a small green ball rolled in coconut. Bill indicated that it was very good, so I cut into it. It was kind of rubbery, and when I finally cut it, a squirt of liquid sugar shot out and over the table. I guess you just can't take me anywhere! Whatever it was, the little green ball was good. At the end of the session, I (as the designated gift distributor) started handing out lapel pins. Whoa! I very quickly found myself in the middle of a veritable feeding frenzy. Councilors and staff were coming out of the woodwork for a pin. They LOVE lapel pins. While I was besieged, a lady in a chador and `. "4 long-sleeved dress came up to ask Bill and Kemal about women in government in the US. ;• She was quite pleased to hear how many r 4410'_'. , ---- women are in responsible positions. She also , ; ' ,, .► told us (the feeding frenzy having abated by -- then) that she had made one of the delicacies especially for us. It was nicely wrapped in banana leaves and we had no idea how to eat ti it so neither of us had. Someone found someIP- plastic bags and packed up our banana leaf goodies for us to take with us. She was a very nice lady. 16 From the council (which has its own building) we headed over to City Hall to meet with the Planning (Bappeda) Finance (Finisi) and Revenue offices. We were running quite late because the council discussion had gone on so long. (Kemal also told us that several councilors had expressed regret that they did not have a full day with us). All of the city buildings (and each department e seems to have its own building) appear quite new and modern from the outside. When you get inside, however, they do not appear to be ' 114‘. : fe' T1.41: as well maintained, and they are laid out in a r < rmanner reminiscent of the 1950's and 60's. Department heads have private offices and t ,. bathrooms, but workers seem to have old - _ desks set in row after row with no dividers and `" no personal items anywhere on or around the desk. Before the meeting, we went into the director's office where the staff had laid out a beautiful meal, including large shrimp, patin (Mahakam River salmon — be sure to pronounce the L!), rice, and a variety of other food. It was all quite good. Apparently the staff prepared all the food. I used the restroom (what a trip!) — old-fashioned tile, a large tank next to the squat toilet containing water, and a sink. Not a scrap of paper or a towel in the place. After using the toilet (fortunately only to pee), I then ladled a dipper of water from the tank and poured it in the toilet to flush it. I now have a more complete understanding of Amanda's advice not to hand anything to anyone with your left hand "because that is your bathroom hand". The planning office had the standard set-up for us — head table facing a U arrangement of tables. They had also set up Washington County's PowerPoint. Once we got them to bring up our PowerPoint, in place of Washington County's the presentation went well. They asked a lot of questions about the urban growth boundary, building permits, and land use. We also discovered that when people attending meetings get bored, they just start talking among themselves. The Finance Director, Ali Fitri Noor, was pretty quiet, as was the Revenue Director, which really disappointed me. As it turned out, they each had presentations also. If we could communicate more I think I would like Ali. He seems to be a very practical kind of person. When we make suggestions for new revenues he always reminds us that people can't afford to pay more. Charlie and Chal did not have a good day yesterday. Apparently their guys didn't have their act together. Charlie and Chal felt that it was a wasted day. Today however, they were absolutely glowing. They had a great day. One of the things they did was take a trip up river in a Mahakam river boat — a small, canoe-like boat powered by a small 17 engine with a propeller on a long shaft (we dubbed it the weed whacker). Charlie and Chal loved this boat and started talking about ways to import it to the US. While we were sitting by the pool enjoying a cold beer and trading stories of the day, a rather scruffy young man and a put-together-looking young woman in a pink chador asked if they could join us. They explained that they were reporters for the Samarinda Pos and wanted to interview us. They asked if they could take a picture, and when we said yes, the lady pulled out a small camera and put it in Bill's face, and took a ` A flash picture. The guy tried to ask a few questions, '• but his English was not very good so it was difficult to understand him and there was no way to determine how well he understood us. The guy asked very few questions, but mostly seemed content to just hang with us. He even offered to take us on a tour, but we still had no idea who this guy really was. Needless to say, we begged off. Fortunately, Kemal showed up about that time. It turned out that these two were legit. Kemal talked to them for quite awhile. This night, Sopie and Kemal took us to Manara Gading for dinner. This restaurant was located in an older, colonial-style home in a nice district. They had tables and chairs on the first floor. We went up a very steep flight of stairs to the second floor where they had several low tables surrounded by low (1'/') wooden walls. People took off their shoes and sat on the cushions around the table (Japanese style). We went out on the large balcony overlooking the street and had our dinner at regular tables with chairs. We had an enjoyable dinner. Our standard fare is fish and shrimp. Rice is served with every meal. We asked Sopie about her family, but she was reluctant to answer. I get the very strong sense that Indonesian's don't like to talk about their personal lives with strangers (or at least foreigners). We did find out that she is widowed and raising her husband's three daughters. We also asked how much houses in Samarinda cost. Sopie said that houses in that neighborhood (a nice neighborhood) cost up to $10,000. After dinner we returned to the hotel and decided it was time to open the Bupati's box. It was as we feared. Rather than give us four cups and saucers, they had given us four place settings, including the glass goblets, the china soup spoons, and the gold- embossed paper coasters. It was mortifying and .� , hilarious at the same time. Amanda stopped by, saw � what we had, and informed us that this was a first for the program. Wednesday, February 13th, 2002 18 We continued our meetings with departments today. In the morning we met with the two Transportation Departments. It was confusing because they had one department that was in charge of roads and road maintenance (I think) and one that planned improvements to the system (I think). We met in their offices. The building looked nice from the outside, but inside was straight from the 50's and 60's — very thin wooden walls, old, worn furniture. The worker areas seemed to consist of large rooms with large glass windows into the central hall (no curtains). In these rooms the desks were arranged in rows, all facing the same direction, with just enough room between them to back your chair away from the desk. There were also no computers and no telephones. The meeting was conducted in what was to _ _ s become a familiar pattern —we were ushered f 1 into someone's office. We were shown to our = T. t ` 1� It seats and joined by the director, the division , heads, a couple other people and someone „ / � '° ' operating the PowerPoint. We were provided _ : f with a small box snack containing two or three YEA • usually very good but very sweet treats and ,.,,, - ; small plastic containers of room-temperature, bottled water. They presented a PowerPoint show, sometimes in English, sometimes in Indonesian, and sometimes in both. Kemal translated for us. Samarinda has pretty ambitious plans to move their port facilities their airport, and their bus terminals — pretty amazing when you consider the cost. While we were discussing these plans, the PowerPoint technician was editing a PowerPoint show they did not have time to show us, but he was doing so on screen. Following the presentation, we loaded up several cars and took off for a tour. First we went to the port. A lot of containers were on the dock and a couple of ships were in. They appeared smaller than I would have expected, but apparently most goods are trans-shipped through a larger port. Apparently 300 ships a month go through (or past) this port. Along the way, we picked up a couple of reporters from Antara News Agency. Our hosts dealt with them, but they were also loaded into cars and taken on the tour like the rest of us. From the port, we drove to a local restaurant for lunch. This place is obviously popular with the government crowd because it was packed with people in the city government uniform. Like most other restaurants that we saw, it was open air and fronted on a busy street. The menu was fairly standard — rice, shrimp, patin, etc. It was here that I realized that all restaurants have one or two sinks located in the dining areas for people to wash their hands. The sinks are always quite small, and always have a container of weak liquid soap. There is always a cloth towel to dry your hands on; though the towel is not real clean (given the number of times it is used). 19 I , TA From the restaurant, we headed out to the site of the new inter-city bus terminal. Along the way, we passed the current terminal, which consisted of a seemingly endless row of 9-passenger vans parked along the road. The new terminal site is located on the new ring road, currently under construction. It is located in a small canyon with almost no level ground. At the bottom of the canyon is a small stream bed. The plan , ;.p_. is to level the site to build the terminal. Bill was told that _ - :. they bought the land from the local newspaper. It is so " inappropriate for the intended use, that we suspect a fi,; 3 K payoff was involved — especially since just down the road, u: u�. y- f the canyon opens into a large flat area. I also asked what , ;� 1x-• - they intended to do with the streambed — install a culvert or bridge it over. They had trouble understanding the x ,N question and finally indicated that they would change the --' p' :t. t u. vl, •y;x direction of the stream. This visit really tells a lot about Iti ' -.�`,. ;� the Indonesian mind set. They seem to have great x .`. '� 4 fr interest in improving their world and some really great 4". f ideas, but the implementation gets skewed somehow. It r -. .j; m was also really, really hot in that canyon. It was almost "s,' s,-.k� *►k'._, more than I could bear. This was our first brutally hot day. From the new terminal site, we drove over to the current inter-city bus terminal. It was fairly simple but serviceable. They plan to convert this terminal to an inner-city terminal which will allow them to switch from the current 9-passenger vans to buses. They will take 5 vans off the road for each bus put into service. They are concerned about so many drivers losing their jobs, so will probably give the vans to the drivers to provide service to rural areas. Bill asked what would keep these drivers from continuing to provide service in the city in competition with the buses. He was told that they would not be allowed past the ring road. Since they don't have their own police force, we figured that won't work. Another mismatch in implementation. From the bus terminal we walked across the r' street to the river terminal. It was an similliiMMINMEN experience! There were a few buildings on a`!--' ,-,A,040-....*-' ..1 shore, but mostly the terminal consisted of a - +.: "'Ar ,` single, rickety pier jutting out into the river x M and some docks along the shore. It was low ,' r -r ,- tide, and the riverbank was disgusting with ": '. . - t• '" _ trash and plastic and pollution. The pier was - .ir Y‘,k 7. in very bad condition and after stepping on `Z two boards that nearly gave way. I learned ,I..,,,I,,... ".:14-,. �. �, . to walk only on the areas nailed to the '' A ' I 20 �w supports. The riverboats were tied up four deep awaiting the next day's departure. Our hosts told us that there were 80 boats tied up. Apparently the central government built this facility in 1975 and it has not been touched since. It looks it. The riverboats were kind of cool — long and relatively narrow. The first deck is wide open with canvas shades that can be lowered. This area is used for cargo. The upper deck is enclosed and is where the passengers ride, though I didn't see any seats inside. The boats looked to be in marginally better condition than the pier, but all-in-all they appeared to be a good mode of travel. Laborers wearing long sleeved T-shirts, baseball caps, and shirts over their heads and tied like scarves were busy loading some boats. Apparently they are part of a union and are hired by passengers to load their goods the afternoon before departure. We saw them loading furniture and boxes of bottled water. It looked like hot work, especially dressed the way they were, but protection from the sun is obviously a priority. We decided to have dinner this evening at the Alamanda Restaurant next to the pool. Big mistake. It was an absolute symphony of bad service. The hotel restaurant where we always have breakfast—and occasionally dinner— always has excellent service. This other place however, was 180 degrees the opposite. We had to practically tackle our waiter to get him to take our order. Kemal and Amanda joined us at different points during the meal, but the waiter couldn't figure out that they would also want to be served also. The capper came at desert. We decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream. I ordered a banana split, which was described on the menu as three scoops of vanilla ice cream between slices of bananas, covered with chocolate sauce and roasted peanuts. When it came there was no chocolate sauce. I pointed this out to the waiter. He nodded, took off, and never came back. I then flagged down the maitre' de. I told him I wanted chocolate sauce and showed him on the menu where it said there should be chocolate sauce. He bent over and put his nose about six inches from the banana split and stared at it for about a minute, and then he announced that it had no chocolate sauce. I told him that I knew that it had no chocolate sauce and that I wanted some. He then took off, never to return. I finally flagged down yet another waiter and went through my whole routine. He informed me that banana splits don't have chocolate sauce! I informed him that they did and once again showed him the description in the menu. He took off, only this time I could see him talking to the other waiters and the maitre' de. They all started scurrying around until finally the last waiter came back and told me "sorry we just ran out of chocolate sauce". Obviously in hindsight, this whole routine is hilarious, but at the time I was hot. I was tired. I was sweaty. And most of all, I was pissed! We finally asked for our bill and the waiter nodded and took off and never came back. We finally asked another waiter for our bill. He took off and I could see him working on it separating it into separate bills as we had asked. It took him several minutes. He finally gathered all the individual bills together, put them in a folder, and brought them to a serving table near our table, where he laid them down. He then took off. We finally 21 had to ask a third waiter for our bill. He picked it up off the serving tray and gave it to us. What an experience! Thursday February 14th Valentine's Day. It turns out this is the first Valentine's Day. Bill, Charlie and Chal have spent apart from their wives. None of the wives are happy about it, and I think it bothers the guys too. All our hosts made a point of wishing us Happy Valentine's Day today. Bill and Charlie invited me to join them for a morning walk today. We met in the lobby at 6:30. Bill and Charlie had gone walking earlier in the week and reported that things were jumping. It was true this morning also. A lot of people were out and about. Kids were heading off to school. People were out in their yards or on their front porches. It makes a lot of sense for a hot climate. We walked up the main road in front of the hotel and then turned right onto a neighborhood street. It looked to be a nice neighborhood. Like all the other neighborhoods we saw, there was quite a variety of housing: we saw quite large, fancy homes next to small rather boxy houses. We also saw a lot of what appeared to be plastic bags of trash and garbage hanging on posts or trees. We later found out that this was indeed garbage put out for pick up. We circled around to the main road which runs perpendicular to the hotel, past some athletic fields, and then back up to the hotel. This street had wide sidewalks, but it was clear that these wide sidewalks were, in fact, cement covers for the open drainage ditch running under it. The sidewalk was not a continuous slab of concrete, but rather a series of slabs laid over the ditch. The gas station located just below the main road was jam-packed with scooters. Every gas station we saw (and there are not that many _} _f--4 t„ of them) were similarly packed. We were told "E"`""" '; } that the national government subsidizes the priceI t «i of gasoline, so it is Rp 1,500 (15¢) a liter. We . , Li:_ . . .. also saw a lot of roadside stands with plastic and `i__ --_: ,�� ._ r,r glass jugs, bottles, and containingwhat 1_,6�t < It_ 1g jars �.:. appeared to be gas. We were told that people fill �� • 8. -�' up these containers at gas stations and then sell them along the road —the obvious answer to a lack of gas stations! This morning we headed off for our briefing by the Sanitation Department. It turns out that they are responsible not only for garbage pick up and disposal but also grounds maintenance and cemeteries. Samarinda picks up garbage everyday and hauls it to the I dump. Also, since they don't have a sewer system, those places that have service use septic tanks (obviously a lot of places, if not most, use creeks and rivers). The 22 Sanitation Department pumps the septic tanks and hauls the material to the treatment center, which is also located near the dump. We then went on our tour of the dump. It was actually pretty interesting. Clearly it smells (as most dumps do). Our driver (of the Osama T-shirt) amazed me, however. He couldn't stand the smell and stood with his hand over his mouth and nose until he could move the car. The most amazing thing at the dump was the .,, people picking through the trash. Apparently 59 ' Y people live at the dump in little one-room shacks '111,7z . s Zitos. (literally in the dump). They make their living 41 • ACI--7,11, by searching though the trash and pulling out -4/ plastic water bottles and metal, which they then sell. We were told that they make a pretty good - � ` living and many own cars. We were also told "' that these people are actually uite healthy, and �.' �.. _ '.- i • _ they looked it. We figured that if this is true it has to be because all of the weak ones die young. We noticed that there was an older lady in one of the huts swinging a hammock suspended from the ceiling. It looked like there was a baby in the hammock. The dump was just that. It was more like American dumps of the 50's and 60's than modern landfills. On top of that, there appeared to be a stream at the bottom of the hill upon which the dump was located. I shudder to think about what was going into that stream. After observing the operation of the dump (and generally getting in the way of some very busy workers) we loaded back into the cars and drove down a dirt road below the dump to the sewage treatment plant. It was fairly unremarkable except that they had four level treatment. They apparently use the sludge as fertilizer and claim they have experienced no health problems as a result. While we were standing there, one of the men went to a nearby papaya tree and picked a huge papaya. It had . clearly been fertilized with the sludge. I was afraid that :R• •.k ' .; s, ... • ,4r they would offer us a piece, but in fact they wanted to show us a large hole eaten in the fruit by a "tree rabbit" } (but I think they meant rat). Poor Sopie. She was with us today and she looked like she expected the rat to come popping out (as I half did myself). We also had �t fun giving her a hard time about being "Queen of Trash". , �, -- ,* , a � 4 ', Following the dump, we went to the Water Department. �, + k�. „4 I had to laugh, because just as in the States, the Water Department in Samarinda had the nicest furniture and 23 4-T`r :,.; the best equipment. Some things never change. We ate lunch in the director's office, and I was amused to find that he had a TV tuned to a closed circuit camera in the front office so he could monitor the comings and goings without getting up from his desk. I must admit that is not something I have seen at home. As with many of the other departments, the Water Department provided us lunch. I think that these lunches are actually cooked by the staff, rather than being catered (as I had first assumed). The fare was fairly standard - patin, shrimp, rice, soup, etc. Here, however, they also had another dish. I didn't know what it was so didn't take any. Sopie (who is a food pusher, I decided) insisted that I try some. She said it was mussel. I tried a little, but I wasn't thrilled. First off, I don't like mussel, and secondly, I was aware that shellfish tend to absorb all the pollutants that are in the water. Needless to say, that thought did nothing for my appetite or my appreciation of these particular mussels. Sopie pushed some on Bill too, but I warned him about the pollution, so he also ate very sparingly. Following lunch, we had our standard presentation/discussion with the Water staff. It was interesting to learn that they provide water to only about 62% of the citizens of Samarinda. I guess the rest get their water from the river or from wells. The water system has a 35% loss rate (compared to 5% to 10% in the US). They were quite proud that they had managed to lower their loss rate from 45% by shifting to contracted meter readers. It seems that city meter readers were working out deals with property owners to read meters incorrectly. I asked what will keep their contractor from doing the same, and they said that doesn't happen - after all, look at the improvement in the loss rate. Following the meeting, we were taken on a tour of the water facilities. The water treatment plant is located on a small hill behind the governor's residence. There were really nice views of Samarinda and the Mahakam River from the treatment plant. They have five water intake ports in the v; Mahakam, and water is pumped to the treatment plant. They add alum to help the sediments settle out, and then pass the water through a sand "" filtration system. They then add chlorine and store ! " . � -.r the water in one of four or five reservoirs at the �- . r , treatment plant before putting it into the distribution �� system. They told us that the Dutch had built this „�. , plant in 1932. When we finished at the treatment plant, they took us to one of the water intake ports on the Mahakam, in front of the Governor's residence. It was a fairly standard intake port, except that it was located in downtown Samarinda, it pulled water out of the harbor, and it was downstream from several creeks dumping run-off and sewage into the river. Needless to say, we were quite pleased that we never drank water from the tap while we were in Indonesia. 24 That night for dinner we all (Chal, Charlie, Bill, myself, Amanda, and Kemal) decided to go to Istana Iguana for dinner. The first time we were there (Amanda, Leon and me) it not only was good, but it was quiet, as we were the only people in the place. This time it was packed with a huge party complete with karaoke. When we left and saw the parking lot, we figured out that the group was a Volkswagen club. I Friday, February 15th, 2002 f This morning we were taken to the Citre Niaga to meet with the staff there. Citre Niaga is a market �`"' b ' area built in 1987 to replace an older market on the '_ f' site. When it opened in 1987 it won the Aga Khan -� c, r - .... Architectural Award. Unfortunately, the City didn't `'.4 _ take care of the market, and it became a high crime ,R ,', .. Ai area. They recently hired a guy from the military, ;` ` ~ - Suradi, to clean it up and get it back on its feet. ' -' ' T lulps � , ,kit ,_-••,.,'-, -,I_ -' 4.•,_0 .'," , '41'-',-qa r. Suradi and staff obviously didn't expect to get much from us, and were just going to give us a briefing, but Bill started spinning promotional ideas (animated lighting, etc.) and I joined in. Suradi quickly sent one of his assistants out to get his note pad, and he started taking notes. It was really fun to give ideas that they could use immediately. Suradi seemed quite pleased. Suradi took us on a quick tour of the market and to a couple of stalls that sell local 1 . L,, , ; handicrafts. I bought a neat Dayak bead mat . . i�,;. and a bunch of gifts for the office. Bill went .. : s crazy. This was a whole new side of Bill. He r `....1 —4% , was like a kid in a candy store. A'ilti " t ;,,,a `i s 1— 'fi — VitThe market has a signature tower and 1 �, 111%i‘-- iil ` commented that there must be a great view ' , from up there, whereupon Suradi offered to ,� . . l take us up. The tower was not used and not jj • < , ... 1 i well maintained, so Suradi told us they allow i., no more than three people up at time. figured I counted for three by myself. Nevertheless, by the time we got up, there were five of us. The view was great but the space was unusable because of crisscrossing support beams. Nevertheless, we had fun admiring the view. We heard later that Suradi has decided to fix up the tower and the deck. All the time we were wandering around the market, we were accompanied by six security guards. Obviously crime is still a problem. After pictures with the staff and the security guards, two of the secretaries approached with a tray bearing two Dayak beaded purses. My first reaction was, "Oh, no. Bill stuck again" (like he did with the Bupati). Bill later explained that he was in a shop with Suradi 25 when Suradi asked if he liked the purses. Bill said yes and asked how much. Suradi said no, and told the shopkeeper to wrap them up. He then presented them to us for our wives. This has been a favorite stop, not only because I finally got a chance to buy gifts for the office, but mostly because I feel that we gave Suradi some good ideas that he immediately reacted to. That was a good feeling. While we were in the meeting with Suradi, two reporters came in, sat down, and started . ;' taking notes. They followed us around the market. A -'� couple of days later, there was a story in Kompass (a z MI local newspaper) about the US delegation buying up all Mr 1, the ornaments of Citre Niaga. It ticked me off. " . N 1 �' ,t' When we finished at Citre Niaga, our hosts were in a . , , rush to get us back to the hotel. We weren't really sure why, but eventually figured out that Friday is the r _ Moslem day of prayer, so our hosts had to get to the mosque by noon. This also explains why city w; �~ employees only work until noon on Friday. :� ' .. , ' I In the afternoon, we visited the Trade Department. ..n � They showed us some of the products Samarinda exports — mostly food products, some sarong material, and a few oil exploration boats. They explained that they would like to get into the American market but most Americans have not developed a taste for these food products. There have been very few women in any of our meetings. One of those few was in this meeting and she spoke very good English. At one point, she turned to Kemal and asked (in English) why Samarinda was developing a relationship with us since it sounds like there was very little we could do for them. From the Trade Department's standpoint, that was a very valid question. We explained that we had to agree that there is little market for their food products in the US, but there might be possibilities for handicrafts and eco-tourism. Bill started talking about the Mahakam riverboat. He became more and more enthusiastic and finally asked how much it would cost to purchase a boat and ship it to the US. They thought about $3,000. Bill thought that was an excellent price. At that point, I felt compelled to warn Bill to be careful — I thought he might have just bought a boat! Given our expressed interest in handicrafts, the Trade 1,11."" • ll !l ��t.,! ", . ;- Department decided to change the tour they had U - planned for us, and they ended up taking us to a - 3 woodworking shop. This was a very special visit for me because I love fine wood. The shopwas crammed full '�r, P '- of all sorts of carved wooden figures and bowls at very x . ,' a a 26 1 s low prices. They had a couple of wooden screens about 6' tall, made up of four panels (each about 2 '/2' wide) and cut and carved in latticework and figures — all by hand. It cost $4001 The shop was neat, but then they took us back in the work area, and that was fantastic. The backroom was filled with partially finished bowls, figures, and furniture. Three men were squatting on the floor sanding pieces. Out back, a • man was sitting using a chisel and mallet to carve another piece. He started just as we came out the door and I heard him quit working as soon as we went back inside. Further out back, by the road, another man and his two • young sons were working on a totem pole. When we �.. went back into the workshop, the owner showed us chairs . f. carved out of a singlepiece of wood and a table-to one g p, meter in diameter and also made out of a single piece of ' .�4 ? . wood, with its surface all carved. This stop was a highlight! This was the start of the hell period. The whole purpose of all of our visits to the city departments this week was to develop an understanding of the issues facing Samarinda. From these issues, we would select a short list of 2 or 3 projects which we would work on together over the next 18 months. These two or three projects would become the basis of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Tigard and Samarinda. According to Amanda all we had to do was to identify our short list of projects and she would develop the work plan. That was not acceptable to us because if we were going to make commitments to do something, we would define what that was, not someone else. We had a lot of forces at play here, and by the time we were done, everyone was stressed to the max and really pissed at each other. To add to the confusion, Amanda's boss, Endi showed up. Endi is Indonesian and it took us about two seconds to figure out that he was a complete idiot. Jessica McKenna from the USAID office in Jakarta also showed up. USAID funds this whole program so Amanda was very concerned about keeping Jessica happy. In addition to this, Amanda who is reasonably bright and totally dedicated to the program, is also young (later 20's, early 30's) and has no experience in running real programs or managing people. She is also self-confused, disorganized and enjoys just jumping in and doing things rather than taking the time to plan an approach. The Indonesian ICMA staff consisted primarily of Kemal and Sopie. Kemal is 51, trained at American universities and quite bright, but very much an Indonesian, meaning he is easily distracted, does not follow-through well, and avoids confrontation by agreeing to almost everything but not always delivering. 27 Jessica is about the same age as Amanda, but again, this seemed to be her first program posting, so she was also lacking experience. Add to the mix some sort of tension between Amanda and Kemal, and you can quickly begin to understand the complications. Then bring in Bill and me with a lot of experience managing people and projects and delivering results and who were totally unwilling to stand aside in the development of a work plan which would commit us for the next 18 months. Now throw in Endi who spent this time wondering about being totally ignored by everybody. Strangely, Samarinda was almost invisible at this point. As we worked through the next couple of days, Bill and Charlie started developing the plot line for a sitcom based on our experiences. Samarinda's Planning Director, Mochdar Hasan, was to be our contact in developing the work plan, but we had only seen him at the beginning of the week and that was all. By comparison, Charlie's and Chal's contact, Bachruddin, had been with them all week. Bill and I had developed a list of possible projects for our partnership with Samarinda, but without talking with Mochdar we were stymied. It is hard to have a partnership when the partners don't talk. We finally went to dinner in the hotel, and still no Mochdar. Before dinner, Amanda and Kemal informed us that another reporter was there to talk to us. This reporter was from the Indonesian equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. Amanda and Kemal said that they would meet with him first to explain the program. Then our time with the reporter could be short and focused on Samarinda and Kutai. After dinner, we went back to the lobby of the hotel to find Amanda, Kemal, Sopie and some other folks sitting with the reporter. Amanda, Kemal and the reporter moved with us out by the pool, where we sat down and Amanda started explaining the program. It was clear that they hadn't had any conversation with the reporter concerning the program. We sat cooling our heels, not working on the work plan, while Amanda and Kemal told the reporter those things that they promised to tell him before we got there. We were very unhappy. Charlie finally went up to his room and got his laptop and PowerPoint presentation to show the reporter about Washington County (this reporter, too was confused by the difference between Washington County and Washington DC). This meeting was also our first introduction to Endi —Amanda's Indonesian boss. Endi came around to look over Charlie's shoulder to see the PowerPoint. When it was through Endi turned to me and said, "That is really very good. You ought to show it to Samarinda and Kutai". I just looked at him and said, "we have. Several times." This is when I realized that Endi is an idiot with no idea what the program is or what we were doing here. 28 I was nervous that Mochdar might be cooling his heels in the lobby, so I went looking for him. No Mochdar, but I found Sopie talking to some other people. I asked if Mochdar was here yet, and Sopie replied, "No. If he comes, we will call you." I was flabbergasted. "What do you mean, IF?" Sopie hastily assured me that he would be there and reached for her cell phone. Mochdar finally showed up, and Bill and I sat down with him and Kemal to discuss Samarinda's priorities. Mochdar indicated that their top priority was citizen participation. He went on to explain that a good share of Samarinda's citizens are poorly educated and are easily manipulated by others for their own purpose. Samarinda wanted to learn how American cities developed the power to control these easily manipulated people. I was sick. I sat there stunned, wondering what the hell we were doing there. I was ready to walk. Bill, fortunately, had a cooler head and was able to talk it though with Mochdar. We agreed on four projects — citizen participation, recycling, revenue catalog, and double entry accounting (the last two to be joint projects with Kutai). Before she retired for the night, following the meeting with the reporter, Amanda had told Bill to just slip our list of projects under her door in the morning and she would write them up. Bill told her that we would write them up and then pass them on. Following our meeting with Mochdar, Kemal told us to give our write-ups to him in the morning and he would type them up. I wrote up the accounting and revenue projects and gave them to Bill about 1:00 am. I think Bill stayed up until about 2 or 2:30 am. This has been such an awful day. All of the mismanagement, confusion, failed promises, statements about controlling the population, etc. have managed to offset all of the positive experiences of the first part of the trip. Clearly cultural differences are playing a big role in this, but ICMA's poor management in general and Amanda's lack of experience in particular have taken their toll. Add to that the apparent conflict and jockeying for position between Amanda and Kemal, and it is not pretty. Unfortunately, it was going to get worse before it got better. Saturday, February 16th Charlie, Chal, Bill and I met for breakfast at about 7 a.m. Kemal came shortly thereafter, and Bill gave him our handwritten drafts of the work plan. Today was supposed to be set aside for development of the work plan, Yesterday however, the Trade people had been unable to arrange a trip to the boatyard to show Bill and me how the Mahakam riverboats are built (all by hand). They therefore said that they would pick us up at 9 today for a quick tour, and then we could come back to work on the work plan. This was going to work out quite well because then Charlie and Chal would also have a chance to see the boat yard. 29 Indonesians have a totally different sense of time than Americans. Nothing ever started at the appointed time during our visit. We were ready at 9, but at 9:30 we were informed that the Trade Director was tied up in a radio show with the Walikota. Our hosts therefore decided to show us some other stuff while waiting for the Trade Director. Our hosts loaded us into cars and took us to Pasar Segiri - the old market. We had passed this market almost every day going to or from somewhere. It is the oldest and II wig; -' largest market in the City, and always seemed to be ' 9( �` a bubbling mass of humanity and activity -totally " .., - �`' - intimidatin I had wanted to see it, but there is 9 n4 absolutely no way I would go there unescorted. tp..\\ + ,a . It was an incredible experience. We pulled into the market and got out of the cars. The first thing that - struck us was the smell. It made me long for the + - - sweet vapors of the dump. It was overpowering. The second impression was the crush of people. People everywhere, doing everything but mostly looking at us. The third impression was the fetid, foul, black goop that covered the road and walkways. I shudder to think what was in it, but some times it is better not to think. The fourth impression was the incredible profusion of foodstuffs, goods, vehicles, and activities. Officials of the market, including an armed guard, met us. We walked back into the market to the market offices where the officials told us about the operation of the market. We asked about health concerns and were told that there was no problem. Back in the market we saw a tank crammed full of over-sized gold fish, fighting for air, and stall after stall �, - ;x , of chicken carcasses laying on tables next to their ► ., s' ,,tern , ' ). entrails. We saw a truckload of eggs sitting out in the :_ -z.,Tr ; r, her f3 100-degree heat. I saw chicken carcasses with little 1 balloons of tissue bulging out of their butts due to the �` heat. Needless to say, we did not believe that there is -` -------,--- - not a health problem. Bill became a vegetarian for the . . '''''''70„.i.--- rest of the trip. . On the way back out of the market, I made a point of smiling and greeting people and got an incredible response. Throughout this trip I have found that a smile and a polite greeting elicit a most wonderful response. I greeted one group of young guys who, at first impression, looked like they would just as soon cut my throat as look at me. They broke out in big smiles and we ended up high fiving all around. Chal said he saw one guy flip us off, but one out of thousands isn't bad at all. The Trade Director still wasn't ready, so we drove over to look at Samarinda's only softball field (pretty ho hum), primarily for Bill's benefit. We then stopped at the swimming pool, which was pretty impressive-a large stadium and a pool Olympic size or larger. There was a co-ed group of high school students getting a swim lesson, and 30 they all came out of the pool and over to us to get their pictures taken with us. This was fun. From there, we walked over to the soccer stadium. Again, it was impressive, but nothing was going on. •40 ,1.,e The Trade Director still wasn't ready, so we asked if we 1 ___ could see the Grand Mosque. We saw mosques ,; ; t '}',. everywhere from small little buildings to large. The y Grand Mosque was the largest mosque in town (though ii •, 1 " F14 ; ';1 :41 soon to be superceded by an even larger mosque -41'f $ -----" under construction). The Grand Mosque is set between ., � the river and the business district amid lovely grounds. It was built in 1994 and is modeled on Turkish mosques. We were able to go inside and look around, though we had to remove our shoes. The inside was very open and airy with lots of white marble. It was really lovely. While we were in the mosque a group of small girls got out of class. They really enjoyed having their pictures taken. 41 1_ Ilk When we came out of the mosque, Edy spotted the Imam and :k:,'-`1N,',, asked him over to meet us. He was a very pleasant gentleman ry ,- t; '111\, , who spoke excellent English. It was a pleasure to meet him. °•' After we left the mosque, Edy decided that we also should visit : y the local Catholic Church. It was just a few minutes away, right -_ 1 next to the local prison. The priest opened it up so we could see inside. Before we went in, I made Edy and Masrullah , remove their hats. (If I had to take my shoes off to go into the 41 �•.^ mosque, they should take their hats off in church). This was . „w , Masrullah's first visit to a church, which I figured was fair since I had just finished my first visit to a mosque. By noon, we still had not seen our work plans. Since we were supposed to sign the Memoranda of Understanding at 6:30 PM, we were all getting quite nervous. We were i sitting in the lobby before lunch when Amanda came through. She was concerned that i we had not given her our work plans yet. She was quite surprised (and a bit unhappy) to find out that we had given them to Kemal early this morning. Amanda said that she had been sitting in her room all morning waiting for our work plans. Seems that if she were expecting them first thing, she would have been out looking for them before noon. When we commented on the disorganization she responded by saying that if we had not spent yesterday morning shopping, things would be going smoother. She also expressed concern about getting the seals of all four governments on the MOUs, and that seemed to be her primary concern. We went into lunch and Kemal came in after about 45 minutes and announced he had finally finished the Kutai work plan. It seemed strange that it took him 5% hours to reformat something which Charlie had given him in electronic format. It didn't bode well for Samarinda, which Bill and I had done long hand. 31 I Bachruddin showed up about one, so he and Charlie reviewed the Kutai work plan on line. Bill and I went up to the workroom to help Kemal get the Samarinda work plan done. Kemal had input and formatted my two items and most of Bill's, but he was having trouble reading Bill's handwriting (as does 99.9% of the world's population) so we helped him decipher the indecipherable. While we were doing that, Amanda came in, still worrying about getting the four seals on the MOU. She also decided that Kemal was using the wrong format for the MOU's. After lunch, the folks from the Trade Department were there to take us to the boatyard. I decided not to go for two reasons: First, I felt that the Indonesians were getting the wrong impression from our interest in the boats, thinking that we actually wanted to buy boats. I wanted to distance myself from that. Second, it was hot. I did real well most days, but when the temperature started getting into the low 100's I really had trouble functioning. I decided it was better to lay low and stay cool. As it turns out, the boatyard sounded like a fascinating visit, so I am sorry I missed it. The day had been interesting but all through it, we kept wondering why we were still touring and not working on the work plan. Bill and I were supposed to work with Mochdar, but we could never get a clear statement of when he was due to arrive. Charlie and Chal had an easier time of it at this stage because Bachruddin had been with them throughout their visit. They had therefore developed a good working relationship. Bill and I on the other hand, had only seen Mochdar at the opening session and at the meeting with the Bappeda, so we didn't know him at all. We kept asking when Mochdar was coming by and kept being told, "later". As it turned out, Mochdar is studying for a Master's in Public Administration and had a big exam on Saturday, so he was apparently busy studying. We finally got the Samarinda work plan done and printed shortly after Mochdar arrived to review it in the mid-afternoon. Fortunately, he was fine with the work plans and only found a few typos. I asked Mochdar if the work plan was okay, and he responded that it was "Good enough." I was a bit taken aback and asked what we could do to improve it. Mochdar quickly responded that it was great, more than he had hoped for. This was another example of our language barrier. I don't know whether Mochdar's original "Good enough" truly meant "Good enough" or whether he had just used the wrong phrase. Bill and I left Kemal and Amanda to work on the MOU's (and get the damn seals on the page). The MOU signing was set for 6:30, so we rested and got cleaned up. The MOU signing had originally been scheduled for another hotel in town, but apparently no one bothered to check with that hotel to see if they had a room available, so there was a last minute change back to the Mesra. Bill, Charlie, Chal and I were in the lobby at 6:30 dressed in our formal batik, but no Amanda and Kemal. It seems they were still having trouble writing the MOU. Finally, at 32 7:30 Amanda and Kemal showed up with one copy of the MOU, four signature pages, and no work plans. I really don't know what the problem was. We went up to the room where the signing was to occur and found all of the Indonesians, in their formal batik, waiting for us. Apparently the Walikota had just arrived so it was not as bad as it felt. To start off the signing ceremony, one of the Samarinda Beauties and Rosita from Finance read each of the two MOUs (Samarinda and Kutai) twice — once in Indonesian and once in English. Since the two MOU's were identical, it made for a very repetitive evening. It was at this point that Amanda discovered that Kemal, and not she, was signing the MOU. Amanda was sitting next to me at the head table and Kemal was sitting down in the U. He avoided looking at her. The signing itself was very formal and was covered by a variety of print reporters and one video camera. Bill said later that it looked like , , A prisoners of war signing surrender documents. Following the signing, the Walikota presented Charlie, Chal, Bill and I with gifts, and we in turn ' t presented the Walikota and the Vice Bupati (the � - real Bupati having been called to Jakarta) with 164,-;#ut ; p- gifts we had brought for that purpose. We had `t.` '® `' also brought about 25 smaller, but nice gifts for other staff, but I did not know who they were to go to. I had been asking for the past two days, but never got an answer. Since we didn't know who to give them to, Sopie decided to let the Samarinda Beauties figure it out, and then we would distribute them at the party following the signing. The Samarinda Beauties were a bevy of five young ladies who worked out of the Walikota's office. They primarily emceed formal meetings, and were always around at those meetings; though beyond that we couldn't figure out just what they did. They were always dressed in impeccably tailored suits, which, though not identical, were always coordinated and always the same color. We retired to the dining room for dinner and entertainment. Following dinner, one of the Samarinda Beauties called several people up on stage and then called me up to present them with our gifts. They had arranged it so several people got two gifts, but I ended up with several left over, which was fine with me. Following the presentation, I was getting ready to distribute the "extra" gifts to the staff who worked most closely with us (and who deserved gifts the most) when Sopie came running up to me and said that several people were unhappy because they had not received gifts. I gave her the extras to distribute, but I was angry at being put in that position since I had no say over who got the gifts in the first place. Sopie distributed those, but there were still a few unhappy people. Fortunately, Chal had some extra T-shirts so they had to make do with those. Needless to say, this all left a bad taste in my mouth. Following the gift fiasco, the entertainment started up— two mediocre female singers. One of the singers' cell phones went off in the middle of the song, and I was surprised 33 when she did not answer it. Cell phones are ubiquitous in Indonesia, apparently because they don't have the infrastructure for regular phones. Cell phones go off anywhere and everywhere and each one plays a different tune. Sopie is the worst with her cell phone. In invited me to dance, and to my horror she drug me up on stage. Fortunately, several other people came and proceeded to dance (and teach) the Pojo — a line dance based on ``'`•' ;�;• ° ' , a traditional dance of one of the northern ♦•: : _ „ islands. Fortunately, most people eo le had left by _ + ^ ' ��• x �� • this time and following the dance most • ) ttI ♦ everybody else left. As we were leaving the dining room, we were treated to a very off key • rendition of"Let It Be Me" by Endi, dedicated • '� '—'• to Amanda and Jessica. This was the perfect ending for a rotten day. Sunday, February 17, 2002 After the stress of the last couple of days, we were ready for a break. The schedule for today called for a cruise on the Mahakam River. I was a bit disappointed when I saw the schedule and it called for officials from Samarinda and Kutai to join us. I had envisioned the Mahakam as a quiet jungle stream and the cruise as four guys and a six- pack floating down the river. Since the Mahakam is similar in size to the Columbia, that was clearly an unrealistic expectation as was the idea that we could go off by ourselves to relax. Following breakfast, we were to meet in the lobby at 9 for the trip to the boat. Having become used to Indonesian time, we figured that meant that we would take off about 10 or 10:30. Fooled us! We left promptly at 9 to go down to the river to board the boat. The boat was pulled up at a dock opposite the Provincial government offices. The Walikota and the department heads from = Samarinda and Kutai were already on board. m''�m. The boat was the same size and general design as the river boats we had seen at the river terminal, only instead of an open cargo area below an upper deck for passengers, the - - lower deck was enclosed as staterooms, and the upper deck consisted of a large enclosed lounge. You could go outside on the bow or on the stern. We entered the boat through the side. Straight ahead and down two steps was a kind of well area which was filled with women cooking and the boat crew. We took an immediate right and up some stairs to the lounge. If we had gone straight ahead down 34 into the well, then turned right and up two stairs, we would have gone to the stateroom area. To the left and up two stairs went to the stove and sink and two bathrooms. It appeared that at least some of the crew lived on the boat as there was a washing machine on the stern deck and some men's underwear hanging on a clothesline (quickly snatched off and put away!) The Walikota and officials were waiting for us in the lounge. A large table ran down the middle of the lounge and it was loaded with food. It was never without food on it the entire time we were on the boat, and all that food was prepared down in the well area. The atmosphere in the lounge was a bit stilted with all of us lined up in chairs on either side of the room and staring at each other across the table. Fortunately, once we got underway, people began to move around a bit and loosen up. Kemal had alerted me that the Samarinda Beauties wanted Tigard pins, and fortunately I had some with me, so I went down below to give them to the Beauty who was with us on the boat. The crew wanted them too, so I was quickly cleaned out. It never ceases to amaze me how crazy the Indonesians are for lapel pins! Cruising up the river was fascinating. The lounge was air-conditioned (supposedly) but I quickly learned that it was more comfortable (and you could see a lot more) out on the bow. There was so much life on the river, with houses built on stilts out over the river, and families out for their morning Y; bath or doing laundry, boats everywhere, and small 4,;,,ro dredges working away. It was an incredible , cornucopia of sights and sounds. We were the center of attention as we proceeded up the river, and at first I thought it was the boat as it was a bit unusual. I started waving to people, however, and the fact that they immediately, waved back told me that they were looking at us and not the boat. I had the definite sense that waving to people was unusual, but it was clearly much appreciated. I felt like we were in some sort of grand procession up the river. It was really cool. I forgot to put on sun screen this morning, so I spent a lot of the morning outside, enjoying the 1' sights and sounds, but also searching out shade. Charlie, Bill, and Chal didn't seem to worry about ' the sun at all. Fortunately, Bill thought to bring a supply of sun screen which he shared with us, so I `' "` 4z was able to be a bit less careful from that point on. Affc "1k."'- Jessica McKenna from US AID was on the boat with us. Early on, Masrullah told me that he thought she was my daughter. (I was not sure whether I should be flattered or offended!) When I assured him that she was not, 35 he started talking to her. I think he was quite taken with her. At one point I overheard her tell him that she had a boyfriend, and he replied that he had hoped he had a chance with her. Oh well. m's Samarinda and Kutai are still new to this whole cooperation concept, so things got a little fouled up at this point. It turns out that Samarinda had arranged lunch for us on the boat, _ � but Kutai had arranged lunch for us onshore in Tenggarong. It was decided that we would have first lunch and second lunch. F • : The ladies down in the \ x t' > 4 well prepared first lunch, 11 t , I' and the table was 3; groaning with all the food. ' ist4 It was wonderful, but between the heat and the .O • knowledge that we would also have to eat second lunch, we ate much more lightly than the food J = 4 deserved. They had prepared rice, Mahakam River shrimp (6 inches long), patin, another kind of fish, chicken, etc., etc., etc. I felt badly after all the work they had gone to that we didn't eat more. When we got to Tenggarong, we stopped at Sumala Island to see the development going on. Of course, Charlie, Chal, and Amanda had seen it up close and personal with the Bupati, but this was Bill's and my chance to see it. Unfortunately, Charlie and Chal had told us how the Bupati was getting his kick-back off the construction work, and how the money was being spent on the island rather than on basics such as upgrading the hospital (three operating rooms, but one heart monitor and one blood pressure machine). After hearing that, I couldn't look at this stuff without seeing a gross obscenity. It was also hot. Charlie had a thermometer in his watch, and it registered 103°. The island had a large dock made out of ironwood which was reflecting the heat back up. It was like walking across a red-hot stove. We just walked over to the mini train (the only train in East Kalimantan), sat on it for a bit, and then went back to the boat. As the day wore on, it began to get unbearably hot. I was real uncomfortable and unhappy. Someone explained to me that three of the staterooms down below had been set aside for the use of the delegation. They took me down below and showed me one of the rooms. It was wall to wall double bed, with only a small walkway on one side. Best of all, however, it was wonderfully over air conditioned. It was frosty—just a bit of heaven. I laid down and took a wonderfully cool nap. ,. While I was resting, we cruised on up the river, then turned around and came back down to Tenggarong. After my nap, I wandered back upstairs, where Bill, Charlie, Chal, and Amanda all were wondering where I had run off to. When I told them about the 36 staterooms, their eyes lit up. Unfortunately for them, it was just about time for second lunch. After lunch I would have gladly gone back down to my frosty stateroom, but Charlie, Chal and Amanda beat me to it. This time, the table was laden with fruit and light snacks. Fortunately, they had lots of langsat, which is my favorite of all the fruits we have tried. It grows in large clusters, and each fruit is shaped like a small chicken egg. You tear them open (there is a bit of technique to that— sometimes I could do it neatly and sometimes not). Inside is a white fruit in sections. It has a fresh, clean taste that is quite refreshing. Each section has the start of a seed, which is quite tart, but in only one section does the seed actually develop. You don't eat that as it is quite bitter. They also had durian —the Thai kind and not the milder Indonesian variety. As a child I remember Tex Dew (a Marine Corps friend of my father's) talking about durian, its disgusting smell, and its great taste. I was At anxious to try it. All of the Indonesians looked on with anxious anticipation as I took my first r,, = taste. It smelled awful, but the taste was not " '`; " ,.•. bad. On the one hand, I think the Indonesians - were disappointed not to get the typical F = Western reaction of disgust and gagging, but on the other, I think they were pleased I liked it. Then Bill tried it and liked it. For the first time `' he appeared to establish a connection with the �.' rr Walikota. The ladies from the well came sweeping through and cleared the table and then started bringing in sweets and deserts that they had just made. I couldn't really bear the thought of more food, but the Indonesians dug in. Sopie kept trying to get me to eat more, and finally resorted to the ultimate blackmail — she explained that the ladies had made these treats just for us. So I broke down and sampled a little bit of several of the dishes, all of which were very good. It was just too hot and I was too full. Bill came up from downstairs about that time and sat next to me. He was going to pass on the deserts, but I passed on Sepia's blackmail, and he gamely dug in. He actually did quite well at it. Things began to cool down as we got closer to Samarinda, and there was some shade out on the bow of the boat, so I moved out there. It became a much more pleasant day. Once in Samarinda, we said our good-byes and thank yous and then boarded the bus back to the hotel. All in all, it was a good day. The cruise wasn't what I expected, but it turned out to be fun and very interesting. The heat was excruciating, but even so, it was a very good time. 37 Back at the hotel, after resting up, cleaning up, and cooling down, we decided that it would be good to go exploring for dinner (though how we could think of food after a day full of it, I don't know). We were all getting a bit tired of Indonesian food, and someone had noticed a pizza parlor across from the hotel. Jessica said it was good, so Bill, Charlie, Chal, Amanda, Jessica, and I took off on foot. Crossing the busy road in front of the hotel in mid-day was a bit exciting, but we made it just fine. We got to the pizza parlor. We were the only people in the place, and in fact, we had to call for the staff. We decided to order three different extra large pizzas. Jessica speaks Indonesian, so she placed the order. The waiter took off for the kitchen, and then came back apologizing to Jessica. It seems that they ran out of extra larges (!), so we had to settle for two extra larges and one large. The pizza was actually quite good — deep dish with a lot of cheese — probably the most dairy we've seen in all the time we have been in Indonesia. Earlier Amanda had let us know that ICMA had arranged a workshop on Water for Sunday. Bill kept trying to find out exactly what we should be talking about, but had never gotten a clear answer. Today, Amanda finally said that she wanted Bill and Charlie to talk about regional cooperation on water issues. She was real surprised to find out that Washington County had no role in water, so it was all on Bill. Since we had just gotten that direction today, we now had to put together a PowerPoint presentation for Bill. The workshop was scheduled for 10 a.m. the following morning. Bill, Charlie, Chal and I went up to the workroom to put together the presentation. Amanda and Kemal came to work on the MOU's. Apparently Amanda also invited Graham, an Australian working on forestry issues, to stop by too. Graham showed up and just wanted to talk about forestry, so we finally got Chal to move him out of the way. While we were working, Bill and Amanda got to talking about a television program she had scheduled us for. Earlier in the week, she had informed us that we would be going on this show to talk about the Resource Cities program. By now, it had become Bill plus someone from Samarinda and Kutai on a call-in talk show to talk about water. Bill went through the roof. He made it abundantly clear to Amanda that we were not going to be jerked around like a bunch of puppets anymore. What fun. We finally finished Bill's presentation at about 1:00 am. The work side of these last two days has been miserable. Monday, February 18, 2002 Today was the day of the Water seminar. Fortunately, after our awful experiences of the last couple of days, we finally got to the point where we could relax and laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Several days ago, I bought more material to get a couple of more shirts made. They are lousy choices for an equatorial climate, but I figured that they would be fun in 38 Oregon. My thought was to get the material to the tailor quickly while he still had my measurements. Kemal supposedly got the material to the tailor, but I never saw any shirts or heard back. Yesterday, I finally asked (again) about the additional shirts, and I had resigned myself to never seeing them, but I was told that the tailor would meet me at the hotel at 8 a.m. Bill, Charlie, and Chal had decided to go golfing this morning after breakfast. I opted not to go, in part because I don't golf, in part because I didn't want to start off the day hot and sweaty, and in part because I was supposedly meeting the tailor. I was in the lobby at 8 a.m. and I sat there for 45 minutes, but the tailor never showed, so I went up to my room to get cleaned up and ready for the Water Seminar which was to start at 10. At 9:30, I came down to the lobby and ran into Sopie. We headed out to go over to the room where the seminar was going to be held. We had been told that it was going to be in the room where the MOU had been signed. We walked out of the hotel doors, and I turned right to head to the MOU room and Sopie turned left. It seems the room had been changed, but no one bothered to tell us. We got over to the room, and fortunately, Bill was there waiting and reviewing his presentation. Someone had caught him and got him to the right room. A little while later, Charlie showed up. He had gone to the MOU room and set up the In Focus projector and then wondered where everyone was. Someone had checked that room and found him sitting there. He got the In Focus projector set up (again) and we waited. By 10 o'clock, there were a few lower level staff around and us, but that was it. Shortly after 10, Samarinda showed up and began to set up their In Focus machine. They wanted to use ours, but Charlie (who had left by then) had been quite clear that no one was to touch our machine. At 10:30, someone came to let me know that my tailor had arrived and was waiting for me in the lobby. I asked Bill what I should do, and he said to go meet the tailor. After getting measured for the second time, I headed back to the seminar room. It was about 10:45. Kutai had just shown up and were setting up their In Focus machine. (It seemed kind of silly to have 3 machines, but hey, everything else was so bizarre, why should that matter?) When I got back, I found someone sitting in the seat I had been occupying at the end of the table next to Sopie. Since all my stuff was there, I stood back to wait while he and Sopie finished talking. He noticed me and immediately got up. Sopie introduced him as an old friend. I sat down, and he apparently asked Sopie who I was and what she was doing there. She told him that she was my "candidate wife". Before we got started, Kemal passed on the word that Bill was off the hook for the television show later than day. Apparently they changed the focus of the show and got Jessica to fill in for Bill. What a relief! 39 Someone had arranged for a professional interpreter to be at the meeting. He was a very pleasant Indonesian gentleman with a British accent. Unfortunately, whoever hired him had told him the seminar started at 8, so he had been hanging around all morning. Kemal decided to translate for Bill. The other interpreter then came up to Amanda and me and asked if we wanted the whispering. I hadn't the foggiest idea what he was talking about, but with Kemal translating, I figured whatever it was, I didn't need it. The show finally started about 11. All the department heads had made it there by then, and were sitting in their customary places in the inner U of the tables. The lesser staff were in their accustomed places in the outer U. I was surprised to see all of the department heads there for the Water seminar— including the Trade Department, the Transportation Department, and the Sanitation Department. We later learned that staff get paid bonuses for attending seminars and special meetings. Kemal moderated the session, and at Bill's suggestion, asked everyone to turn off their cell phones. All of the Kutai and Samarinda folks promptly did that, but none of the ICMA people did. As a result, Sopie and Endi ended up taking and making phone calls throughout the session. The Water Manager from Kutai started out. He was a real stem-winding orator and really got going. Then it was Samarinda's turn. The guy running his PowerPoint either got confused or had technical difficulties, but he only got part way through the PowerPoint s (which Bill and I had seen at our meeting with the Water Department) and then began flipping ;�� back and forth between the same two slides. Bill then did his thing and did a really good job with something we had thrown together late the s *, night before. That took us up to lunch time, so we broke for lunch in the hotel. 41 . raj At lunch, Jessica told us that she would miss the afternoon portion of the seminar. It seems that she had only gotten 11 hours sleep the night before (poor thing) and now she had to do this TV show, so she needed to rest. She wasn't at all concerned about the content of the show, but she was quite nervous that it was going to be conducted in formal Indonesian and she felt her formal Indonesian was not that good. All of this was the wrong thing to say to someone who had been up until 1 a.m. the night before preparing for today's seminar with the threat of the TV show hanging over him, so Bill was not at all sympathetic. When we came back from lunch, all the department heads had split, so it left us with the junior staff. This part of the session was devoted to question and answer. Since Kemal was moderating, he couldn't interpret also, so the interpreter finally got to do his thing for Bill. The "whispering" was simultaneous translation in a low voice. The questioners all had very lengthy statements, so it was a long session. Bill finally invited me up to the head table to sit with him and the whisperer, so I could hear what was going on. 40 Unfortunately, I quickly learned that I could not watch the audience and concentrate on the interpretation at the same time, so I had to look down at the floor. As I sat there looking at the floor, the late nights and stress of the past couple of days caught up with me, and I found myself drifting off to sleep. I don't know how those people at the UN do this on a regular basis —watching something going on in one language and listening to it whispered in your ear is really very difficult. Bill handled it quite well. Kemal did a very good job moderating, but it was interesting in that people answered only those questions that they wanted to answer and no one seemed to think anything of it. A couple of members of the public had shown up and asked questions during a series of questions that were asked in a row. No one responded to their questions, and they really didn't seem to mind in the slightest. The session ended with Samarinda and Kutai agreeing that Tigard should build them a new water treatment plant and that was that. (Fortunately, Amanda had warned us that this is the way it would end and told us not to worry about it.) It was a rather surreal session, but as Kemal and Amanda pointed out later, that the mere fact that Samarinda and Kutai had participated in the same session was a major step forward. This afternoon, Masrullah told us that Edy (the other staffer from Samarinda) had been in a traffic accident. Details were sketchy, but it seems that he had been riding in one of the small Samarinda mini-buses. He had been thrown out of the bus and into the path of an on-coming car. He was okay, though he had five stitches in his forehead and had hurt is arm. It was ironic, because as crazy as the traffic is, we had not seen one accident. It was too bad that it had to happen to a friend of ours. Following the session, Bill, Charlie, Chal and I decided to do some last minute shopping. We all needed to go to the ATM to get money so we would have enough to pay the departure tax (Rp 60,000) and Bill and I need additional suitcases to bring all of our loot home. Sopie agreed to take us. We went to the mall to use the ATM and then Bill wanted to go back to Citre Niaga. Sopie had the driver take us to a luggage store near there. It was pretty amazing. The walls were absolutely covered with different bags so you could not see walls at all, and the center of the store was piled high. There was just one narrow aisle around the center pile. I found a decent bag for Rp 135,000 ($13.50) and Bill found one for himself. We then walked over to Citre Niaga. I was a bit nervous, simply because the last time we were there we had six security guards surrounding us. I kept expecting something to happen, but we got along just fine. Bill was like a kid in a candy store, checking out shops we had been in before and buying additional goods. It really was kind of funny. All along he had been telling us about his sister who is apparently a shopping network addict, but it is clear that it is in the genes! 41 1 I didn't buy anything else. I had bought plenty before, and I was beginning to feel very awkward about our shopping reputations. We were reminded that the Walikota was throwing a cocktail party in our honor this evening. We didn't know if that meant dinner or not, and we were all curious how you have a "cocktail" party in a society that doesn't drink. Most interesting, however, was that this cocktail party was to go on at exactly the same time Bill had been scheduled to be on the dreaded TV show. More skillful ICMA scheduling I guess. We assumed that "cocktail party" meant no dinner, so we ate in the dining room before the party. We should have known better. We had first and second lunch the day before and tonight we had first and second dinner. At least I am learning to take small portions! The party was kind of fun. Bill and Charlie were going to have to make farewell speeches, but somehow they managed to pass that off to Chal and myself. It was kind of a surprise, but just a little more "go with the flow'. Following the speeches and dinner, the entertainment started (a.k.a. karaoke). This time we couldn't avoid it. Fortunately, Bill was called up first and he had the good sense to call Charlie, Chal and me up with him, so we did a foursome. Doubly fortunately, while we were at dinner, the singers had done Leavin'on a Jet Plane so we did a reprise of that. We survived, but the songbook had words and no music, and the words were an interpretation of the actual words so they weren't quite right. (Which is to say, they matched the singers perfectly.) Following our dismal tune, the Walikota and three department heads got up. They weren't bad. Of .e course, we promptly dubbed them "Wally and Da '=" Kotas". While they were singing, people started dancing the Pojo. I did better tonight than I had `1 the night before, but every time I started to get it, l someone changed the steps on me. It wasn't fair! One of the Samarinda Beauties finally declared the evening over. Everyone came to the dance / floor, formed a circle, held hands, and sand a song while swaying to the music. It was a nice way to end the evening. The party was fun. During the evening, Ali Fitri Noor, Samarinda's Finance Director, gave me a copy of Samarinda's budget and an Indonesian eagle pin. I wish I could have spent some time with him. I think I would have liked him. We returned to our rooms to figure out how in the world we were going to get all of our stuff into those suitcases. Tuesday, February 19, 2002 This was our last morning in Samarinda. I was really very sorry to be leaving because that also meant leaving all the wonderful friends we had made. The plan for the day 42 was to go to a rain forest park for a canopy walk, and then spend the night at Balikpapan prior to leaving the following morning. I was quite pleased to find out that almost all of our friends were going to Balikpapan with us. Before we left the hotel, Bill organized all of the Indonesians into an informal rendition of their national anthem. (Sopie had apparently made the folks from Coquille—who are partnered with Pasir— sing the US national anthem, so turn about was fair play.) Needless to day, it attracted a lot of attention in the hotel lobby, but it was really quite cool. Of course, I was quite concerned that Sopie would insist on a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Sopie is small, but she is quite good at getting her way. Fortunately I worried for nothing. I gave Masrullah the last of the gifts that I had left over. Right after that, Suradi (from Citre Niaga) came in. Apparently he had been assigned to accompany us to Balikpapan. He had not gotten a Tigard pin and asked for one, but I was out, and I had just given the last of my other gifts to Masrullah. I felt badly that I did not have something for him, but that was that. I later noticed that Masrullah gave Suradi the last Tigard Police pin, which merely confirmed my already high opinion of Masrullah. Before we left, Masrullah gave us all large Indonesian eagle pins (worn by all Indonesian government employees) and another pin worn by government employees. I was really touched by his thoughtfulness and pleased to get those pins. We all climbed on the bus and took off. Not far out of Samarinda proper, the air conditioning on the bus conked out, so we pulled over to the side so they could fix it. We had a driver and a back up, and they both set to work. I felt sorry for these guys, because, of course, everybody on the bus had to supervise. They finally decided that they couldn't fix the air conditioner and they were going to load us all into cars to complete the trip, but Bill and Charlie decided that the bus would be fine if they just opened all the windows. My Momma didn't raise no fools— I opted for the air-conditioned car. I had enough heat by that time. I dozed most of the rest of the way to the turn off to Bukit Bangkirai — no mean feat considering the rough road and twists and turns — so I was unaware of the final death of the bus. Apparently at some point it broke down completely, so everybody was transferred to the accompanying cars. We turned off the main road at one of the very few side roads and waited for the other cars to catch up with us. We then headed off to the rain forest park. I have been on some rough roads in my time, but I have never seen anything to compare with the road that we were on. It had been paved at some point, but that was clearly some time ago. For a good share of the way, the road was merely rough and deteriorating, then it got bad. It was covered in potholes a foot deep, and had eroded from the formerly paved sections in incredibly sharp drop-offs. All of our vehicles, with one exception, were four wheel drive or vans, and were therefore high enough to handle the road. One vehicle 43 was a station-wagon-type vehicle and it kept bottoming out. We finally had to stop to shift people out of that car (and luggage into it) so we could proceed. After driving on the bad road for what seemed like forever, we finally arrived at Bukit Bangkirai. Bukit Bangkirai is a rain forest preserve. They have built an eco-tourism camp on the edge of the forest and they have a number of programs for reforestation. The camp looks to be fairly new and consists of open-air halls, a restaurant/office built on 6-foot stilts over a cement slab, four or five cabins built on stilts and containing two separate units each, and a large swimming pool. We didn't get a good look at the swimming pool, but it seemed to be of good size, but contained kind of brackish-green water. We went into the restaurant (The Hornbill) and found the preserve staff awaiting us along with several people from Kutai. They served us lunch and then the staff put on a PowerPoint presentation. The director spoke broken English, but Harry, the deputy director, was pretty fluent. They explained that the preserve was 7,000,000 hectares, but 5,000,000 of those hectares had burned in the forest fires of the 1990s. Following the presentation, we set off for the canopy walk. At the start of the trail, they had set up a "test" catwalk a few feet off the ground to give people a feel for what they would be experiencing. They explained that no more than two people could be on a catwalk at the same time, but in my case, only one (a guy could get a complex!). We started up the trail to the canopy walk area. We had picked up a forest ranger as our guide, and he was extremely fluent in English and very good at reeling off the standard tour guide jokes. He was very good at pointing out the different flora in the rain forest and explaining about a -*' `. ;, . ". f: ",- the challenges they face in preserving and enhancing what .-*:,,0.,,,. .,, is left. °• s ` 'It It was really hot, and we were walking uphill, so I was •. ire *'�� '�. sweating like a stuck pig. I was walking with Rusmandi and at one point he turned to me and told me that I really should :-.1 take up jogging. I really couldn't be offended (though I kind ` " a w . ' ' of wanted to be) because he `« `- was saying that out of concern. ='`v < y �P -$` eih,,• . ', �' 'i+II Aa ''''1°2'4';,.••. :.t' .IC . .■/__ We reached the canopy walk ,. ,... ,� ♦ .,. ..'l �, J ,!Iv , k� area to find a tall tower with f -„ 't`L , ti endless steps built around a if" ` ' '' ,PA tree. The guide, Amanda, and '. Chal immediately started climbing, and so did I, though ,• " \, - Rusmandi turned to me and told me he didn't think I should -;`„x,� ;:• zY> , go up. Phooey on that! There is no way I would miss this! Round and round we went. It wasn't bad. About the time started to flag, I realized that we were almost at the top. When we arrived, we found a plank and wire cat walk 44 stretching across to another tree, and a series of catwalks connecting several trees. It was great. We had great fun walking across the catwalks, r r y looking at the trees and enjoying the view. The experience was made much more dramatic, � � ' �t :: �- ; however, with thunder booming in the not too far distance and increasing flashes of lightning. �j. y•It was clear that a thunderstorm was rapidly y ` approaching. I would have loved to stay up �t ` ^ �, ` `' • there longer, but it quickly became evident that - "�'" we needed to get down out of the trees. I hung back a bit waiting for Bill and Charlie, who were '.1 having a ball. I was standing on the top of the final tower watching Bill and Charlie come across a catwalk when the first wind of the storm hit. I would not have wanted to be out on the catwalk at that moment, but Bill and Charlie did just fine. The tower was not attached to the tree, though the landing from the catwalk was, so it was a bit disorienting to be standing on a solid surface while the tree and the platform swayed in the wind. Once we got down the tower, Harry met us and gave each of us a Canopy Walk lapel pin. There were two cars to take us back to the camp, but they could not carry everyone. Bill and Charlie decided to walk back with the folks that did not fit in the cars and the staff hustled the rest of us into the vehicles. The minute the doors shut, we took off on one of the wildest rides of the trip. The skies opened about that time. It poured, it thundered, and lightning was flashing all around! We barreled down a narrow, rutted, dirt road which was rapidly becoming a running stream. We bounced, we flew, and we slid around corners. We arrived back at camp and slid to a stop by the restaurant. We jumped out of the cars, dashed under the restaurant, and turned to find that the cars were already tearing out of the camp. It was then I realized that not only did you not want to be up in a tree during a thunderstorm, they did not even want anyone in the forest. Fortunately, there was a pavilion up at the canopy walk area. They had never intended for anyone to walk back to camp, and the rest of our party was waiting at the pavilion. It took two more trips to get everyone down out of the forest. Bill and Charlie, who were on the last car out of the forest reported that the road was now a river, and they likened the ride back to Disney's Indiana Jones lir 'a '4 olk Adventure— a very good comparison. r fi Our under-restaurant haven was very comfortable, '11:4X with the cement pad and great views of the storm, but it started to get crowded as the second shift • came in, and it started to flood from the heavy rain, so we dashed out into the storm and up the stairs to the restaurant. Surprisingly, the storm actually cooled things down a bit so it was more comfortable than it had been earlier. 45 Bukit Bangkirai has an Adopt-a-Tree program. For $50 you can adopt a tree for one year. They erect a sign by the tree indicating that you have adopted it and then send you a picture and a certificate. Charlie, Chal, and I decided to adopt a tree. I asked if they accepted credit cards, and they did, but Charlie still had his crisp $100 bills we had been advised to bring. They accepted American $100 bills as long as they were crisp and new. (Banks would not accept smaller denominations or bills which looked excessively used out of concern for counterfeits.) Charlie offered to loan me $100. considered adopting two trees —one in honor of the Three Rivers Land Conservancy and one in memory of my parents, but I ultimately decided that would be too complicated with the language barriers. I adopted a tree for Three Rivers for two years. The paperwork was not difficult, but it took a little time. I was uncomfortable that during the time it took to complete the paperwork. Three $100 bills were laying on the table. That is Rp 3,000,000, which is a lot in Indonesia. I was concerned that it just reinforced our image as rich Americans throwing money around. All the while we were completing our transaction, one of the staff people was using the microphone to sing very off-key karaoke. We finally completed our transaction and it was time to load back into the cars. It turned out that the Kutai folks were going to accompany us into Balikpapan. It was still pouring rain, so we dashed into the cars and took off back down the awful road we came in on. The drive to Balikpapan was uneventful. We arrived at the Dusit Hotel, which was extremely nice and modern. Apparently Balikpapan is an oil port. The town looks more prosperous than Samarinda, and the hotel was clearly set up to cater to western business people. Rather than spend the night, the Kutai people were planning on returning to Tenggarong. They produced a wrapped gift for each of us from Bachruddin, and a case of wild honey for us. I was really taken aback because they had given us so much already. It was hard to say goodbye. Totok even got teary-eyed, which did not help. He gave each of us a hug. The Samarinda people were staying in Balikpapan so they could take us to the airport in the morning. I was glad, since I thought that would give us more time with them, but then they loaded into a car and took off. It turns out that Samarinda has a house in Balikpapan for their folks to stay in when they come to town, so the Samarinda folks were spending the night there. That was very disappointing. Charlie, Chal, Bill and I decided to meet for a }' walk after getting settled in our rooms. My room .w was extremely nice — located on a corner with `�°`" �� r large windows on both sides. There was some problem in gettingour luggage to our rooms, F' �-l: '" -raa ..; � „� ..... however. I finally went in search and ran into ' „lice •, . Kemal. We went to his room to call the desk. ,: About that time, the bags showed up, so I claimed mine and helped Kemal and the bell boys 46 sort out which bags belonged to whom. I also invited Kemal to join us on our walk. I got settled and went down to the lobby to meet Bill, Charlie, and Chal at the appointed time. They were not happy that I had invited Kemal (who, of course, had not shown up on time) so they wanted to leave without him. I felt caught since I had invited him, so I told them to go ahead and I would wait for Kemal. I checked out some stores in the hotel, and then found Kemal in the bar. We had a real interesting conversation about the program and about life in Indonesia. Kemal told me that the people assigned to us during our stay (Masrullah, Totok, Edy) are seen as real up-and-comers in their organizations. Working with us is part of their preparation to take on more responsibility. What he told me made perfect sense, though it had not occurred to me before. I had assumed that they were chosen primarily for their English language skills. Earlier in the day, Kemal had also told me that Indonesia had gone through its own Red Scare back in the 50s and 60s. Unlike America, however, people disappeared. Kemal said that he had several cousins and other family members who disappeared and to this day they have no idea what happened to them. This was interesting, not only for what it told me about Indonesia, but also for what it told me about Kemal and his family— obviously they have always been in the more liberal wing of Indonesian society. Kemal also told me that he had an older female cousin, who was apparently quite good looking. The local military commander at the time decided that he wanted her for his wife. She refused, so he threatened to kill her family and friends. She married him to protect them. Kemal took me out of the hotel and over to a little shopping area to use the ATM. I had spent the money I had gotten the day before on the extra suitcase, and I had seen a batik in the hotel that I wanted to buy. I also still needed to make sure I had my departure tax money. The little I saw of Balikpapan in this sojourn leads me to believe that Balikpapan in definitely more prosperous than Samarinda. We met up with Bill, Charlie, Chal, and Amanda for dinner in the hotel. They had beef on the menu (the first that we had seen in Indonesia). It was from New Zealand. It was good, but not up to American standards. It was very apparent from the clientele in the restaurant that the Dusit Hotel caters to western businessmen. While we were at dinner, a Charlie Chaplin impersonator came in. He was apparently hired by the hotel as an entertainer. He decided to flirt with Amanda, which she really did not appreciate. It was just one more bizarre incident in our trip. While at dinner, Kemal informed us that East Kalimantan didn't really mean to pay for the shirts they got for us, so we had to pay him Rp 50,000 per shirt, to pass on to East Kalimantan. It seemed strange, but, on the other hand, it had seemed strange that East Kalimantan would buy us shirts too, so who knows what was going on? Following dinner, I headed back down to the gift shop to pick up the batik I liked. Everyone followed along. I ended up getting two batiks and a couple of Javanese masks. Bill was still like a kid in a candy store. It was fun to watch him. He ended up 47 buying several items, including two elaborate hand puppets. Actually, I would have loved to buy the puppets myself, but I just didn't think I had room in my suitcase. We had decided that there was just no way we could bring a case of Kutai wild honey back with us. Fortunately, the honey was in about 20 small bottles. We decided to each take a bottle to taste and to give the rest to Kemal to take to the ICMA staff. I tasted the honey up in my room. It definitely has a wild, smoky taste and it was a lot thinner than honey I am used to. Tuesday, February 20, 2002 We got up in the morning and had breakfast in the hotel. Amanda's plane was leaving early in the morning, so she was going to be up and gone before we got up. When we left the restaurant, however, she was just checking out of the hotel — apparently she had overslept. We tried to joke with her about taking some honey with her, but she was definitely not in a joking mood. We got our luggage and checked out of the hotel. About that time, Suradi, Masrullah, one of the Beauties, and her chaperone showed up. We took last pictures with Masrullah and the Beauty (who we think was Suradi's daughter). We then loaded in the cars and took off for the airport. We got to the airport, and it was a zoo. The drop-off area was quite busy, and there were a lot of men in orange jumpsuits anxious to grab your luggage and carry it into the airport. Things got quite confused and, all of a sudden, Suradi was hugging us goodbye, and we were running off to enter the airport. You couldn't get into the airport without a ticket. I assumed that we were going to check our luggage and then come back out to say a proper goodbye to our friends, but after checking in, Kemal told me the Samarinda people had left already. I felt really bad because I did not say goodbye to Masrullah or thank him for all he had done for us. We paid our departure tax and then proceeded to the immigration counter. I had worn the pins Masrullah had given us the day before in honor of our friends. When the immigration officer saw them, he said, "Ah. Government employee." I tried to explain our visit, but it was clear that he did not understand English, so I gave up and said, "Yes. In the United States." He smiled, and very quickly stamped my documents. proceeded to the gate area, following Charlie, who had preceded me. Bill and Chal were behind me, but they didn't come and they didn't come. I finally looked back and saw Kemal talking to the officer and running around. I figured my pins had saved me from a major hassle! It turned out that Chal, who had established quite a pattern by that time of throwing things away, had managed to throw away the immigration card he had gotten as we entered the country, not realizing that he needed it to leave the country. They finally got everything sorted out and Bill and Chal were able to join us. 48 They finally called our flight and we went out and boarded wonderful Silk Air for the flight back to Singapore. Once again, it was an uneventful flight, but it passed in great comfort. We arrived back in Singapore, and made our way though immigration. When I reached the desk, the officer greeted me warmly in an impeccable British accent and said, "Have a lolly?" That threw me. He repeated it and pointed to the candy dish on his desk. This was perhaps the most civilized immigration check I have ever experienced! We collected our luggage and set off in search of a London Cab. There was no London Cab, but we did manage to snag a mini-van for the same price. We got back to the Hotel Ana Singapore with no problem, and once again made arrangements for our cabby to pick us up early the next morning. We talked about visiting the Zoo for their night tour, ; - 4, 4r,$ but in the meantime wanted to check out digital -; T.', �J ` ' cameras. Both Bill and I were quite impressed with Charlie's camera during our trip and were , . ,: . +� , �` 1 interested in buying one. Amanda had advised us = to go to the Funam Center— a high-tech mall. Thev 1 hotel desk agreed that Funam Center would be a good place, so we went out to hail a taxi. m ... :- The taxi ride was interesting, primarily because we were traveling during the day, rather than the middle of the night. Singapore looked to be large, spotlessly clean, and chock full of major stores and restaurants from around the world. It was also interesting in that they have congestion pricing —when we entered a designated section of the downtown, a small machine on the dashboard of the cab recorded our entrance and deducted a fee from the balance in the machine. It was very interesting and easy. Several American cities, including Portland, have expressed an interest in congestion pricing, so it was interesting to see just how easily it worked. Funam Center was interesting. It was a large, multi-story building with electronics shops on five levels around a central atrium. Most of the shops, however, were quite small and specialized. We looked at cameras in one store, and I found one I was interested in, but fortunately, Charlie had brought the Camera World catalog along. We found the same camera in it for less than what the Singapore store was asking — and that was before duty. We checked out the rest of the mall, and then decided to walk down to the river to check out a brew pub Amanda's fiancé, Leon, had told us about. We found the river quite easily. It was interesting because it had all been redeveloped in the same manner as San Antonio's Riverwalk is supposed to be. It was quite clean and safe, but it had an unreal feeling about it. The area is made up of several different blocks, called quays — Clark Quay, River Quay, Boat Quay, etc. We walked down to Boat Quay to a place called Brewerkz. We sat down at one of the outside tables and 49 had incredibly good service (totally unlike the Alamanda restaurant at the Mesra Hotel) and the best beer of the trip. We decided that Singapore would make a great base of operations for exploring Southeast Asia. Go out to the 1 :Art. various countries for a week or two, and then come back to Singapore for a western culture fix, then set out again. � Fn After dinner, we walked back the way we came and signed 4 ' ' ' on for a tour of the river and harbor on one of the tour boats. The boats looked like old, working boats, but were probably replicas. We sailed down the river to the harbor and back all the while a tape played an English narration of the sights along the way. It was very interesting and totally worthwhile, but it a r j `k. �,�is� sure felt like , .a« ri . Disneyland (or perhaps, more accurately, } Asialand). Following the tour, we took a little ; l 3�ffi p aeaitiIIs L k turn around one of the Quays and then decided s n Ya to walk up to the Raffles Hotel. Of The Raffles Hotel is one of the grand old hotels of the world and dates from the British colonial .,r era. I had heard about the Raffles Hotel for _ _ quite some time and particularly from Nancy - = `r- Pennell's father when I was in college. I was quite anxious to see it. It was also the birthplace of the Singapore Sling, and one of the required tourist activities is to go to the Raffles Hotel Long Bar and order a Singapore Sling. The Raffles Hotel was much larger than I expected. It took up an entire, quite large city block. We walked around the hotel to the main entrance and started to go in. They stopped Charlie at the door and would not let him enter because he was wearing sandals. Chal, Bill, and I went in and looked around. It was interesting, but we couldn't see too much because much of the lobby was restricted to paying guests. Bill asked for the room charge list, and it was easy to see why they were restrictive —the most expensive room was S$3,000 per night. We went back outside to pick up Charlie and then walked back through the hotel grounds to the Long Bar. Along the way, we stopped in one of the gift shops, and I was astounded at the prices. They were not cheap. It would have been fun to get a souvenir, but not at those prices, and especially not when I had no room in the suitcase. The Long Bar was packed, so we sat at the bar and ordered our Slings. They just poured them out of a bottle into the glass, so they were a total rip-off and not very good to boot. At least we can say that we have done that (and will never need to do it again.) After we finished our drinks, we decided to head back to the hotel. It was too late for the Zoo, and we were all too tired anyway. We found a taxi stand and got into the 50 queue. After waiting quite a while, our turn came. The taxi was one of the smaller varieties that seemed to be all over the place. I squeezed myself into the front seat while Charlie, Bill, and Chal squeezed into the back seat. I was really wedged in, so much so that I really feared that I would not be able to get out again. The taxi driver looked over at me and informed me that I really should have waited for one of the Mercedes taxis. If I could have moved my arm, I would have hit him! Wednesday, February 21, 2002 Once again, we were up early for a ride to the airport. The mini-van showed up as scheduled, and we were off. We arrived early enough that check-in at the airport was easy, and we had plenty of time to look around. Changi airport is more like a shopping mall than an airport, so there was plenty to look at. The flight to Narita was uneventful. I had an aisle seat, which was a real luxury. We did, ` , however, have a great view of Mt. Fu i ama on they- 44n4i way in. The pilot announced that it was Mt. � �� ':`�� +t. � „� a�t°"x 7.}�45?xi' 1. Kilimanjaro, however, which gave us quite a start, and it certainly didn't instill any confidence in hist ; µ ' navigational skills. .: # Once again, we had two hours on the ground in � 9 � k5 � .� , Tokyo. We were in the same terminal, which we had p pretty well explored two weeks before, so there was not a lot to see. I did check out the electronics store in the airport, and I found the camera I was interested in. It was cheaper than Singapore, but still not as cheap as Camera World. It was finally time for our flight to Los Angeles. The loading area was packed with a tour group of older, loud folks. It was going to be a long flight. We boarded the plane and Bill and I found our seats — the two center seats of the four-seat center section. I do have to say that ICMA's travel agent absolutely stinks at getting seat assignments! Before we took off, one of the tour group came back to speak to his friends in front of us. He was one of the loudest and most obnoxious of the group. He noticed a Sikh in a turban seated a little way forward and leaned close to his friend and said, "I want you to keep an eye on that one." Nice. Loud, obnoxious, and an uneducated bigot to boot. Lovely. ,_ The plane was extremely hot and stuffy, and unfortunately our seats were right below the movie projector, so our air vents were actually behind us. \ I opened them up and directed them forward, but t. they did very little good. Apparently, the vents were bothering the guy behind me and his wife. } Rather than nicely explain the problem and ask us to adjust them, however, as soon as the pilot turned off the safety belt sign after take-off, the jerk 51 jumped up and shoved our vents all the way forward. I was feeling kind of sick from the heat so that really pissed me off. I jumped up and moved them back. I then asked the couple next to the jerk whether they were a problem, and when they said no, I sat down. I can't say that I am real proud of how I handled that, but why in the world would someone choose the most offensive way possible to handle a situation like that? I don't understand some people. This flight was every bit as long and uncomfortable as our flight from Seattle. I also have noticed on this trip, that most of the American stewardesses we have had have been among the oldest, heaviest, and grouchiest that I have ever encountered. It must have something to do with the route. We arrived in Los Angeles about an hour after we left Singapore (by the calendar and clock). How disorienting! Immigration and customs was a snap. After leaving customs, we were met by an airport greeter, who helped direct us to our next flight. It was a nice touch, and the first I have seen in the US. The line for security at the concourse for our flight to Portland was very long. After traveling for 19+ hours, lines are difficult. At least Charlie made it through. We had to wait for awhile, but eventually, they boarded our flight to Portland. Will wonders never cease? I actually had three seats to myself, so I was able to lie down and sleep. Heaven! It was good to get back to Portland. We claimed our bags quickly, and went outside to await Jean and the county van. Amazingly, she pulled up very soon after we got outside, so we were loaded up and on our way with no muss and no fuss. She dropped us at our cars in the Tigard parking lot. I went -IV/ - ---..;.V;122 j', over to my office to pick up my car keys, and wig/ ja r was amazed when mystaff all commented on all �i�i ►10 '� � the weight I had lost. When I got home and :"1'..-:''',e4!'-: weighed myself, I found that I had lost 14 e ` pounds! I guess Indonesia agrees with me. ."_ __ 7 ,,, , ,: .;,._ v This has been the most amazing, wonderful trip. . We had bad times, thanks to poor scheduling and management of our time, but on the whole, this has been an amazing, incredible experience. I have made wonderful friends and seen and done things I never thought possible. I truly hope I get a chance to go back. 52